Yesterday, I attended a Web seminar with Mindjet as they provided a preview of MindManager 7.  I have been a serious evangelist for MindManager products for a couple years now and the trainer for MindManager for about the same length of time.  I did some work on a project to help promote their products last December using a process I developed which allows users the ability to turn mind maps into a video podcast.  Unfortunately as these things go I was completely out of the loop and did not realize that they were working on a version 7.

Version 7 was partially designed so that mindmanager would work with office 2007 and live up to the new Microsoft Office standards, which it does.  I knew that they were working to integrate Mindmanager with office 2007 but I did not know they were going to push that out in something called version 7.  So was a bit of a surprise to get the invite for the seminar and learn about the new version.

For several months now my mindjet labs ID and password have been stuck somewhere in limbo and I can’t seem to get it unstuck and so I don’t get technical information from Mindjet like I used to get.

There are some interesting new features in the new version of mindmanager, however I wouldn’t say that this is a evolutionary change for mindmanager other than the fact that it’s now office 2007 compliant.  That is a big change all by itself.  It is not going to revolutionize the world of mind mapping.

Still Waiting for the Day When  .. .

There is no support for 3-D, nor as far as I can tell from video or audio for that matter.  I haven’t seen anything to indicate that can handle HTML tags within a mind map either.  These are all elements that could take MindMapping to an entirely different level.  Also absent is anything that would indicate that Mindmanager has created a more collaborative tool capable of creating wiki’s or even enabling a greater ease-of-use for bloggers.

Hint Hint How about a right click and Blog this option???  LiveWriter tie in?  (Microsoft is responsible for LiveWriter)

I was somewhat surprised to see that the feed reader option available in Mindmanager, is still a 10 step process.  It takes 10 clicks to add a feed to a topic in a mind map to create a feed reader.  If you have 10 URLs that you want to follow through a feed reader that would be a total of one hundred clicks compared to a one to two click option if you want to use Google’s feed reader tool(10-20 clicks for 10 urls).

In Version 7, Mindjet seems to be staying the course with a Microsoft strategy that will further remove it from web-based products and solutions.  They have done a lot more work to bring the Mac version of MindManager up to snuff as well,  but as more and more free office programs start to compete directly with Microsoft office programs Mindjet could find itself painted into a corner.  Already free mindmapping solutions are starting to chip away at the market for people looking for lower price points.

Now I make all these comments from the slightly critical perspective of somebody that expects more out of their favorite software.  I will be reviewing the software a great deal more over the next several weeks and sharing that with you.  It is still my favorite software and I get more use out of that software than almost any other program with the potential future exception of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which I can use to blog with.  I anticipate putting together a video tutorial very soon about mind mapping with Dragon NaturallySpeaking so keep your eye open for that.

For users that haven’t tried MindManager, when you use it you will be blown away.

For those of you that have been using it for some time, you are probably somewhat like me waiting for MindManager to show that amazing genious that is hidden away somewhere in Mindjet waiting to break free and make an evolutionary phase shift one more time.

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Below is an excerpt that I dictated while recording the embedded video. I wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to utilize Dragon Naturally Speaking within Dream Weaver. This is just a test of the text editing capability in Dream Weaver and not a test of my ability to code html or any other programming language in Dreamweaver.

Transcription follows

Hello this is a test to determine if I can use Dragon Naturally Speaking with Dreamweaver for Macromedia and I’m using Dreamweaver eight from the studio eight bundle.

I do a great deal of work writing is a freelance writer, and I often times need to include a little bit of HTML coding for example I sometimes need hyperlinks embedded in the text. If I use Microsoft Word, the HTML is created with a great deal of buggy code and it’s just not acceptable for publishing on the Internet. I like to use Windows live right or however it’s only good for using or writing that is one article at a time. Sometimes I like to write several articles and row especially if I’m writing a series of articles on the same topic.

The ability to use Dragon Naturally Speaking and Dreamweaver essentially using Dreamweaver in this case is a text editor even though that’s extreme under kill for Dreamweaver’s capabilities. I do use Dreamweaver extensively for my web design work and also I use it for FTP purposes and a number of other helpful reasons.

As I’m writing this document I am noticing that I do not have all of the capabilities are normally would to edit text. You probably noticed that I had a little difficulty selecting some of the words in the last paragraph. The selection didn’t cover the entire word that I was looking to select and I was unable to edit it once I had selected it.

In addition when I state that I needed a ‘new paragraph,’ it gives me an extra line in between as opposed to the single line that I’m looking to get in between each of these paragraphs.

You’ll notice I just did some manual editing with the keyboard even though when you’re working with Dragon Naturally Speaking you tend to want to use your voice alone most of the time sometimes it’s just more practical to revert to the keyboard. Sure it’s possible to use just your voice (when you’re not working in Dreamweaver) however why not use all the tools that are available to you including the mouse the keyboard and your voice.

I think this is the wrap up my attempt at trying Dragon naturally speaking with Dreamweaver all in all I think it was successful and I do think I will use this in the future.

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