Xmind, the collaborative tool... my review

Ideas are worthless if you cannot express them in a logical easy to understand manner. One should be able to picture or visualize where the idea is coming from and where it is going to or what exactly the thinking is hoping to achieve. Now assume that you are in a group and you need to brainstorm with others and these people are not necessarily in the same room or geographic location as you are: that is where xmind comes in.

Xmind is an open source brainstorming and mind mapping application that allows users to plot their ideas as they think about them allowing for visualization. Not only is it easy to use, it is also easy to export its output to PDF or Microsoft office. Thus users can create mind blowing imaginative logic or logical solutions to problems which they can then share with their peers thus cutting down on time spent  on brainstorming. Xmind also allows users or groups of users to manage given projects by its use of Gant charting which provides users with a general overview of their given projects.

Features that support innovation:

For starters, xmind is open source and runs on a multitude of platforms including but not limited to windows, mac osx, Ubuntu Linux, android and the ipad (it is still in development but we can dream cant we?). What does this mean for users? Users can develop their ideas using xmind no matter where they are and then share these ideas with their team members in a collaborative space.  This not only removes the need to be in the same collaborative space as the people we work with but it also removes time as a factor of collaboration as one can now develop ones ideas in Bangkok (don’t ask me why I chose that city) and share it with ones peers in Ngelemenduka (yes that is a real place…)

Additionally Xmind works seamlessly with other open source products that allow for brainstorming such as freemind and mindmanager. What this means that users are not tied down to using Xmind but rather they can use whatever platform they choose to logically map their ideas or brainstorm and this will be easily workable with those of us that choose to use Xmind.  For a project such as our natural language processor for mobile devices, this means that we can have our different players be they linguist, psychologist, AI programmers, hardware programmers and what have you, brainstorm using different platforms with neither time, place or equipment being holding up the work.

With that being said , Xmind has the drawback that you can only get some of these features to work by paying for the pro version but hey if you want quality you may want to shell out some dough ….