Open Mind

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on February 22, 2012

Have you ever drawn a mind map? We bet you have. Mind maps are the kind of diagrams that business planners, mad scientists, and other innovative types scribble over blackboards and whiteboards, linking balloons and boxes with a variety of lines, arrows, and assorted scribblings. Ordinary people might draw one on a napkin while planning out their day. In any case, mind maps are one of the most flexible, useful, and intuitive planning techniques known. Open Mind is freeware for creating customized mind maps for any use you can think of. You can insert text, images, and even YouTube video links into map bubbles, though the video option requires an active Internet link, preferably broadband.

Open Mind opens with a plain field containing one balloon, a rounded-edge rectangle. We started by typing text into the bubble, which called up a chat-style text entry box that made it easy to enter and embed large sections of text into map objects. We right-clicked the map field and selected New Bubble. A drop-down menu on the toolbar let us choose from a variety of shapes for our new bubble, including triangles, circles, and many more. Open Mind makes it easy to change background, object, and line colors, and even change the thickness of the lines connecting objects on the map. There's a full-screen option but not much else in the way of extras: No bells and whistles, but everything you need to create a clear, colorful mind map of any process, idea, plan, schedule, relationship, or system you can think of. The program's Help file and FAQS include useful screenshots.

We quickly created some basic but easily expanded mind maps to try out Open Mind. We especially like the ability to embed video links to YouTube since so many companies and individuals use online videos for instructions, documentation, and additional information. The mind maps Open Mind creates can be saved, printed, and exported in a range of document types, too, making them great for meetings, classrooms, and even home use. If you don't think freeware can beat napkin scribbles, we recommend trying Open Mind.

 

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Publisher's Description

From Open Mind:

Open Mind is a free brainstorming and mind mapping software. It is capable of creating completely customizable mind maps in such an easy way that anyone can grasp its controls. Every bubble can set to 3 different 'data types': text, image or youtube video. Text can be set to any font, any colour and any size to create a bold heading or a smaller sub bubble. Images can be copied from the clipboard, browsed from file or simply enter the URL web address of an image. All images in the document get saved into the mind map file so you can edit your file anywere without the need to carry images seperatly. Youtube videos can also be set but internet connection is required for this. Not only is the content editable but the way the bubble looks can be too. The size, shape, border and colours can be adjusted to suit your purpose and needs. All document made in Open Mind can be exported as an image file to share online or printed out on paper. Open Mind really is one of the best mind mapping softwares around. Its the 8th best brainstorming program on cnet and the 3rd best free brainstorming software. (as of 23/12/2011). Open Mind is really worth giving a try to see for your self how good Open Mind is because it's a completely free software and is constantly getting new updates to improve on its current features.

What's new in this version: Version 1.3 features a whole new UI update that looks a lot more slick and cleaner. It also has the ability to embed youtube videos into mind maps.

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