Comments on: Productivity Tools: Personal Dashboards

By: Ben WElls

Ben WElls — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:42:16 +0000

For Mac Users - it's all about Curio. I'm building a dashboard with a picture of my desk as teh background, a picture of my log book, etc... - point is, you can go graphic crazy with it by using, for example, a picture of a journal which opens up your Log Book MindMap from your personal dashboard. I tried them all - while Curio is sort of weak at actual mindmapping (I liked NovaMind much better) but for the other stuff it can do - curio is awesome.

By: kiatlc

kiatlc — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:27:20 +0000

Your snapshot is too small to see it clearly, should put a link to a larger image

By: Kamal Syed

Kamal Syed — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:30:46 +0000

Mindmapping is a great tool, and I really liked MindManager. Moving over to the Mac however last year (mostly), I've found that MindManager for the Mac is a poor cousin to the Windows version. Its a lot less intuitive to use, it doesn't come with nearly the same features, and doesn't seem to come with the same number of icons/graphics and formatting options (or maybe its just less intuitive and I can't find them). If you're on the Mac, NovaMind is a great option, and its available feature-parity on Windows as well. They're about to release a new version, which sounds very interesting. My challenge is that a personal dashboard is only as useful as its ability to integrate information from other sources, and MindManager Mac is not there yet. I've been using Things from CulturedCode both on my Mac and my iPhone, and its a great tool for organizing not just my goals, projects and tasks, but also some reference information. I've been using BaseCamp on the web too for simple projects, but haven't played with any of the mobile clients yet. MKS

By: JL

JL — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:56:45 +0000

Just what I want from a mind mapping software, the ability to be THE dashboard for my PC worlds! However, I haven't found one that can automatically organize my Windows desktop and all my folders, with me having the option of course to modifier the suggested organization the tool creates. If such a mind mapping software exists and I don't have to send more than an hour creating the entire base (basic) dashboard, please tell me where and how it's done. I've been on several sites asking for this capability for over a year and have been dreaming of it for over five plus!

By: Jacques Turbé

Jacques Turbé — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:41:47 +0000

I like your criteria for mindmapping for dashboards.
I myself never got mindmaps for general use : I found I was loosing too much time for esthetics and tweakings of all sort (as you say, it's addictive).

I'd add to your software list an app which could be seen as part of mindmappers family, but goes much further : PersonnalBrain 5.

You can use it as a dynamic straightforward mindmapper, too,

but :
(see you items connected as thoughts in a brain, with no top, no bottom but top, bottom and related items of the thought on which you focus)
You can make any item a "home" item, and the map is instantly redrawn according to your new focus.
You have Parent/child links, but also "related" (items you usually work with for that)
You get color coding and fast selections through items "types" and item "tags".
You just enter some letters, and you instantly get a zoom of the focused area
Thus you can afford thousands of items, pim data, reference data, contact data, writings data, .. anything that come through your brain (hence the name).
As (behind the scenes) every item is a folder, you can not only link but even move in any doc, even apps (I've embedded in my "Brain" my whole former EverNote database as well as my Datebook dynamic scheduler ). So everything I need is into the single database I always carry with me.
When I call a topic, I instantly get a dedicated "desktop" displayed with all I might have to use with this topic.

I afforded in january the pro version :
You can drag Outlook posts, web pages, files straight into it.
You get html outputs or outline outputs of selected area
It has now a Calendar/reminder where to display items with a deadline or which are events.

Just to say, as you guess, I'm sold to it : it is now my main UI on my machines, and I have my Brain database on a USB to use it on my Tablet as well ason my Laptop

By: Matthew Lang

Matthew Lang — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:27:48 +0000

Great article Raj!

Using mind maps as dashboards is a great way to stay organised, but I do think that mind mapping software could do more to allow users to be more creative with their mind map dashboards.

By: Andrew Wilcox

Andrew Wilcox — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:14:22 +0000

Great blog Raj. I have used MindManager for years. One dashboard is no longer enough. I have a master which links to finance, customers, projects etc.

P.s. the current version of MindManager is 8. Some new features which work well with dashboards are:

- applications and browsers opening within the MindManager window
- displaying of database records
- and if make sense you can send someone else an active copy of your dashboard in a PDF file.