This downtime also applies to the sync features of our mobile apps. Please save all work done on these applications directly to the device. Sync features will return as soon as our servers are back online.

After a successful deployment of features and upgrades we’ll have a very exciting announcement to make about a new integration, as well as some cool new features!

Thank you for your patience and continued support of MindMeister.

• Press SHIFT to select a range of nodes with the same parent
• Press ⌘ to select multiple single nodes
• Press ⌘ + A to select all nodes
• Press ⌘-←, ⌘-→ to select the next level left / right

Of course, multi-selection also works with drag & drop and other common operations, such as Cut, Copy and Delete. Let us know what you think of it, and happy mind mapping!

These templates provide a skeleton for your mind map, containing a pre-defined structure, icons, images, and notes, to kick-start your brainstorming or structuring efforts. They’ll also help you find more usages for your MindMeister account, ultimately making you more efficient and productive.

Selecting Templates

The initial popover just shows the six most frequently used map templates, as well as your recent templates.

Clicking the “Browse Template Library” button opens an advanced dialog containing all existing templates in categories. This dialog will also let you preview the templates by clicking on the small magnifier icon, so you get an idea of its content before creating a new map.

Submit your own templates

So far, we have about 35 categorized templates which have been based on popular mapping templates or hand crafted by ourselves and a number of mind mapping enthusiasts in our environment. However, our future goal is to tap the vast knowledge and experience of you, our users, to be able to provide the best quality mind map templates in our apps. We’ll therefore be rolling out a template submission feature within MindMeister, complete with approval, rating and recognition options.

Until then, however, please feel free to share any interesting templates from your personal use with templates@mindmeister.com. We’ll review each and every one of these, and include the best ones in MindMeister. Enjoy!

In our continued commitment to bringing you the ultimate collaborative mind mapping experience we’re happy to announce a host of new features!

Si, nous parlons Dansk

MindMeister is now supported in six languages. In addition to our existing English, German and Japanese support, we’re happy to offer Spanish, French, and Danish versions. All versions have been proofread, but if you’re a native speaker of any of these languages and find an error – please let us know by sending us an email.

In-Map Chat

While we’ve supported Skype integration for quite some time, not everyone has, or has the ability to use Skype at all times while working on a mind map. To this end, we’ve introduced a chat feature directly within the browser window. To get started chatting with fellow collaborators, simply click on their name at the bottom of your mind map to open a chat window.

Embedded Maps now with Live Update

Initially debuted during the TEDxAmsterdam live mind mapping sessions, embedded maps now include the option to continuously poll MindMeister for updates. This option opens up an entirely new avenue in mind mapping, as live sessions can now be streamed to not only collaborators, but the entire world.

New publish features, embed wizard

You can now put your public maps in categories in the revamped Publish dialog and customize embedding options in the new Embed Wizard. Premium users can choose to hide the “Share” button and MindMeister logo in their embedded map.

Improved Public Map Features

Our public map listings have undergone a major change in the way that they are discoverable and shareable. Now searchable by both language and category, these changes should serve to improve the usefulness of the public maps directory, as well as make it far more easy to use as a reference and resource tool.

Monthly Payment Option for Team Users

Users of our Business and Academic Editions now have the option to pay on a monthly basis, as opposed to yearly. This now means that users will only pay for the time that they need to use our service – short projects, annual reviews, etc. At the same time, should Team Users opt for a yearly subscription, we’re now offering 2 months for free.

Additional new features

Faster and more relevant map search – searching through your mind maps has now been streamlined. By default, search parameters will search through your map titles. If no matching terms are found, the MindMeister system will then search through the text of all your maps until matches are found.

Better Email Notifications – we’ve improved a number of features within the email notifications that should allow users to more easily identify what changes have been made to what maps, and by whom.

Alphabetize now with numbers – the Alphabetize function now sorts numbers correctly.

During this festive time of year, we’d also like to take this space to wish each and every one of you a very Happy Holiday Season, and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

The MindMeister Team

Please avoid taking your maps offline with Google Gears before the downtime as we’re also upgrading MindMeister’s offline capabilities.

Sorry for any inconveniences, hopefully you’re fast asleep (or out partying) at that time anyway!

Update: It has taken the full three hours but we’re back now!

As a company headquartered in Germany and providing their product in English only you almost get used to people questioning your patriotism. Our usual response to questions regarding the availability of a German version included citing some demographic statistics of our user base (which is about 40% native English speaking). Truth is, it’s somewhat embarrassing it took us so long to launch a German version, but at least it’s here now!

At the same time our partner act2 created a Japanese version of MindMeister which also went live last weekend. Japan is great country for mind mapping as the technique is almost universally taught in schools and children get used to visually mapping out their thoughts at a very early age. Thanks to everyone at act2 for their untiring effort in getting the translation out the door in time!

More translations are on the way – next up are French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese – and if you’re interested in helping us with any additional languages please let us know. Also many thanks to those who have already offered their services, we’ll surely be coming back to you!

Finally we’d like to ask you a favor: if you’re a native speaker of German or Japanese and you find any missing or erratic translations please send us a quick feedback message using the “Found a mistake” link in the menu bar. Sometimes you need to see a word or phrase in context to make sure the translation fits the intended meaning.

Please avoid taking your maps offline with Google Gears before the downtime as we’re also upgrading MindMeister’s offline capabilities.

Update: As of Saturday 8am (UTC) our latest database migration is still running, and we hope it will be finished soon. Please bear with us a little longer and sorry for any inconveniences caused!

Update: Saturday 9:05am (UTC) we’re back! Please check out our new features, we’ll be presenting them in a special newsletter soon. There might still be some glitches but rest assured that they’ll be ironed out soon.

This should all be fixed now and our growing numbers of IE8 users (which are already up to 2.3% of all Internet Explorer users, who in turn make up a third of our total visitors) can hopefully enjoy mostly bug-free mind mapping. If you do encounter any remaining issues please let us know, and even more importantly, if you’re still using Internet Explorer 6 please, please upgrade to version 8 asap. Or better still, use Firefox if you can…

He said there were many technical difficulties to overcome, so please bear with us if not everything works quite as expected yet – we’re working on it!

We also added a few other new features in this release, please see details below or check out the list in the obligatory What’s New in MindMeister 3 mind map.

Graphical cross-connections You can now add graphical cross-connection between your ideas in your mind maps, which will be displayed as green arrows. This feature is still beta, so please be kind. We’ll add more functionality here in future, such as control points and formatting. Mark & nudge inactive users Collaborators who haven’t visited a mind map yet since it was shared with them are now marked with a coffee cup icon in the Share dialog. Clicking the icon allows you to send another email to those users, reminding them to contribute (“Nudge” feature). Alphabetize subnodes We’ve cleaned up the node context menu a bit and added a function to sort the children of a node alphabetically, at the click of a button. Small but hopefully useful function. Select maps to take offline No longer do you have to wait for endlessly for all your maps to synch when you go to offline mode – a new dialog allows you to choose which maps you want to take offline. Very useful if you have a lot of them! Other enhancements Ability to skip share emails, withdraw from shared maps using the “Delete” function, improved invitation system, and of course the odd bugfix. See all changes since MindMeister 3.0 in the What’s New mind map.