XMind

Brainstorming and Mindmapping!

Last week, Lifehacker.com launched a new event, and asked people to nominate which mind mapping tools they thought were the best.  Because they believe Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm, make a plan, or turn ideas into the steps needed to make it real.

The good news is that XMind has received the enough nomination, and is in the Five Best Mind Mapping Tools list. Now, XMind is still waiting for your precious votes for the final ranking.

• Visit Five Best Mind Mapping Tools page
• Scroll down to the vote area
• Choose XMind in the list and click Vote button on the right bottom

It’s glad to share a good news with xmind users. The great mind map sharing website, Biggerplate.com, now supports .xmind files.

They said,

The addition of XMind to the library is yet another exciting step for Biggerplate, and a testament to a fantastic piece of software that has been making some big waves within the mind mapping world!

XMind has rightly earned a very large and loyal following for itself, as users have been won over by simple design, highly effective functionality, and an extremely competitive pricing model.

The free version offers a level of functionality that would put several paid software providers to shame, and the Pro version adds layers of business-oriented features that further enhance the program’s appeal.

The open source nature of XMind means this software is sure to evolve with the needs and wishes of consumers and developers, which will help to ensure it can continually provide a highly affordable, user-friendly, and extremely effective mind mapping experience for a wide range of user types.

Now, there are some great mind maps and templates already there. Below are steps to share mind map on Biggerplate.

• Create a Biggerplate account
• Upload xmind mind map to your account
• Add description to your map

Now, you can see your maps at, Mind Map library(click Most Recent).

Congratulations! XMind was picked as one of PCWorld Best 100 of 2010, and ranked #50 among all hardware, software, services, sites, and apps.

PCWorld.com recently announced that PCWorld scanned the entire universe of technology this year–HDTVs, phones, tablets, PCs, e-book readers, storage, software, services, apps, digital cameras, camcorders, printers, and more–and picked the 100 best.

XMind was also the #6 among all best productivity software.  We are glad to see they evaluate XMind with Microsoft Security Essentials, Google Chrome, Microsoft Office 2010, Adobe Creative Suite 5, Ubuntu, and etc. This means Mind Mapping Software, as a productivity tool,  is becoming important, more and more people realize its advantages and begin to benefit from it.

XMind will keep in working hard to improve itself, and power more people.

P.S. XMind v3.2.1 is in beta. Download and Take a try.

Because of our love of mind mapping, the XMind team came together from different parts of China to create XMind. On April 1^st, 2007, we released the first English version of XMind in Beijing.

To make a better productivity tool, we have a few principles that we adhere to:

• XMind must be very easy to use.
• XMind should increase user productivity with a fun to use interface and powerful functionality.
• XMind should be accessible so that more people can benefit from mind mapping.

Easy-to-use ≠ Simple

Every good tool must be easy to use. But this does not mean simple. In fact, some look-simple tools are not easy to use. Easy-to-use is a design concept that gives people a certain feeling while using a tool.  For example, XMind allows users to create a subtopic with the Tab key. The result is that people can easily mind map with a shortcut keystroke that makes sense. Some users have described this feature as Enter spreads your ideas, and Tab digs one idea. It greatly enhances usability.

The need to focus is very important for building a mind map, especially a big one.  Drilldown provides a perfect solution.  Selecting a topic and clicking F6 brings you into a branch level, where you can focus on the topic for that branch and its associated subtopics.

Navigation is easy too. We can choose to see all topics in a classic style outline viewer or via the diagrammatic Overview viewer. Outline view shows the entire map content in a traditional linear way, which sometimes helps in digesting the map concepts.  BTW, we can directly edit topic content in this viewer. Overview view offers us the flexibility to see and navigate through content on the map. Left-clicking the mouse allows us to move any part of the map into the center. Scrolling the mouse wheel allows us to quickly zoom in or out on the map.

Presentation is an easy task in XMind because of the Presentation Mode.  No matter which topic we are on, clicking F5 will bring us into this special mode. All topics are hidden except the Central Topic, which is at the center and highlighted. Now, by hitting the space key in succession, each main topic is revealed one by one, centered and highlighted instead of the central topic.

In fact, we can pick out more. All of these features, while powerful, were designed with ease of use in mind.

Increasing User Productivity with XMind

When we decided to enter the mind mapping software market, we wanted to provide functionality that was not only easy to use, but fun to use and productivity-enhancing. We didn’t find a mind mapping tool in the market that provided all of these aspects, so we took on this challenge with XMind.

Since releasing XMind, we’ve received lots of positive feedback about the user interface, that it’s pleasing to the eye. We believe having an attractive interface makes work tasks more fun and greatly enhances productivity.

We’ve also received many accolades for our Multiple Sheets functionality within the main view.  Similar to how a spreadsheet workbook allows you to have multiple sheets within that file; we can create multiple sheets within a single XMind file. Searching, finding and navigating content is much easier this way. Instead of having to open and close various files, or follow links and navigate away from a starting point, users can easily click between different sheet tabs for maximum efficiency in perusing various map content.

Other functionality for finding and sharing content within XMind makes it an essential productivity tool.

Finding

If we want to find something in a single map, normally Find and Replace (Ctrl+F) will be good enough. When we have many opened maps, with some having multiple sheets within them, Powerful Search view will be a great assistant. In this viewer, we can search any content in all opened workbooks. The search results are listed as a tree with a clean looking format. We can get to the content we need to find quickly and efficiently.

Sharing

XMind can export map content to other file formats such as Image, PDF (Map), PDF (Document) , HTML, etc., for fast sharing.

XMind also offers another free sharing solution, XMind Share. Suppose you’re a teacher and a mind mapper. You want to share some special class content with your students in a non-public way. Just open the map in XMind and sign-in with your XMind Account (free to set up on www.xmind.net). Click the Upload button on the toolbar, select Unlisted in the privacy controls, and upload the map to XMind Share. This map will be assigned a unique URL, which you can provide to your students so that they can go and read the map online or download it to their own computers. Note that people without the URL will not be able to get to your map and it won’t be searchable in Google.

Making XMind and Mind Mapping Accessible to the World

When we started XMind four years ago, we had the vision of exposing as many people as possible to the power of mind mapping. We believe that XMind Open Source is a great way to achieve this vision.

This open source version of XMind has many features which meet most peoples’ basic mind mapping requirements. More importantly, it incorporates all of the design rules mentioned above, namely easy to use, fun to use, and productivity-enhancing.

Along with XMind Open Source, we also offer XMind Pro, which has more advanced business features such as Presentation mode, Audio notes, TaskInfo view, and Gantt chart viewer. XMind Pro is subscription-based software with a very reasonable entry–level fee.

Remaining true to our principles has gotten some results that we are really proud of. Earlier this year, XMind surpassed the half a million user mark, and our user base continues to grow exponentially as more and more people discover the power of XMind.

Finally, we want to say a big Thank You to all of XMind users who have sent feedback via email or left messages via Twitter, Facebook, and our user forums, or just support us quietly. No matter whether its praise, suggestions, or criticism, your support provides the fuel for the XMind Team to keep working hard and make XMind better and better.

XMind Pro Time-limited Promotion is ready! People can Buy 1 Get 2 subscription codes now!

Are you still benefit from XMind Pro in family alone? Are you still the only user who can do presentation with XMind among your friends? Do you and your roommates own XMind Pro with a more favorable price?

Now, it’s time to share XMind Pro with our family, friends and roommates!

Learn more about price

Please remember to enjoy this promotion before Sept. 30th, 2010.

*This promotion is only available for buying XMind for Individual subscription code.

Very sorry. Many people met the download problem in the from 15:20 to 20:00 GMT+8.

At beginning, we thought it was a server problem. After carefully checking, we found site5.com closed our website visit because of too many download request visits.
But what we have bought is the unlimited bandwidth plan to host XMind software download and serve our supporters. And they also ask us to wait! We do not know how long to wait.

So frustrating!!!

Now, we have transferred to host software on Amazon S3 server.

Nowadays, we are getting used to spell checking whenever we write something. In XMind, you may meet this kind issue, when editing a topic, you expect that spell checking can help you to perfect your spelling.

Now in XMind, the default spell checking is in English. But our users come from all over the world, they speak all kinds of languages. This default spell checking couldn’t meet the need of users who come from non-English speaking countries.

If you come from non-English speaking countries, you may probably want to use your own dictionary for spell checking.

Here one of our users shared a useful website for you to find your own dictionary:
http://www.winedt.org/Dict/

Download the very dictionary,  change the extension to .dict , then add your own dictionary to XMind. (Edit > Preferences > Mind Map > Spelling)

After doing this, in XMind, you can enjoy spell checking for French, German, Spanish and etc. Very easy and useful, right? Whenever you need this, do not hesitate to give it a try.

In the past months, we received lots of inquiries about XMind Pro Enterprise license. They told us that XMind Pro was good at enhancing the efficiency, saving working time, and wanted to know something about the Enterprise license support.

The full name of Enterprise license is XMind Pro Enterprise Unlimited License. Actually, it’s another type subscription code, which means all people within a company or an organization can enjoy XMind Pro. Of course, there is no limitation on the number of users.

Normally, we will recommend this Enterprise License to these inquirers only when the estimated user number is more than 100. In that case, it has the superior cost-effective. More important, only one license and a few special XMind accounts needed, so it’s very convenient for you to mange your team, department, and your company.

Interested in it? Please fill this form.

Recent months, exchange rate of different currencies has big change. This kind change even has affected the justice of our price system. Some customers also sent emails to question us.

So we do the fine tuning on price system, which has token effect from June 1st 2010. Now 1 Year Subscription Code will cost
USD 49.00 OR EUR 40.00 OR GBP 35.00 OR JPY 4900.00.

And the coupon code “PRO10OFF” is still available, has no purchase amount limitation.

Here, we collect the most frequently asked questions in last month.

First one is from Nobuo a Japanese user.
“I have two PCs (my office and my home). So, I can ran one Pro version at a time. Should I purchase one license? Or I have to purchase two licenses even though?”

XMind: You only need one subscription code for all your PCs.
Being an XMind Pro user, you should have an XMind account, and then activate/renew your account with subscription code. Then with this activated account,  you can use XMind Pro on any computer which has XMind.

Second question is from Davy a French user and Florian a Germany supportor.
“I would really apreciate to used Xmind Pro even when I don’t have an Internet connection. Can you help me ?”

XMind: Of course, you can use XMind Pro offline.  The solution is:
Enable “Remember me on this computer” in the signin dialog while you signing in with your activated account. Then your XMind Pro will not ask you to sign in before the expiration date.

The last one has been asked by Many users from UK, Singapore, Spain, France, and etc.
“We would like to buy 10, or 30, or 50, please tell us the volume price.”

XMind: Yes, XMind Pro has prepared the volume discount for supporters.

• 10% for 10-20 codes;
• 20% for 21-50 codes;
• 30% for 51-80 codes;
• 40% for 81-120 codes.

And you can directly transfer money to XMind Ltd bank account in HongKong.