XMind

Collaborative Minds!

There is a good news for all iPhone™ and iPod™ touch users. We can read and edit XMind maps anywhere via support of iThoughts, one of the Best iPhone Apps.

Thanks for the great work of iThoughts. 

XMind Support Looking Good
The following attributes ‘survive’ the import/export process:

• Text
• Notes
• Colours
• Hyperlinks
• Shapes
• Folded (collapsed) status
• Icons
• Start/End dates
• Priorities
• Percentage complete

Click and know more details about iThoughts-XMind

Friday, 4 December, 2009 — XMind, a leader in mind mapping, visual thinking and collaboration software, today announced XMind 3.1.1, with many important

Improvements:

1. If your account has been renewed, after signing in, your XMind title will become “XMind Pro”.
2. XMind shows the Path of current XMind file in the window title.
3. XMind prepares the description file about “XMind File Format” for Developers.
4. While launching XMind, you can enable “Do not show this again”. Then you can sign in under Help menu when you want to.
5. Every Pro feature is labeled “Pro” in Menu.
6. If you sign up an account in the inside browser, XMind will sign in automatically.
7. If you renew you account in the inside browser, XMind will enable all Pro features automatically.
8. Improve some translation.

and fix some Bugs:

1. When adding local files as hyperlink in XMind for Windows version, if the path has “space”, XMind will not work well.
2. If using Spreadsheet structure, we can not edit the column name via double-click.
3. If showing the Legend in the map, we can not edit the description of markers in legend via double-click.
4. While signing into your account on XMind.net, we can not unsubscriber the newsletter/tips at the Setting page.
5. After extracting a new Theme or Style, we can not rename them via double-click in the theme view or style view.

Another important thing we would like to share with you is:
Our website, XMind.net has been revised successfully.

Here I list some major changes of our website:

1. More attractive Home page: More friendly and good-looking design. You will find the target information easily.
2. New website with many improvements, especially can work fluently on any browsers.
3. New Downloading: Save your time, be nice, considerate to you. Two editions, one Package only.
4. Better viewer for your online maps: Make every effort to build perfection.

At last, on this Thanksgiving Day, we also would like to take the opportunity to thank you, our friends, thanks for all your support, thanks for being with XMind for so long time. We believe that with your support, your understanding, your patience, XMind can get better and better. We are so deeply grateful to all of these, and we will take this as our forward momentum!
Wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving Day!

November 23, 2009 — XMind, a leader in mind mapping, visual thinking and collaboration software, today announced XMind 3.1, a major release of its award-winning product. New XMind will be more accessible to a broader audience and more powerful for professional users.

Here let’s know about the changes in this powerful new version:

New Features

1. Default Theme, now makes it easy to use your favorite theme and even your own designed theme in new maps.
2. Brainstorming Mode, help you get sparkles easily and save more time.
3. Powerful Search, now works among all workbooks, which means you can fast find out useful information in all open XMind files.
4. Relative Link, lets XMind be able to your assistant to manage files better.
5. Export to PDF(Map), offers another option to share our maps with the world.
6. Sorting Topics, helps us review the whole plan handily.
7. Enhanced spellchecker, could be our great assistant in work. It not only tell us which is wrong, but also what the right is. Another good news is that we can add our own dictionary file(.dict) into XMind.
8. XMind has the new online update system.

Fixed bugs

1. Fishbone: If changing map’s structure to fishbone, add summary to a topic, drag and add more topic into this summary, click print, the layout is chaos. When reopening this map, the layout will be chaos too.
2. Extract Theme: If we extract a theme(named theme 1), close and reopen xmind, then extract another theme(its name will be the theme 1 automatically,), change its name (like to be theme 2).Now when we reopen XMind, the theme 2 is lost.
3. Context Menu: Only in the first sheet of the first workbook, select a topic and right-click mouse, you can see the full context menu(including markers, and structures).
4. Upload map: If we add some special theme or style to a map and upload it to http://share.xmind.net/, then download this map and open it, all special theme and style will disappear.
5. Import XMind 2008 file: If the map has wallpaper, that wallpaper will lose after being imported.
6. Import FreeMind 0.9: Some Freemind 0.9 files can not be right imported into XMind.
7. Extract style: Sometimes, your extracted style will disappear after re-launching XMind Pro.
8. Export dialog and others works well on Ubuntu, esp 9.10.
9. Copying multiple lines which begins with “Tab” will cause XMind crash.
10. Some other bugs fixed.

Improvements

1. You can open XMind files via double-click on Mac OS.
2. XMind works fluently on Mac OS 10.4.
3. Improve the Spell Check in XMind.
4. Improve the Find and Replace.
5. Improve the Notes.
6. XMind Pro users can use XMind Pro offline.
7. Some other improvements.

Want to know more? Download and try Now. It’s our honor to hear your voice.

As I wrote before, all the XMind Pro features that I listed can benefit Project Management a lot. Now, let’s step into another important feature, Presentation Mode.

First, I want to spend a little time talking about meeting. Undoubtedly, meetings run through the whole project. How to get our meetings effective during Project Management? Is there any good approach to have a meaningful meeting? Presentation Mode in XMind Pro is entering to its stage.

Let’s take project status reports for example. How to express your project status clearly, how to make your co-workers get fully understood of what you are talking about? The answer is to use XMind Presentation mode, which can help you to present your thought perfectly to others according to the map you drew.

As we know, XMind is a great and powerful visual thinking tool to help us to organize our ideas, plans, and tasks. And visual thinking tools are naturally good at communication. To enhance this advantage, XMind Pro brings the well-designed Presentation Mode. The Presentation mode allows us to browse maps with a minimum of distraction.

Press F5 to enter Presentation mode. Now the map appears on the whole screen rather than in a window. And only the central topic is highlighted on the center of Window. See as follows:

With the Arrow keys, we can navigate in Presentation mode fluently. While we are focusing on the current topic, we can also have a glance of the topics mentioned before:

There also is a hidden button panel in Presentation mode. Moving the mouse to the bottom, we will see it, which has six buttons. They can help us navigate the topics, zoom the map, highlight all topics, and Show Sidebar.

In this sidebar, we can see the outline of all opened works, enjoy the powerful filter, and enable audio notes. This sidebar should be remembered esp. while navigating a complicated map.

With this presentation mode, our audience can easily concentrate on the selected topic. At the same time, they can also read the topics we have navigated. This is the point. From the beginning, XMind shows all things as a whole.

From the task percentage, the difficulties you met when implementing the task, any other improvements in existing tasks, next major tasks, the estimated completion date, all the listed stuff can be arranged orderly, can be presented clearly. In Presentation mode, with arrow keys,  you can show them one by one. Then, your team members can see all the other stuffs you listed as a whole. Meanwhile, your customers could understand your clearly. Everything you present keeps their integrity, but have their own emphasis as well. Presentation mode in XMind will help you do better project status reports.

What about trying XMind Presentation mode to assist your Project Management, it won’t let you down.

It is obvious that Visual Think really can do something helpful to Project Management. XMind, as a great Visual Think/Brainstorming Software, can also benefit our Project Management via its friendly design, many powerful but easy-using features. In the coming several blogs, we’ll focus on how to make full use of XMind in managing projects.

Of all the features that XMind owns, Taskinfo, Gantt View, Powerful Filter, Map Merge, Presentation Mode, Fishbone Chart, Spreadsheet chart, Multiple Sheets/Workbook, Brainstorming mode/Timer* do play important roles in Project Management. Here goes the first one: Taskinfo and Gantt View.

When running a project, there are numerous things need to organize, such as: steps in the whole project, business requirements analysis in measurable goals, financial analysis of the costs and benefits, task assignment, task priority and so on. Therefore, how to get all these things done is not that easy.

Now, you may need XMind, a visual think tool. Suppose that in Executing Stage of a Project, drawing a mind map is very necessary to carry out all the things planed to do, such as business requirements, functions as it was intended, acceptable quality standards of the product, time and budget constraints, and all others aspects. Then we need to list all tasks, and each task has a start and end date, has its own priority and progress. It’s time for us to use Taskinfo. We can select the task and choose the start/end date, priority, and progress percentage for a certain task in the Taskinfo View, and even add the person in “Assigned to”*.

Everything is in order. Click “Show Gantt Chart” under View menu, we will easily check all these tasks and detailed information. Gantt Chart in XMind is a special Viewer illustrating a project schedule, showing the timelines of the tasks, ordering all tasks with their priorities. When does this task start, when does it end. Which tasks are urgent, should be done at once, which have not to. What’s the progress of a task. Moreover, moving a mouse to a task, we will see who are in charge of it in the future. Here, we can understand fully at one glance. I guess it will be a better idea for us to use this view to communicate/discuss with other members than just watching it by ourselves.

Apparently, you may be aware of that Taskinfo and Gantt View can do better performance when they work together. That’s definitely true. Finally, it seems that arranging and managing your tasks is not that hard.

How Effective and valuable approaches for Project Management, would you like to have the experience by yourself? Just do it, don’t be hesitate. Whatever you think of them, please make your voice heard.

*The features, Brainstorming/Timer and Assigned to, will be available in the coming version.
**Taskinfo and Gantt View are both available in XMind Pro only.

By Chuck Frey

Most people don’t normally associate mind mapping software with making money. But the fact is, it can have a real impact on your bottom line – because it enables you to think more clearly and completely, make better decisions, envision the future of your company, and more. Here’s a partial list of ways that mind mapping software can (indirectly) help you to make more money:

• Map your customers and identify the most promising ones for targeted sales campaigns
• Develop new products to sell
• Create a map to clearly and more completely understand the evolving or unmet needs of your customers.
• Analyze and improve your company’s business model
• Identify opportunities to reduce waste in your business – the savings go straight to the bottom line.
• Map your current market segments, and identify adjacent ones with similar needs into which you can expand your marketing and sales.
• Brainstorm the content of a white paper or information product (e-book) that will help you to dramatize your product’s or service’s unique selling proposition to potential customers.

In what other ways are you using mind mapping software to grow your business?

This article originally appeared in Chuck Frey’s Blog
Chuck Frey is the author of The Mind Mapping Software Blog. He has written numerous articles and reviews about mind mapping software, and is widely regarded as one of the leading “gurus” of this technology.

XMind, a powerful mind mapping software, is ready to make contributions to your business.

With an XMind account, you can present your map anywhere.

Firstly, with the account, you can upload your maps online and share with people all over the world. Also, you can choose the map you like and add to favorite, then you will see the map in your account, staying in “My favorites”. If you are an XMind Pro user, your online maps can even be shared privately as you wish. In fact, the inspiration to write this blog is from the questions raised by one XMind Pro user.  He who is a CEO from a UK company, a mind mapping fan, began to use XMind by recommendation from his friend. Later, he consulted with us about how to cooperate with his colleagues by using XMind. After knowing about the Private Sharing, and even the other one whom he wants to share with doesn’t have to pay to be a Pro user, just needs to sign up an XMind account, he was very glad about it and felt it’s very convenient.

Secondly, the account is very important to use XMind Pro. You should use a code to activate your account, and then use the activated account to sign in when launching XMind Pro. With this account, the greatest benefit is that you can use XMind Pro anywhere! No geographic and time limitations, XMind is somehow close at hand.

How convenient it is! It only takes a little bit time to sign up a free account. Why don’t you have a try to sign up an XMind ID, then enter into this wonderful mind mapping world.

Interested in it? Get you own XMind ID at: http://www.xmind.net/signup/

Recently, many XMind friends ask about the affiliate program of XMind Pro.  And XMind Pro affiliate program is available now.

Every affiliate will get an unique purchase link, the XMind logo and a buy button, and an online account to trace the sales from this link.
After listing this link on the website/blog, you can trace the sales online and get the commission every month. No other things to do. There are no cost.

If you are interesting interested in, please send an email to “sales@xmind.net” with subject “XMind Pro Affiliate” to join our Affiliate Program. Please also list below information:
Your Full name
Your website/blog
Your other contact information besides Email, such as Skype, Gtalk, Phone number

The wise had told us communication is very important in our life.
We also know Presentation is an important way to communicate with others, esp in work. There are many companies designing and developing the tools to let us perform better on presentation. And so do us.
Mind map brings us a great way to catch inspiration, organize sparkles, plan project, and more other things. While we designed it in 2007, we asked ourselves, since mind map is so powerful and useful, why don’t we present the map directly. Then managers, colleagues, customers,and clients can understand us more clearly. How perfect! From Oct. 2007, XMind 2008 Pro has a special feature, Full Screen Presentation. A brand-new method.
With many follow-up hours’ work, now Presentation is very stable. Here are some key points to present your map in XMind Pro:

Below are three screenshots:
1. Beginning. all topics are hidden, only central topic is highlighted, centralized and zoomed in:

2. During presentation. topics which have been navigated will be shown too.

3. Sidebar and Button panel. Move mouse to the bottom, you will see the panel button. Click sidebar button, you will see the powerful sidebar at the left side. Here, you can navigate, filter, and record.

This presentation mode is popular used to make speech in meeting, report in hall, etc. Maybe you’re willing to share some your experience with us.