Here’s a quick and easy fun tip for working with SnagIt, the screen capture program of choice for most bloggers and web designers.  This program has probably been the best buy for about $30 that I have made in the last couple of years.  Its excellent if I want to add an image to a mind map, powerpoint, or to a blog article (like the images below).  It only takes about 30 seconds, and if I like I can even push the image out to Photoshop and do some more advanced work.

SnagIt has a number of accessories and stamps for SnagIt to help both automate your work a bit more and to add more options when you put together your images.

I just picked up about a dozen of these stamps (they are free btw).  The call out options and the keyboard stamps are two that I suspect I will get a lot of mileage out of.  I create a large number of callouts in pictures and for my tutorial work, I think it will help to be able to explicitly provide an image of the exact key as opposed to typing something like ‘tab’ key.

Here’s the link, If you want to check out some of these SnagIt Accessories . 

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I have been using MindManager mindmapping software for several years now.  I am a trainer and love the program.  I do believe that it makes me more effective, more efficient and helps me keep information together in a way that might even make me smarter.

Those are all very useful traits to cultivate in yourself and for students, especially college students and high school students that is even more important.  This world is not getting any less crowded and students today have a great deal more competition than I had just a couple decades back.

That said buying MindManager as a student is a relatively inexpensive affair as Mindjet, the makers of MindManger offer some great educational discounts through partners such as Campus Tech.

Get Academic Discounts on Software at CampusTech

Campus Tech Rates with the Educational Discount on MindManager Product Line

$150 is a great price for this software!  The rates for Mac users is very cheap as well.

Now there is one very cool thing about doing research with MindManager in a mindmap form.

It is very easy to recycle and reuse later.  I could definitely see a teenager and especially a college student keeping notes in MindManager and using those notes very effectively as they go to work as an intern or kick off their career. 

Imagine having a large chunk of your college education immediately at your finger tips!  Now, I do understand, one of the reasons for going to college and getting a degree is not only to learn a discipline, but to learn how to learn that discipline and stay on top of a changing landscape.

I can not really think of a better tool to help a student develop that skill set.  I’d call it a discipline, but MindManager makes it so easy that its like saying that kids swinging on swing sets have developed a discipline.   Can it really be a discipline, if its fun and easy?

It’s just too easy to be a discipline.

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I have been waiting for a service like this for years.  Qipit takes images that you snap with your mobile phone camera or just a regular digital camera of things like white boards, hand written notes and other documents and converts them to text using OCR, Optical Character Recognition, technology which has evolved very significantly over the last 12 years.

As a heavy mindmapper I often times try to use electronic mind maps instead of a regular white board, but some things are just easier on a white board.  I use mind maps so heavily because they enable me to capture that information very rapidly. 

However with this type of service and application, I have the ability to get a great electronic backup with very little effort.  Not to mention, I can get electronic iteration captures as the white board notes evolve say during one of those meetings where it seems like everyone will step up and drive the dry erase marker over the white board to get a feel for the issues or add to the discussion.

Now with my 1 megapixel camera on my phone, I can only convert images from white boards.

However, these days I always carry a small digital camera with me as well.  With that I can also upload images from my computer to the site and have documents scanned and read via OCR as well or even have hand notes converted.

Or Here’s a great tip if you are Mobile without a WiFi connection or computer

Take the picture with your regular digital camera.  Pull the flash card out of the camera and drop it into your phone or smart phone and add the better quality image as an attachment and send it to Qipit via email!

So in review this is a very cool and did I mention FREEEEE!  service.  It takes your pictures of handwriting from white boards or even from printed documents and uses OCR technology to create a soft copy or it can even publish straight to your blog or website.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of electronic white board tools and applications, even some touch screen surfaces requiring expensive investments in large screen devices and the wiring and connections and tuning and plasma mount to keep it from falling off the wall, etc, etc, etc. 

This is just a simple little solution that is ready to go for almost any user and the setup only takes about a minute.

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I arrived home yesterday from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  I flew the Red Eye home (upgraded ) I found a large number of technologies converging around the concept of an improved user interface to the computer.  This for me was the most important aspect of the show and seemed to signal the direction of technology going into the next 2-4 years.

One of those interface improvements included a search engine that had a mind mapping interface capability (among several other views and tools).  I’m going to be covering these technologies and the impact and usefulness of these interfaces over the next few weeks and want to set everyone up for the topic.  After seeing what the show offered, I believe that this will be an extremely important transition in computing, possibly as important as the introduction of the mouse or even the color monitor.  Regardless, I think that these new interfaces will be nothing less than extraordinary.

In the meantime, after traveling for a week (and all the pre-travel prep), I have several mundane things to take care of this weekend including transferring and renewing my license tags, and finding a new insurance broker for my home owners insurance. 

Plus, if I have time, I am going to reboot this blog and with a new theme as this one is feeling a good bit stale these days. 

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I wrote a week or two back that there was a MindManager Pro 7 update available, but for some reason I could not find it when I went through normal channels on my computer(video on how to find MM update availability manually).

Normal Channels being either me hitting the update button in the menu or having the program itself automatically check for an update.

So today when I went to launch MindManager 7 Pro (shortly after waking up!  ) this time I received a pop up window in the program telling me what I already know, that an update was available for my computer.  So I clicked on the button to get it and get the show on the road!

Here is what I found on the mindjet site after accepting the update.

THINGS YOU SHOULD NKNOW BEFORE UPDATING MINDMANAGER PRO 7

• You will have to reboot your windows machine after the installation, so install when you do not need your other programs running.
• You will have to shut down all windows applications and MindManager before installing.  That includes Outlook, which on some computers will run in a hidden capacity in the right task bar.
• Now the update is 82mb long, not super large, but not super small either.
• You should not loose your Map Templates built up, saved up and downloaded over the ages

If you can’t find where your Map Templates are located in MindManager 7 like me, just go to your tools menu, its the button on the right.  I always look for it in the formatting section and never find it. 

The Upgrade Windows preview so you do not panic

1. 
1. There was no virus in mine, you should not have one in yours.
2. 
1. I mentioned this above, this is the first time they give you this type of warning.
2. Note. they do not warn you that you will have to reboot your system.
3. 
1. In case you were not paying attention the first time, you may get a 2nd warning even when all of your applications are closed. 
4. 
1. I wish mindjet had told me about this one before I started the installation.  It is a common enough practice, but it never fails to catch me by surprise with many programs.

So all in all the installation went fine.  I do not know yet why it took so long for my computer to find the update, not like I was looking for movers New York to ship a whale cross country or something (bad analogy), but all in all I’m through the holidays, into the new year and the update is running.  I’ll let you know how it works as I use it.

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