Marco Milani

Ci spiace, ma questo articolo è disponibile soltanto in English.

I recently discovered XMind,  a mind mapping software, formerly commercial and now branched into two versions: Open Source (published on sourceforge) and Professional (commercial).
I tried both the two versions of this software, however I'm interested in understanding if the Open Source version can actually replace Freemind, the mind mapping software I'm using in my everyday life.

In this post I write about my really first impressions about XMind. I don't touch deeply every functionality and every aspect involved in this project (see the website for a complete description of the software and a comparison matrix for the two versions), in this post I'm only highlighting the features I consider necessary in the choice of a good mind mapping solution.

At the first use of XMind I was immediately impressed about the GUI. The GUI is really modern and nice, nodes are animated, colors are well chosen, elements in the GUI react really fast at the user input and the node dragging is really smooth so the user experience is really intense and pleasant.
I liked a lot the hi-res markers (icons) useful to remember and highlight nodes meaning, and the map styles (structure) one can apply to the map: fishbone, map, org char, spreadsheet, this can make the map apparence different from the classical  "tree view" form.
I also appreciate the sheets, making the application a good box in which effectively opening more than one map and clearly see which map is the current and which are in background.

Unfortunately I didn't find a way to propagate markers hierarchically from a node up to the root. I use this feature in freemind and I consider this functionality really useful in order to immediately identify important area of the map.

Of course, XMind provide also all the main features needed in a mind mapping tool, like:

• Cut/Paste for nodes
• Creation of outlines
• attachment of notes and files to nodes
• creation of link (relation) between nodes
• creation of clouds or boundaries around nodes

This functionalities are deeply integrate with the advanced GUI, so the resulting sight is really impressive.

In the PRO version there some other interesting features, enabling a more professional use of this tool, like:

• project management and "Todo" primitives with a simple gantt chart
• presentation tools
• various export filters

Around XMind there is also a nice and good looking website that is the base for an active community sharing mind maps.  I don't evaluate aspects related to sharing maps because at the moment I'm not interested and sensible to this topics. In any case I was impressed by the clear and good looking website and the excellent integration between XMind pc client and the web community.

In a mind mapping tools I best appreciate features related to "project management" and "getting things done" (see my previous posts in the "mind mapping" section), unfortunately these features are only provided by the professional (non free) version. This is the main reason because don't plan to switch to XMind now, even if XMind has outstanding functionality in terms of usability, look and feel.

I'm interesting about the road of the OS version compared to the PRO version,  in the past I appreciated similar approaches, I'm thinking, for example, to the Interbase/Firebird initiative started by Borland.

IMHO the OS version is an excellent starting point, it isn't common that the OS community can gather a so rich gift, I hope that now the OS community will notice this product and concur in short to the development of the product (at the date of this post the OS project on sourceforge counts only one developer) in order to ensure long and productive life even to the OS version of  XMind.

I will follow the Xmind project with great interest.

It's Christmas and another year is closing. A lot of things happened this year, as usual some are good, some other are bad. The social psychology seems to be forged to a widespread pessimism and I'm a little bit concerned about the new year.  I have no doubt in the human ability to make good things, but I'm concerned because a so wide absence of trust will make bad things happen.

Even if I don't like to see good things where there are not good things at all, I'm in general an optimist. I'm sure that only if we all try to see some good things in the  future the economic disaster depicted by media and by some politician could be avoided.

It's quite clear that in last years a lot of companies, "business men" and "managers", tried to make money creating apparent and virtual value. This should make us reflecting in our judgement ability about what happen in the world, about the real value of things and about our ability in understanding the news from media. We are all responsible if virtual value was created from nothing and we if we didn't recognize sick business systems.

I hope that the crisis we perceive in this weeks will produce s kind of "garbage collection" in economical and financial world in order to eliminate all fake businesses.

We should always remember that real investments, and the resulting economical welfare, are completely based on confidence about the future, we risk the economical paralysis if we don't trust in future.

We should even understand that if we all think that bad things will happen, bad things will really happen.

We should trust in future, we have to trust in the human ability in finding solutions to problems. I thinks that the main ingredients toward a satisfactory solution to this crisis are:

• Patience
• Hard work
• Social solidarity
• Ethics

I'm sure that if we put these ingredients in our every-day life in 2009 we will see a completely new and better world.

Try to think positive. Merry Christmas!