A friend of mine recently pointed out a great little PDF printing tool.  The cool thing about this tool is that it includes a creative common license generator.  Basically as you’re going through the steps to print a document into a PDF format with this tool, you can opt for a creative Commons license to be inserted into the PDF document including a creative common license on the main page of the document as well.

This can tentatively outlined to people that receive your PDF mind map from MindManager Pro seven that you are the owner and creator of that mind map.  It then gives them the instructions and rules by which they can share that mind map without getting into trouble and still cite you properly.

I think this is a great idea as it allows for a safer and wider distribution of mind maps because people and companies that come across these my maps will know the rules by which they are able to hold those mind maps containing knowledge or information that they need.

Enough of my babble about the importance behind the concept.  Let me show you a few screen shots of how it works.

Free Download Location and Video Demo

Go to The Anything to PDF Converter site to see a video of this PDF converter in action and or get a free download.

View Mindmap and PDF examples for this article.

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A word for our sponsors

Years ago when I was in the military, we used to use these very large dot matrix printers to print off very large maps for strategic planning of battle plans.  These days large scale printers are available to be run with full color based on Inkjet Cartridges. 

Our sponsor Inkers.biz also provides Toner Cartridges for a very large variety of inkjet printers from some of the smallest to some of the largest.  Their products are of course available for purchase online.

I have long held the goal of being able to easily and rapidly print off a four foot by eight foot paper mind map. This would enable me to have a static view of an extremely complex map, something that is not always possible to achieve with a projector.  Now with a mindmap that was not filled in with lots of images or background colors, such a map would probably not even burn through too many Toner Cartridges.  Basically the mind map lines and the topics would just be print offs from individual lines, similar to printing off maybe 32 sheets of one page mindmaps.  That would not be a major drain on ink or toner resources at all.  Combine that with maybe one of those extra large stick it like poster pads from 3m and you could maybe remove a strip (like a self adhesive envelope) and stick the mind map to a wall without damaging the paint.

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The Following video walks you through the multiple methods required or available to insert an image or a picture into a MindManager Pro 7 Topic.
As you could see in the video there are multiple ways to insert a picture into a topic. There is one method that I did not cover. You could add the image to your image library and then open up the library and insert the image into a topic from the library. This is usually only practical in circumstances where you plan to utilize that same image many many times.

If you would like to see a video of the steps required for adding an image to the library, drop me a comment and I will add it to the rotation very soon. In fact you can leave a comment for any video requests and I will do my best to cover them in short order.

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One of the best tips that I can give any future of my mapper is to use a projector . You will get a tremendous experience if you mind map on your computer and display it on a projector.  It’s better for your eyes, but it’s tremendous group experiences.

Brainstorming through mindmanager is a fantastic way to get an idea out and focused, but when you can put that up on a projector and displayed in a room of people potentially customers or vendors are partners, the software in a projector pay for themselves instantly. 

Now you can’t always travel with a projector. Projector bulbs don’t always travel well and sometimes break.  However you can make arrangements to rent a projector when you arrive at your destination.

If you are trying to reach consensus or if you are trying to help a customer or partner understand a complex topic, there’s no better way to close the deal and to present your offer to a mind map presentation.  So when you travel you should consider renting a projector if you can take one with you.

Projector rentals are becoming more prevalent all around the United States.  If you travel to Seattle, there are Seattle projector rental options available. If you travel to Spokane Washington, there are Spokane projector rental available there also. If you travel to Portland, you guessed it, there are Portland projector rental options available there too.

Just because you’re traveling doesn’t mean there’s any excuse what you should be able to use a projector while you’re on the road. Most projectors today are so bright that you can display an image on almost any wall or surface.(mirrors excluded )

I often times use a projector with my mind maps even when I’m working alone.  It enables me to get up for my desk and walk around and take a different perspective on the mind map and get a feel for what’s going on in that map and what’s going on in my own head.  Plus it’s also good practice for working with the mind map live so that when you sit down with a customer you will be prepared.

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Here’s a quick little video tutorial that will show you how to shut off the spell check option in MindManager Pro 7.

MM Pro 7 has been upgraded to the new Microsoft Office 2007 standard and the ribbon makes navigating options very fast and easy. However, it is a little tricky to find a few of the more obscure but very necessary options in MindManager Pro 7.

Why would you want to turn off spell check in MindManager Pro 7?

I often times need to shut off the automatic spell check option before I take a screen shot of a mindmap. I do not want to see the little red squigly lines underneath names that are not in the spell check dictionary.

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In case you find it as difficult as I did to find the Bug Reporting page for MindManager software from Mindjet, I’m posting the link here.  Its not listed in their site map nor on any menus that I could see. 

However when I did a search of their site with their search tool on the keywords bug report, the second or third option was the right place.

Here is where you report MindManager Software bugs to Mindjet

For those of you that have been following, I did report the potential bugs I found in MindManager Pro 7

Article 1 with video

Article 2

I included the urls for these articles in my bug report.

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OK, first I must apologize. I did not get a chance to participate in the beta testing for MindManagerPro 7. As such when I first take it for a spin and start finding a few “issues”, which I will call bugs, because I am a consultant and not a programmer, I get curious and want to track them down.

For those of you that are not members of the Yahoo Group for MindManager, I would encourage you to join. If you can not join another group, then I will share with you below some of the results of my findings as a follow up to my last post

Possible MindManager 7 Bug - Small Little thing

My response in the Groups and my new findings ( A couple more bugs) or at least abnormalities.

I attempted to utilize the background(in my initial testing), and transparency settings in the Marketing Strategy Template in a different map. I did not get the same problem when I did that.

So it seemed to be something unique for this map(so far).

But I did just test your(Refering to Nick Dufill’s suggestion to change either the background image, background color, or transparency level) suggestion.

• When I change the transparency from 35% to 0% the problem goes away.
• When I change the transparency back from 0% to 35% the problem comes right back.
• When I change the color of the topic box from light gray to light blue, the problem remains.
• When I remove the background image (this leaves a gray background) the problem goes away.
• When I then assign a new different background image, no problem appears. (I tested 5 different backgrounds)

After all those changes, when I put the original background image back into the map, the problem comes back.

So it would seem to be an issue with the background image included with this template.

Then I thought I might try and get smart (you might suspect a mistake coming).

Pro6 - Same Issue

I opened the file I had saved as a mmap file in MMPro6. I get the same error as in 7. Can’t read the text while typing.

I also noticed that the map layout of this particular map when viewed in MMPro6 was drastically different than in MMPro7. Its a split tree in mmPro7, but when I open it in MMPro 6 it is changed for no reason to a generic map layout where the growth direction is concerned.

That is pretty troubling!

So then I created a new map with a split tree growth direction. saved it and opened it in Pro6 to see if I would lose formatting again.

No re-formatting this time?????

X5Pro possibly incompatible all together (for this file not all maps)

I saved my mindmap based on this template. I then tried to open it with MMX5Pro.

Well apparently that was a bad idea. MMX5Pro crashes when I attempt to open that file. “The instruction at 0×00adff50 referenced memory at 0×0ec5f7c0. The memory could not be read.” Click OK to terminate program.

So that was nice.

MMX5Pro did not have any difficulty opening up the maps in my My Maps folder created with MMPro6. This just happened to be the first file saved my MMPro7 that I had attempted to open with X5Pro. I thought, I hope they are backwards compatible?

So I made a simple map in 7, saved it and opened it in x5pro. No error.

So I am thinking that there must be something intrinsic to that file created from that template.

I thought, maybe its that troubling background again?

So I opened the file again, removed the background image, and saved it with a fresh new file name. Opened it in X5pro and it crashed again with the same error.

I tried creating a couple more maps from random pro7 templates, saving them as mmap files and opening in x5pro. No problems.

Conclusion so far

I think there must be at least 2 issues with that template.

1. Something must not be kosher with the background image -> Creating the error I initially mentioned.

2. Something else must not be kosher somewhere in the files that the template generates, causing an incompatability with X5Pro

3. Bugs are like ants. If you see one bug there are probably more of them somewhere else.

Thanks,

Brett

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I was getting organized for some future tutorials with MindManager Pro 7 and I may have stumbled across a little bug.

It may be a program bug or it may be a bug in relation to a standard map template that MindManager ships with called the “Marketing Strategy” Template.

The bug basically seems to happen when you attempt to write over the title of the main topic, or update the text of the title of the main topic in any way. While you are doing it, the text is completely illegible. Its as if there’s a shadow of text behind the topic that is not getting corrected. I haven’t seen this on any other map yet. So I did a quick little screen video of the phenomena and

I’m going to check the consensus with the Yahoo! Group community for MindManager before I send it up to Mindjet. (still don’t have a Mindjet labs account yet - not sure where to send it so I’ll check with the community for consensus before I invest the time in tracking down the Mindjet submission process . . .)

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I installed MindManager Pro 7 from Mindjet last night and the installation went off with out a hitch. I’m running Windows XP Home Media center on a Vista capable machine (haven’t installed Vista yet, I’ve been delaying due to QuickBooks 2006).

I put together a video to offer up a demonstration of the installation and my initial impressions looking at the software once it launched. I will follow up with many more videos on the use of MindManager Pro 7.

I have also been toying with the idea of a series of tutorial videos showing users how to perform the same task in 3 versions of MindManager:

• X5Pro
• Pro 6
• Pro 7

Mindjet would love to have you purchase the latest version, and it probably will be the best place to start for new users. That said I run all three versions myself to get special capabilities offered by each (although I suspect I may not need to keep Pro 6 now that I have Pro 7). Never the less, I would like to share the tutorials for all three versions.

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