Windows Phone Thoughts: Mapping the Eureka Moments! -- Pocket Mindmap 1.3 reviewed

You can also add special symbols, and custom fields to the topics for inter-topic comparisons.


Figure 7: Available topic symbols in Pocket Mindmap.


Figure 8: Entry of custom-defined fields on each Topic.

With a relatively small landscape like the Pocket PC, it’s fairly quick and easy to create a mindmap that moves beyond the boundaries of the screen. Pocket Mindmap provides the usual tools (scroll, pan and zoom) for moving around on your virtual paper, but JKRB Software also provided a couple of neat additions for finding your way through bigger and more complex maps. The Center function in the Map menu always brings the display back to the Subject of the map. A Search function provides a floating search dialog in which you can use text or fragments to locate matching topics.


Figure 9: Searching for text in Topics.

There’s no mention about the use of wildcard characters in the Search criteria, so I’m not sure they're supported. You can also attach hyperlinks to topics, which provide a hypertext-type link to topics in the same map, another map, another document, documents or URLs. Maplinks are also available, which will provide sub-maps under the main map.

There is also an Outline view, which presents the topics in a hierarchal tree structure – similar to what would be used in a Table of Contents.


Figure 10: Mindmap in Outline view.

While this Outline View is useful for finally starting to develop that thesis or marketing presentation, a great deal of the visual information associated with the mindmap is lost in this view. References and additional images placed on the Mindmap (such as the ‘Asteroid Belt’ entry on the Solar System example) are not visible.

As noted above, Pocket Mindmap also supports a number of references, which describe relationships between topics. There are many types of references supported in Pocket Mindmap, and there is the ability to add your own types as well.


Figure 11: References available within Pocket Mindmap (you can also add your own!).