Gary Eckstein

FreeMind has been around for awhile and has a very loyal following for good reason; it is an excellent software product! FreeMind is free (it’s GNU General Public License software) which adds to it’s appeal however is a far better product than many of the licensed mind map software products. It is written in Java and runs on the Java platform therefore making it platform independent (i.e. use it on Windows, Mac OS, Linux etc.).

FreeMind is mind mapping software that is simple to use yet very powerful. Wherever you’d normally use a mindmap FreeMind can be used. For example I use this software to map the structure of websites to present to customers; this allows for a simple sitemap which is easily readable. It is also great to use in brainstorming sessions as the hierarchical nature of mindmaps is ideal for categorizing topics.

FreeMind has some very clever features. For example, if you create a mindmap in FreeMind then copy it and paste into Word you’ll get an ordered and hierarchical list of the diagram. Also, if you copy an ordered list from a Web Page (e.g. a sitemap) and paste into FreeMind a mindmap will be instantly created from the list!!! There are very many other cool features however my favourites are the ability to export the diagrams in many formats (e.g. PDF, Javascript, HTML, XHTML, PNG, JPEG … ) and the ease of inserting hyperlinks into nodes of the mindmap.

Above all however, the FreeMind team have managed to keep the software very simple to use and extremely reliable even although there are many advanced features available. FreeMind is an excellent product.

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