I have just put together a video based on a story from my dim distant past…about 25 years ago when I first started using Mind Maps. It shows how I made good use of mind mapping techniques to give a great presentation under … trying … circumstances.

There’s lots of information on the NovaMind web site about using Mind Maps for presentations and a good starting point is the following:

http://www.novamind.com/presentations/

where you will find this video and also lots of other information related to Mind Mapping for presentation research, preparation and delivery.

And without further ado, here is the video:

I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Gideon

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest Mind Map Connection newsletter, which contains information about the latest developments in NovaMind, including:

Mind Manager import functions

MS Project import and export functions

Crossgrade discounts

New Mind Mapping tutorial videos and web pages about how to use Mind Mapping for various types of planning

The “back to school” site license sale starting on 3rd July with 50%+ off a limited number of site licenses. Although this was prompted by the tight funding within schools, it is also open to anyone who is feeling the pinch of tough economic times.

Here is the link to read the full newsletter:

http://www.novamind.com/mind-map-connection/mmc-2008-06-28.php

Enjoy!

Gideon

Microsoft Project Import and Export

For some time, the Windows edition of NovaMind Platinum has had the ability to add project related information like start and finish dates, percentage complete, priorities, and assign resources to the branches on the Mind Maps.

Unlike the Mac version of NovaMind which can be imported directly into Merlin, the Windows edition did not have any way of getting the information over into a project management package.

Now that has all changed with the introduction of both import and export of Microsoft Project XML files. This means that you can carry out the project inception phases in NovaMind, brainstorming your ideas and working out the project’s scope and objectives, then export into Microsoft Project format for detailed project management.

The Microsoft Project file format has become the de facto standard for project management applications, so no matter which project management software you use, it is almost certain that you will be able to use the MS Project format.

During the project, if you need to bring someone new on to the project or brainstorm solutions to particular problems in the project, you can either import the whole project file into NovaMind, or export a portion of the project plan from your project management package and open it in NovaMind, and work with it in NovaMind. Using the Mind Map format makes it easy to see the interrelationships between objectives and requirements and tasks within the scope of the project, which makes it a powerful tool for both understanding where all the different pieces of the project fit together, and also for designing solutions to project related issues.

The Microsoft Project import and export functionality is available immediately as a free update for NovaMind Platinum for Windows users, and will be integrated into the NovaMind Platinum Mac product shortly.

Mind Manager Import

The Pro and Platinum editions of NovaMind for Windows also now have the capability of importing Mind Manager files. We have a lot of users who have a number of old Mind Maps that they want to convert to NovaMind format and work with in NovaMind, and people who receive Mind Manager files from colleagues, so we have built this capability into the Windows version of NovaMind Pro and Platinum.

Mind Manager import and export has been in the Mac version of NovaMind for several years, but the techniques we are using in the Windows product gives a better result, so we are going to be porting the new Windows import capability over to the Mac, and it will be available shortly.

To get the latest version, just do a check for updates in NovaMind and download the latest version.

There is now a video tutorial now available to help you get up to speed with the NovaMind screenwriting capabilities. NovaMind helps screenwriters by allowing you to visualize the screenplay both from a visual storyboarding perspective on the Mind Map, but also use the built in screenwriter, in a combination we call ScriptMapping™.

Find out more by watching the video below:

 

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Video introduction to ScriptMapping™ - write your screenplay using the integrated screenwriting capabilities of NovaMind mind mapping software.

This video takes you through the overall functionality and benefits of using Mind Mapping software with a built in screenwriting system to build up your screenplay using visual storyboarding and experimental screenwriting.

There are also some comments from prominent people in the movie industry about their experiences using NovaMind for their screenwriting needs.

Sometimes screenplays start as doodles, or conversations with friends, and are developed through brainstorming sessions.

But those brainstorming and planning sessions where all the ideas are being thrown out there left right and center are often not captured, and afterwards only a flavor of the conversation is left. Many ideas that could have been developed into something brilliant have been lost in this way.

Many professionals in the live theatre, movie and TV industries already use Mind Mapping and brainstorming techniques to generate and develop story ideas, characters, organize aspects of production and more. This has helped immensely with capturing that information, organizing it, and explaining it to everyone else involved in the production.

But there used to be something missing - sure, if you have a good Mind Mapping application, you can use it like a visual storyboard, but very often snippets of the actual screenplay are thought up during these brainstorming sessions.

There used to be nowhere to store these portions of your screenplay in your mind maps.

That is, until NovaMind.

Now with NovaMind, you can both use powerful visual storyboarding, task planning, resource management and scriptwriting all in one place.

The new NovaMind screenwriter is totally unique, and provides everything you need to write and publish your screenplay directly from within NovaMind.

You can attach as much script as you like to each of the branches, and it is automatically assembled in the right order for your screenplay, according to the position of the branches. If you want to reorganize your script, all you need to do is move the branches around.

But there’s something even more powerful - you can do experimental script writing. Say you have a screenplay and you have ideas for three different endings, you could write all three of the endings and attach them to different branches. Then you would disable the printing on two of the branches and produce your screenplay, send it off to the director or producer. Let’s say they come back and say “I love the screenplay but the ending could really do with a rewrite”. So now you’re all ready - you go back to your computer, uncheck one ending and check another one and produce the revised screenplay instantly - you’re the hero of the day!

 

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This video will teach you the NovaMind user interface and Mind Mapping terminology.

Here is the Windows version:

And the Mac version:

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the immediate availability of $50 discount coupons for people trading in their other Mind Mapping software for NovaMind.

These coupons are available for people who used to use Mind Manager or iMindMap or any other Mind Mapping software that they purchased for over $100. The coupons are valid for NovaMind Pro and NovaMind Platinum, as well as bundles of NovaMind Pro or Platinum plus Merlin project manager.

NovaMind owner Gideon King said “we have had quite a number of people requesting crossgrade discounts recently, as they have found that NovaMind fits their needs better. We have decided to make their migration to NovaMind easier by offering this discount.”

The coupons are now available at https://www.novamind.com/store/crossgrade.php.

This video explains what is in each of the different editions of NovaMind Mind Mapping software: Express, Pro and Platinum, and helps you choose which one is the right one for your mind mapping needs.

For a complete feature comparison, please see the NovaMind features page.

 

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Starting with the current Mind Map Connection newsletter that was just released today, we will be archiving the newsletters and announcing the links to them on this blog.

In this newsletter, there is a summary of the things that have been happening in the world of NovaMind over the last few months, including links to many of the mind mapping articles and videos that have been released by NovaMind in that time, and the enhanced mind mapping capabilities of the latest release of NovaMind.

Some of the new web site features such as social bookmarking, easy linking and the articles are discussed.

The new version of the NovaMind screenwriter for Mac has been released and we are looking for feedback so we can make sure it is the screenwriting tool of choice for both budding and professional screenwriters.

It was also announced that NovaMind for both Windows and Mac will be getting import and export capabilities for Mind Manager and MS Project files in about 3 weeks. The Mac version of NovaMind has had Mind Manager import and export for some time, but it was difficult to maintain, and the new version improves the handling of Mind Manager files in many respects. 

There is some preliminary information about the new web system that NovaMind is developing, and a few hints about what is coming in the future. Stay tuned for further information in due course.

Here is the link to the full newsletter:

http://www.novamind.com/mind-map-connection/mmc-2008-06-12.php

NovaMind is pleased to announce the first of a new series of tutorial videos on NovaMind for Mac. This first video shows you all the basics of creating your first mind map in NovaMind.

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the first of a new series of tutorial videos on NovaMind for Windows. This first video shows you all the basics of creating your first mind map in NovaMind.

 

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Make your Mind Maps look even better using the new image reflections, branch image layout modes, glossy button look branches, new corner styling and new themes. This allows you to more effectively present the Mind Maps to other people and to recall information more easily.

Brisbane, Australia, June 2, 2008. NovaMind has long been recognized as the Mind Mapping program that produces the best looking Mind Maps. These new features take that even further, allowing you to create stunning looking Mind Maps that really grab your attention and make the Mind Maps even easier to remember.

These new capabilities are available immediately in both the Windows and Mac OS X versions of NovaMind.

The image reflections for attached images allow you to create stylish “Web 2.0” look images to enhance the look of your Mind Maps. You can now also apply both the chamfered and rounded corners to attached images, to further enhance the look of the images.

Using the new branch image layout modes, you can fit, fill, or stretch the images to suit your needs within the branches. This allows you to maintain the shape of the image where necessary, or to fill the branch with the image as required.

The glassy look branches give you a “Web 2.0” look for your branches. Whether they are rectangular, chamfered, rounded or oval, the glassy look can be applied to instantly add that extra visual pizzazz.

The existing themes have been updated, and new themes added to take advantage of the new visual styling that is available. This gives you professionally designed themes for your Mind Maps to make them look great by simply applying a theme.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way you think – they organize the information in the same way your brain organizes information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and is rapidly gaining recognition in the Windows market. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

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If you’d like more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon@novamind.com. 

We are pleased to announce that we have completely rewritten the screenplay module for NovaMind Platinum for Mac, based on the feedback from our screenwriter users.

Full Screenplay Editing

The new screenwriter has the entire screenplay shown all the time, with the text for the selected branch highlighted. This makes it much easier to create and work with your screenplay, and see how it is attached to the branches. When you move the cursor in your screenplay, the branch for that part of the screenplay is automatically selected. When you select a branch that has no screenwriting attached to it, a line is opened up in the screenplay so you can attach a portion of your screenplay to that branch.

All this makes it a breeze to create your screenplays.

New Control Bar

At the bottom of the window is a control bar which allows you to jump through all the branches with screenwriting text attached to them, see the page and scene numbers, change the element types, change the capitalization of the selected text, see what the next element types are when pressing Tab or Return, and zoom the screenplay for easier reading.

This gives you all the tools you need to work with your screenplay at your fingertips.

Improvements in Basic ScreenPlay Editing

We have made many improvements over the previous screenwriter in the handling of element type selection, completions, mores and continueds, copying and pasting, character and scene completions etc.

In short, the whole screenwriting functionality of NovaMind for Mac has been rewritten to match the needs of screenwriters. It is now in beta testing and will be released shortly. This is a free update for existing NovaMind 4 Platinum users.

Other New Screenwriting Features

In addition, we have many new features which make the screenwriter much more powerful and flexible. These include:

• Scene numbering in the margins
• Ability to configure how the next states on Tab and Return work
• Ability to set the line spacing, capitalization and character positioning of the different element types
• Smart widow/orphan protection of dialogue, keeping it with its scene and character information where required

The new screenwriter requires that you use MacOSX 10.5 Leopard.

This decision was first announced over a year ago, and we now have implemented based on this decision. The reason is because we use a number of new features that were only introduced in version 10.5. It will not run at all in earlier versions of Mac OS X.

Windows version coming soon

We will be introducing a Windows version of the new screenwriter in a few months, and in the meantime any screenplays you write in either the Windows or Mac version of NovaMind will be able to be read and used on the other platform.

We are pleased to announce that there will be a number of new ways that you can enhance the look of your Mind Maps, in our next release of NovaMind.

This will be a free update for existing version 4 license holders.

The new features include:

• The ability to fit branch images automatically into the branch (scaling them to fit)
• The ability to fill the branch with the image (cropping as necessary)
• The ability to stretch the image to fit the branch by scaling the width and height independently to fit.
• Reflections on the images
• Glassy button styles for branches and connection lines

The new features will be available in both the Windows and Mac version of NovaMind.

All this is currently in beta testing and will be released shortly…hope you like it!

Gideon

 

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Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way you think. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

These days we are bombarded with so much information that it can be difficult to make sense of it all, and we suffer from information overload and overwhelm, which reduces our effectiveness.

Some of the problems we face are:

* inability to solve problems effectively,
* lack of creative thought,
* lack of focus,
* difficulty giving great presentations,
* problems organizing your thoughts,
* poor communication,
* missing out tasks when planning projects,
* forgetting important information, and
* lack of clarity and direction.

If you have suffered from any of these problems, Mind Mapping is for you. Mind Mapping gives you clarity and allows you to:

* organize your thoughts,
* remember information,
* communicate better,
* solve problems quickly and effortlessly,
* brainstorm new ideas,
* increase productivity by 20% or more,
* see the important issues,
* make better decisions, and
* give compelling presentations.

Why does Mind Mapping work?

Mind Maps organize the information in the same way your brain organizes information. This makes it very natural and easy to understand.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures that are created when Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

We have two halves to our brains which think in different ways. The left half thinks linearly following direct linkages to related ideas. Our right brain likes to see the whole picture with colors and flow.

Mind Maps cater to both sides of the brain at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

The new NovaMind web site is now live with many new features, easier navigation, and better articles about Mind Mapping.

New Mind Mapping Videos, Examples, Case Studies and Articles

As part of the new web site, we have a mass of new information by way of articles, blog postings, and case studies on how people us NovaMind, including:

• A powerful new video and article teaching people what Mind Mapping is and how you can use it (on the new home page)
• The case study about Stephen Feber winning the £22m contract using NovaMind (now including video and PDF report)
• Case study about how to use NovaMind for a Legal Practice (updated from our old web site)
• Case study about Jay Abraham’s marketing teachings and how to implement them using NovaMind
• Case study about how Marc Dussault uses NovaMind for setting up business mastermind groups, and has also included mind maps in his books
• A new article and example mind maps about Mind Mapping in general terms, explaining what they are and how you can use them
• A new article and example mind maps about mind mapping for businesses
• A new article and example mind maps about how teachers can use mind mapping
• A new article and example mind maps about how to use NovaMind for presentations
• A new article and example mind maps about how students can use mind mapping for their studies
• A new article and example mind maps about using NovaMind to enhance your personal effectiveness
• A new article and mind maps to help you work through the process of choosing your mind mapping software
• A new article about the cognitive aspects of Mind Mapping (example Mind Maps will be put in this article shortly)
• A new article about generating innovation using mind mapping
• A new article and example mind maps giving general information about using NovaMind for presentations
• A new article and showing how to prepare presentations using NovaMind
• A new article showing how to deliver a presentation effectively
• A new article with tips on giving great presentations
• A new article on business presentations using Mind Mapping
• A new article on presentations in the classroom using NovaMind

…and more on the way…

I will be continuing to add articles, tutorials, and case studies as well as enhancing these existing articles with videos, examples, and PDF reports where appropriate.

If you have any suggestions for enhancements or new articles or case studies that you would like to see, please let me know.

Easy Bookmarking

We have built in the ability to use your favorite social bookmarking site to link to pages on the NovaMind web site, whether it be blog pages, forum posts, or other pages on the NovaMind web site. You can click on the icon for Digg, Stumble Upon, del.icio.us, Technorati, or Reddit to use one of those services. If you use a different service, you can use the general Bookmark button to bookmark that page.

Easier Linking to NovaMind web pages

On each web page we also have the ability to easily create a link to that page. If you want to create blog posts or web pages that link to articles we have on the NovaMind web site, or just send links to your friends or business associates, this system makes it easy. All you need to do is click on the “Link to this page” hyperlink on the right side of the NovaMind web page, and copy the HTML code.

Better Affiliate and Reseller facilities

We have made the affiliate and reseller facilities easier to find and improved the application process, to make it even easier to become a NovaMind affiliate or reseller.

I hope you find the new web site useful.

Gideon

We are very pleased to announce that the Mac version of the new NovaMind screenwriting system has entered beta testing.

The new screenwriter has been completely rewritten from the ground up, and has many new features, and works in a completely different way to the old version.

It has the entire screenplay showing with the script for the selected branch highlighted, and you can move through and edit the script inline, and it will keep the branch selection updated to suit. It has inline scene numbering, new pagination controls to split dialogues appropriately, improved completions, more flexible layout options, and many other new features.

If you would like to join the beta test, you will need to be a NovaMind 4 Platinum licensed user, and you can send an email to our support team and they will point you to the place where you can sign up to be a beta tester. 

I have posted another article about Mind Mapping in your business on Squidoo.

In this article I explain how to use Mind Mapping for creating a company mission statement that everyone can “buy in” to, and then go on to discuss goal setting and achievement, planning a web site, and selling your ideas.

Mind Mapping provides a great tool to clarify what your business is all about, and strengthen your ability to deliver on your vision of the company.

Here is the URL of the article:  http://www.squidoo.com/Mind-Mapping-Clarifies-and-Strengthens-Your-Business 

NovaMind Platinum for Windows was awarded a 5 star rating in the review on innovation tools. In the review, Chuck Frey highlights a number of the features of NovaMind, including:

• The improved “fluent” ribbon toolbar
• Live preview of map formatting
• Feedback when moving branches
• Show/hide map elements
• The Suggesterator
• Map orientation settings
• Color mode wheel
• and the built in Presentation mode 

In conclusion, Chuck says “I don’t know how Gideon King and his development team do it – they continue to push the envelope in terms of new features and functionality that no one has thought of before. This program is a pleasure to use, and I really like the Suggesterator.”

You can use Mind Mapping to make your opportunities and priorities clear. It makes growing your business easy and systematic.

Many businesses struggle because the owners and managers don’t have the right strategies to grow their businesses in the marketplace, or even if they do know the strategies, they are either not sure how to implement them, or are overwhelmed by the number of different things to think about all at once.

In this article you will learn how you can grow your business using Mind Mapping.

Included in this article is:

• a Mind Mapping case study,
• Mind Mapping tips,
• some ideas to help you with your project planning,
• the results of a Mind Mapping survey,
• techniques to help with getting things done,
• and videos on the 5 business growth factors.

So hop on over to find out how you can grow your business using Mind Mapping.

Gideon