It’s the Viewers Dummy

I hate to pick on Mindjet again but I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t love their program (MindManager) and really want to see other people use it, yadda, yadda. I’m the “enthusiastic but cranky customer”. Sometimes it’s important to listen to me. So here goes:

What’s with the overhead of getting a free, viewer-only version of MindManager? Seriously, didn’t Adobe (and hundreds of others) show everyone the way on this? The value of any document I create in MindManager is directly proportional to the number of people that can “easily” view that document. And (this part is important) the bar on “easily” is going down as the internet evolves. Ten years ago you could ask people to spend 20 minutes jumping through hoops to get a free version of your product but, as they say, “things have changed”.

I’m trying to share information with people that may or may not understand the value in mind maps. A lot of people are still unfamiliar with the concept. Most of the people I have introduced to mind maps have gotten really excited about them. But, if you make it too hard for them to at least see their first map, there’s no chance you are ever going to convince them.

The best thing Mindjet could do would be to implement something in the “code-on demand style” that could view any .mmap file (doable in JavaScript? – no idea, sorry.) Short of that, they need to make it very easy to download and install free viewers on whatever platforms make sense (can you really do anything useful with a mind map in a handheld form factor?)

Finally, if you (the mythological reader) are thinking of taking me to task for using proprietary file formats – yeah, yeah. I may often claim to be right, but I seldom claim to be consistent. I like all the bling, bling in MindManager and I haven’t found free mind mapping tool that gives me that.