gazumped

There's a mental picture I'd pay to forget. Seriously folks - Mind Mapping is a valuable way of taking another view of your data. It's not the only way, because one problem of big mind maps is - you start to forget where things are, and you spend more time finding and navigating to them over a large layout than you would in simply typing new points in as with Evernote. To-do lists are another way of looking at the same information. Evernote is allegedly moving towards some sort of GTD (ish) implementation, so why not mind maps? It's a big, graphics-driven area however. We may yet be saved from the Sprouts if it takes longer than 3 years.

One peculiarity feature of MSWord is that if you open a document file, then close it again, Word doesn't let go of the file. I get the same error - the fix is to close Word temporarily to force it to clear out whatever webbed bunker it's keeping the file in. Carry out your operation, reopen Word. Robert is then your elderly male relative. As to seeing the document contents, that doesn't happen except for picture files and PDFs. If you need to see inside the file, or some part of it, cut and paste the relevant sections into the note as well as attaching the file, or print the file to PDF and attach both the PDF version and the Word file to the note. Edit: Darn! just pipped to the post there...

I'm sure I said this before somewhere (not that it'll stop me repeating it here..) but my first venture into information management was via Lotus Agenda - software so smart that it would set up its own categories to help you find stuff. I swear the phrase "artificial intelligence" came up, - and this was 30 years ago! The idea was that if (for example) you were in the real estate business and entered all your various property descriptions into Agenda as pure text, a buyer could come along and ask for all the properties with a sea view, 2-car garage and trees, and if there were properties in there that matched all three requirements, out would come the list. Agenda was intended to help your computer takle the place of "all those bits of paper" that were lying around on everyone's desk - want to remember something? Put it into Agenda until you need it. Trouble was, Agenda was a black box system. You didn't see your raw data once entered, and while I might suspect that some important information had been corrupted or lost, there was no way to check except by looking at search results. Evernote has that defect licked - I can see all my notes in my various notebooks, and if necessary I can comb through the notes from a specific date looking at each one to find something I know is in there. There's no zoom control however. I can look at my notes directly, or go via searches and tags and notebooks; and it seems lots of people use detailed titles for notes, so they can scan down a search listing to find the note they require. But that's all word and language-based. It is possible to prompt memories, innovative thought and insight by stepping back from this level of detail and looking at a "broader picture" - I always use the example of Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. It's an engaging little sci-fi story about what happens when two test subjects - a mouse, then a man - undergo intelligence enhancing procedures. They get much smarter, then they don't. And somewhere in that story there's a description of the four cycles of an internal combustion engine as "suck, squeeze, pop, phooey". Reading that book in school was the first time I saw that popular contraction of the cycles, and it's stuck with me since. Knowing that phrase gives me "induction, compression, ignition, exhaust" and writing those eight words down links me to camshafts, spark plugs, pistons and pretty much everything that makes the magic happen. Given a following wind and a large whiteboard I can cover a lot of space with the resulting spider diagram (or "mind map" as we call it in the trade..) and I can do that again, and again. (I'll resist repeating that a few more times.) Evernote isn't set up to create that sort of spatial relationship between bits of information, or give that sort of overview which can be applied to lots of work and personal issues. I do wish it could be, but as I said above I think the best we can hope for short(ish) term is to interest Evernote and some MindMap providers into playing more constructively together. In that context it's good that Evernote doesn't MindMap, and MindMaps aren't infinitely expandable databases. But both are definitely operating in contiguous spaces.

Evernote has indicated previously that it doesn't want to reinvent any wheels and seems happy to leave word-processing, webpage authoring, graphics processing and lots of other stuff to the people who've already built up a substantial body of expertise (and active users) in their chosen fields. I would imagine a mind-map style interface for Evernote would not only require a considerable amount of catching up with the market on their part, but it would also mean a pretty drastic rethink of their database and infrastructure which is in daily use by millions of - in many cases fee-paying - customers. If there's a backup back-burner to the back burner I'd guess this might be on it, but this is really not an issue you'd want to hold your breath on. It seems far more likely that either 1) a third-party developer will use the Evernote API to host the node information but display it via their own front-end; and/ or 2) Evernote will (eventually) be able to display the contents of a mindmap file if it is embedded in a note. Even so there are a number of file formats in use from MindManager to FreeMind. It is possible to output most mindmap files as a graphics file so you can attach a completed mind map to a note, but it would be useful to be able to dump a work in progress out there which could be easily resumed and saved without having to export the file first. If you're heavily into mind mapping, you'll use file-linking where a node in one map is actually the link to another map - don't think this will be possible outside of the mind mapping software itself, so serious mappers will probably always want to use bespoke software rather than see how far Evernote can copy the facilities they need. I use MindJet and Mind on Track both of whom do lots of other things besides make pretty pictures. There's that whole diary and Due Date thing for starters... Sorry to be negative, but I'm very happy with what Evernote does well now, and I'd hate to have that standard slip just to include some features that already exist in other commercial software.

I've had the same error when trying to open an embedded email .EML file that works fine on my PC but not on the Droid. In that case my phone doesn't have the software to process the file, hence the error. In your case you have the 'pro app installed, but there's no linkage from the mindmap file to the app itself. PDF files open in PDF readers, so the possibility exists somewhere - maybe there's a generic utility out there somewhere that assigns file types to applications. Any suggestions from the crowd? (This is a bit above my pay grade.) Thinking Space seems to have joined Mindjet Mind Manager (MM) who have a shiny new replacement app out. Good news is that it's free, bad news that it saves to .MMAP files that aren't (AFAIK) widely readable outside Mind Manager. It's an ace app and very good desktop software (if you're into mind mapping) but does come with a corporate level price tag and lots of bells and whistles that "pure" mind mapping doesn't need. (Gantt charts anyone?) For someone (or organisations) just starting mapping, I'd suggest Mind on Track - I've mentioned it in a few threads around here (no personal interest!) - it uses a cut-down toolset of MM-style mapping, concentrating on drawing spider-diagrams, adding notes, keeping track of DUE DATES (sorry) and linking to external resources, including Evernote URLs. It's GTD-friendly and quite a nice little package. Some of the other mind-mapping tools produce fairly garish results with big, brightly coloured icons - that's actually good from a learning point of view; you and your audience will remember that hideously green cucumber with the "Next Year's Targets" items under it.. On the other hand for internet use (where screen real-estate is important) and for presentations where a highly professional look and feel is required, the MM/MonT style of smaller minimalist icons is better. I'm not beyond doing presentations that shock people into remembering things (I still remember a long-ago professor skipping along a lab bench singing "Don't forget the full stop ~tra ~la"... OK, long story) but these days I prefer the more mature look.

And for Android users - presumably also for those other handsets out there - there's now a Mind Manager app for mobiles so I can start a map on the phone, save it to Evernote and then develop it further on my desktop. Although you need to have the paid-for full Mind Manager app on the desktop to edit it further, there's a free mind map reader that might be suitable for some.

Don't get me started on Mind Mapping - I'm still upset after the last podcast; mindmaps are something to do with phrenology? If I didn't need Evernote so much, I'd be offended +1 for Mindjet, though the software is feature-rich (scary if you're not used to it) and fairly expensive (unless you're a corporate). I use it a lot. Although Mindjet has dates, projects and reminders built in, I wouldn't want to use it for smaller projects - it would be like going to the shops in your executive jet. I've recently been trying out Mind on Track which has the same basic facilities, fewer bells and whistles and a much shorter learning curve. As to Evernote synchronicity, I agree you can save your output files in a note, and Evernote will open them, via your OS, in your editor of choice; but one of the facilities that both Mindjet and MoT offer is to keep track of your maps, and link them together like connected spreadsheets. I don't think that will work while the files are attached to notes. I currently use Evernote to launch the editor, and load maps from there. Now the wrist-slapping bit. I know Engberg & Co don't really think that mind mapping is related to head-banging (although now you mention it..) but since it is a highly effective visual method of accessing information and memories, I would have thought that 1) you guys would have a little more knowledge than that, and 2) would realise that it is another method of searching for content that might connect rather well with a certain green product we all know and love. Short-term I'd say that without reinventing any wheels, MindMap files could and should be another filetype that (like PDF and JPG) can be displayed in a note; and that URLs in those files should be accessible via the note interface. Since creating a map involves setting out a spider chart with headlines, then filling in those headlines with more notes, I'd say that longer term Evernote would be ideal as a note repository for a mindmap - but whether you get there in a partnership with a current player or by developing your own solution is way above my pay grade. But mindmaps is how I think - and it appears from various comments that quite a few others are of the same mind. This behooves a more serious look, guys! (Gee I feel much better now) Anyhoo - Mindmapping = good. Was invented by a Brit - Tony Buzan - and if you have another few hours I can teach you all about it! Edit: PS - just looked at Owyn's link in this thread on sticky notes, and the developer there says he used the Evernote API to hold his note data for the stickies displayed...

I'm always championing ScanSnap stuff, but assume that other software may have something similar - Fujitsu's ScanSnap Manager has an option to scan multiple pages to one PDF file, or to allocate one file per page. If you have some such option you may be able to split up these scans. Failing that, Adobe at least has an option within one PDF file to extract one or more pages into a separate file. If you can't scan 25 pages into 25 PDFs, you may be able to scan to one PDF and split that into 25 sub-files. Either way you don't want to send these files directly to Evernote - it's easier and less demanding on your upload allowance to mess around with the files on a desktop somewhere and only save the final format. Or just save the whole thing as one file (unless it's too big to OCR or add to a note) and let the indexing sort itself out.