Mind Manager from Mindjet

One of the most valuable tools I have in my techwriting arsenal is Mind Manager offered by http://www.mindjet.com/.

I am able to pump out and order my ideas in a matter of minutes instead of using Visio and labouring over getting things lined up. There are icons and markers readily available to annotate sub-topics and text notes that can be used to reference ideas and to expand on those ideas if necessary.

This tool takes the hard work out of producing ideas on paper compared to using a tool like Visio where the user can become bogged by managing the placement of shapes and linking them. 

There is only one downside to Mind Manager and that is its multiple outputs. I have found that when you:

• - output to Visio – it changes the layout of your mind map completely,
• - output to PowerPoint – it chops off any sub-topics that don’t fit on the slide while export to Excel is just flaky to say the least…
• - output to PDF – unless you have the latest patch, it triggers an error message: ”Could not print to PDF.. “

http://www.mindjet.com/ 

It also comes with a free reader (personal use only) so that everyone can view your document once you have published it in its native format. Unfortunately, the reader is not freely available for commercial use and must be purchased. I feel this is a somewhat short-sighted move by the company as it stops the proliferation of their product. If they were to make the reader available to all and sundry, once the product gains significant market share, then, perhaps it would be wise to ’sell’ the reader.

That said: Check it out, it is a tool worth having…

Most useful tools… 2007(8) plus browser wars…

Have a look at this document… http://d.scribd.com/docs/19re73m9mmqh8htx2lva.pdf

The list uses the responses of 109 people, which is a very small demographic sample, however in spite of the erroneous research methods, I can honestly say that it does list some of the most fantastic tools out there and most of the most popular tools come at the right price… “FREE”.. for example Skype. The document touts Firefox as the most used browser among its user group however, the browser market share statistics (June 2008) state that IE has 73.01% market share, next is Firefox at 19.30%, followed by Safari at 6.31% then Netscape, Mozilla, and others…Google’s Chrome will give these browsers a run for their money too.. so keep an eye out for it at …  

Supposed to be released today…
http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://1220310893071&section=technology

and it comes with an interesting User Manual: (gives new meaning to technical writing)
http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHohwwVYC&printsec=frontcover#PPA5,M1

 

Check out the tools, they are fantastic.. I simply love Picassa.. and Captivate and…

NEO Email Organiser

NEO Email Organiser (NEO 3.2 has just been released) is a very cool tool complements Microsoft Outlook and can be used in preference to Outlook.

I use MS-Outlook and run NEO in tandem that is, I run both programs at the same time.

The Outlook Search function is basically USELESS however, in NEO I can search back through several PST files (I keep on for each year on my local drive with backups on CD) and find whatever I want in seconds if I am specific in the search criteria.

It also eliminates the need to keep emails in folders – this is a great timesaver.

Check it out today… It is not very expensive and is well worth the expenditure. I have found emails that have saved me from near disaster at times when searching Outlook would never have located them.

Even the free version is useful but you do find yourself wanting to hook up more PST files. With the demo you are limited to only one PST file… My current NEO Message Stores goes back to 2005.

Save yourself alot of time and check it out today: http://www.EmailOrganizer.com

When you buy the product, all upgrades are free!…

No I am not getting a commission on this product, I just feel that it is a tool that cannot be ignored.

Enjoy,
Nikki