SystemsWiki.org Blog

I know the title is presumptuous though the application isn’t. The application simply delivers!

I found myself in an engagement working with a distributed team of individuals and having all the recurring nightmares of how painful that experience had been in the past. Being completely unwilling to go through the nightmares one more time I went searching for a better way, and to my delightful relief I found it. The answer is Comapping.

Before you utter the typical response, “Oh no, not another mind mapping tool!”, I would suggest you watch the videos on the web site. Yes, it does all the typical mindmapping functions though just imagine having a conference call with 10 people in a distributed environment and ending with a single record of all the thoughts and issues discussed during that call, and having all the thoughts and issues in the exact words of the individuals involved and structured in a way that makes them readily revisitable by all those involved. And not only are they revisitable they can be continually updated and evolved as appropriate by the individuals involved. And, Comapping keeps track of who changed what and will even send you an email telling you that the map has been changed since you were last there. Comapping allows up to 20 people to simultaneously update the mindmap in real-time while online, and each person gets to see everyone’s changes.

While the existing features are considered to make the product unique, it also exists as a web based utility meaning there’s no software to load. All one needs to do is purchase a subscription to the service, at what appears to be a most reasonable price of $25 a year, and less for group subscriptions.

While I have been continually amazed by Comapping they just added a new feature that is most amazing and for which I think experience is the only way to grasp the full utility of. The feature is called “Analyze”. Imagine being able to attach a URL to a node in a mindmap and then telling the software to analyze the content of the node and build you an outline of the content based on an analysis of the relevance of the content. Hard to grasp? I found it difficult to understand until I tinkered with it for a while. I’m still amazed! And you can attach a text, word or pdf document to a node and have it do the same analysis and build a content outline based on relevance directly into the mindmap.

Ok, so you find it hard to believe. I can understand why you might think that. Just go to Comapping and sign up for a trail subscription and see for yourself. You’ll be even more amazed if you develop a map with a couple other people a the same time.

Here’s another blog post regarding Comapping and Context Organizer, the basis for the amazing analyze function. Blog Post Link