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Show HN: Transform Notes into Visual Mind Maps

cmaps.io

34 pointsgxara24 comments

Hey, HN Community!

I'm a Brazilian software engineer, and my educational journey led to a significant discovery. During my master's degree, I often struggled to recall foundational concepts studied years earlier, which were crucial for my current studies. This challenge sparked a reevaluation of traditional note-taking and inspired the creation of cmaps.io.

Human thinking is inherently associative, not linear. We often draw connections between learned concepts unconsciously. To leverage this natural process, making these connections explicit is essential – and that's precisely what cmaps.io offers.

I can personally vouch for the impact of cmaps.io on my learning and retention. It's become an invaluable tool for me, and I'm confident it can be for you as well!

You can find more details on the ProductHunt post: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cmaps-io

Discover cmaps.io and enjoy a revolutionary note-taking experience!

I eagerly await your feedback and thoughts

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At first I thought, this is a reboot of the carnegy mellon CMapTools app. I may have butchered some or all names here, sorry:) That tool had some downsides, but the UX when actually creating a concept map is unmatched, imo. You can do everything with a single mouse button and keyboard for actually labeling your nodes. Not sure if its still available, but there should be some videos on the big video platform about it.

this I guess https://cmap.ihmc.us/ also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CmapTools

Never used such things, it looks pretty lame, can you recommend I learn it? What do I get out of it? Thanks

You are correct, that's it!

And no,I wouldn't learn it nowadays. It's more like a blast from the past. If you mean the general appearance with "looks pretty lame", yea well it's old. Grey was trendy once and afair it is a java app:)

Also, not to mix things up: This is a concept mapping tool. Which means, nodes, edges, labels, with no enforced structure. Unlike mind maps (what cmaps.io seems to be), which have a tree structure.

Unexpectedly, you have played a key role in refining the character and presentation of cmaps. The project was originally designed for note-taking, it features a tree/graph structure to link notes and concepts. Although it now serves well as a mind mapping tool, this wasn't its primary intended function. I will work to enhance the clarity of the website.

By 'lame' I meant in terms of I couldn't see what it was supposed to do or how it was supposed to bring value. Certainly not criticising the superficial aspect of it, I couldn't care less about appearance.

What I'm saying is, how does it benefit me? If it's basically just a graph with informational nodes at the end, what do I do with that?

I can vaguely imagine that if you set it up right you could kind of quiz it like a database or something, but I don't know if it supports that or similar. Essentially I'm clueless, if you could point me to part of the website that sells the idea to me, that would be really good.

Sure, can give it a try.

I can think of two usecases, research and creativity.

In research (not scientific research necessarily), you can fight the "I don't know what I don't know" problem. For example, all the subcategories of math, write them down as nodes as you discover them, connect with edges when they are related somehow. Put a label to the edge, if necessary.

The nice thing (imo) compared to mind maps is the freeform factor. You can have orphan nodes sitting on the edge, the edges don't need to be directed, you can have cycles.

In creative manners, you can for example have elements of a story, characters, places, events, and connect them as you see fit. Being so freeform, you don't get distracted by being forced to classify (as in, define the position inside the tree structure). Note down open questions, contradictions as orphan nodes in the vicinity.

> I'm a Brazilian software engineer,

Ha! This is why R9 is up front and CR7 only makes the bench ;)

LOL Maybe I'm a little biased

Am I missing something - this is mind mapping, as in freemind, old as the hills?

Have you tried it? The tool is focused on note-taking, like Notion.

It's pretty different of freemind

Fair question. I have viewed the examples on mobile but I am not immediately sure of the delta between the two. I’m not a user of freemind. It seems like this imposes less structure but allows the associations. There isn’t a huge amount to go on without logging in.

Edit: I see from the other comments a product hunt link that shows the text blocks in a video. This was not apparent from the website on mobile, to me at least.

Thank you for the feedback! It seems that our landing page, particularly for mobile users, requires enhancements to enhance its intuitiveness. I will prioritize addressing this issue.

This is really cool, what does your tech stack look like?

Thanks!! NextJS with Typescript

Congrats on shipping! I will give this a try in a couple hours when I get my day started.

You are about double the cost of my current tool, mindmup[0], so for me personally there is a change cost that will have to be overcome by a much better experience.

That being said I am stuck between obsidian and other tools including figjam and mindmup already and really want a nicer, obsidian friendly mindmapping solution.

https://www.mindmup.com/

Very nice!

cmaps for me has been useful for centralizing all my notes (be it personal, work-related, or academic from university) in one integrated platform. That's why I consider it a "note-taking" tool, more similar to notion than figjam.

Thanks for the answer, I'm eager to hear your feedback!

I think folks downvoted me for explaining the price and usage of my current tool - but the congrats on shipping was sincere. Getting something out in the world is hardest part.

Quick feedback:

There's a CSS / content bug on the sign up page. The google and github logos are present but no words. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/hRLvWy8

For me, the lack of keyboard shortcuts is a non-started for my immediate usage. I like to just slap stuff down and jump around vs spending time organizing and compiling. Mindmup is just as "awkward" with managing notes on nodes but the keyboard shortcuts are a real timesaver.

Have you seen Arrows.app?

https://arrows.app/

You might find some additional inspiration looking at another tool I used from Jason Koo that also uses arrows.app for generating graph data:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxO835DKzKs

https://mock-graph-data-generator-app-fjbvtm7qtyvs3f4ddeerz7...

https://github.com/jalakoo/mock-graph-data-generator-streaml...

Thank you for sharing these insights. It's really a huge help. I wasn't aware of these options before, and I'm impressed by the efforts being made in these initiatives. Your suggestions have opened new avenues for me to explore.

Would you mind sharing examples of the kinds of things you mindmap? I made a tool for decisions/arguments which ended up incidentally serving as a non-graphical mind map, and I'm curious what people are looking for in this space.

Sure, here's a quick, small, real example where I reach for mindmup before anything else:

https://ibb.co/m53P9r7

So I built a prototype CLI in Go that wrapped up a few different technologies and before I wrote any code I popped into MM and "sketched" the command hierarchy and dependencies. It pretty snappy for tossing out linked concepts with the keyboard navigation.

And in a different direction I also use it to organize / reorganize information by visualizing the structure and color coding by particular attributes

https://ibb.co/xHqZdsq

In both cases it is a big help to me to spatially organize my thoughts and look at the relationships either while noodling or while organizing existing information.

Just like this cmap project the management of notes on nodes is still a big clunky / involved (and overall mindmup is not a "slick" product, especially compared to Ink&Switch's Muse).

That's helpful. Thanks.

> You can find more details on the ProductHunt post: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cmaps-io

Why don't you repost these details here? Otherwise your announcement looks like a thinly-veiled fishing for PH votes.

I've made a demonstration video and made some screenshots that are not possible to post here. I think these help to make it less abstract, since my explanation about cmaps may not have been very good. I did not ask for votes, just feedback

He/ she didn't ask you to vote. I did vote, however, the least I could do to support an indie-dev's project.

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