Show HN: New mind mapping tool for learners
brainio.com
brainio.com
May I ask what, if any, features do you plan to add that supercede those of Freeplane?
As background: whenever I need to grok a larger concept or chomp through a large collection of material, I fire up Freeplane. (It's a fork of Freemind, a desktop application written in Java, it's under GPL and runs fully locally, see freeplane.org)
You already mentioned a Markdown to map input path. That is a good idea, since often things (at least for me) begin with a small list.
Collaboration was another thing you mentioned. Does that mandate uploading the maps to your cloud backend or can it be self-hosted? I ask because for some people it is not an option to use "other people's computers", as the domain being mapped can be of sensitive nature (under NDAs, or other things).
Right now the solution is cloud based (but with SAML SSO and access provisioning for enterprises). It could be self-hosted it there is a demand for that.
Perhaps a useful feature for someone like me would be the an online app where I could import a mind map from another program and then choose from a variety of presentation options, and be provided code for an interactive embedded mind map in a blog or website. That would be enticing to people who aren't ready to dump all the features they are used to, and that crowd is much more likely to jump on to something like this than the average person.
Because the map IS the territory, in this case.
Mindmaps get little traction imo because this first experience is usually dreadful: Simple examples (like you show) are just as well represented by a bulleted list. And complex examples need a really slick and intuitive UI, otherwise they are too painful to create.
My take on it is Markdown in a private Github repo provides 90% of the benefits and a lot of other features, with none of the worry about being locked in to a new company whose product is immature and doesn't have an established track record.
Finally, your posting those 20 free keys to the pro plan just reinforces in my mind the notion that the price-features balance isn't attractive.
An interesting idea, although a bit counter-intuitive: in principle, a mind map helps you to visualize ideas better, in a way that lets you restructure them, etc. This visual outlining process is a tool, not the end goal. You'd expect to start with a rough diagram of idea nodes, not with a list. That said, starting with text could be useful in some cases.