Mind Mapping Software on the Market

Mind mapping is a very good tool in taking down information. There are software programs available in the market that can help in the analysis of data after collecting them. These mind mapping programs can help people in a great way while being creative.

There are a number of mind mapping software available in the Internet. Many of them can be downloaded for free while others are proprietary software. Most of them can also be operated in different platforms so it is not hard to acquire them.

Probably one of the most popular types of mind mapping software is the Freeplane. It is currently in the beta version. It has been newly developed as a fork of FreeMind. FreeMind now has Beta version 0.9 although its version 0.8 is still live. It has been hailed as one of the best open source software of 2008. Both Freeplane and FreeMind are written in Java.

Released by a non-profit organization of the same name, Compendium is a tool for social science with mind mapping capabilities. It can collect information from users to solve complicated problems. It utilizes the Issue-Based Information System, a system that can tackle really difficult problems.

Another free mind mapping software is the Pimki. It is written in the Ruby programming language and is a type of wiki software wherein the contents can be interlinked to other sources. Primarily, it has a mind mapping purpose. However, mind mapping is just one of the numerous functions that it can actually do.

One of the best proprietary software for mind mapping is the mind mapper. Proprietary software by definition is software that is not free, therefore a user needs to subscribe or pay in order to use it. MindMapper was developed by SimTech Systems and is now on its seventh version which is the MindMapper 2009. Aside from mind maps, it can also create flowcharts as wells as concept maps. The newest version is integrated with Microsoft Office 2007 so it is just very easy to create the ideas incorporated in the mind maps.

Most of the free software is licensed under General Public License which uses copyleft (a pun of copyright) that removes the restrictions in a given material in for it to be published freely. Learning through mind mapping tools can never be costly.