Over the past couple of months I have had the opportunity to touch base with some of the developers of MindManager add-ins to see what they had up their sleeves for 2009. I was delighted to find out when speaking with Nigel from Olympic Limited that his company would shortly release a MindManager 7 & 8 add-in called Olympic Utilities. The Olympic Utilities tools once installed can be viewed as a new Ribbon Tab within MindManager giving you access to the various tools. Nigel was kind enough to provide with a license so that I could test it out. Olympic Utilities was very easy to install and I was up and running in no time. Once installed you will find that you have a new ribbon with ten new utilities that you can use within MindManager. The ten utilities include the following:
Link2Attachment
A handy utility that will convert a hyper linked document such as a PDF file or a Word document and change it to an Attachment (embedded within the map). The add-in also allows you to either keep the current hyperlink or have it replaced which allows for additional flexibility.
Topic Text Lock/Un-Lock
This utility allows you to select a Topic and then lock the text so it cannot be changed by other users of the map, (unless they have Olympic Utilities installed). When a Topic is locked, it is indicated by a padlock icon on the Topic.
Topic+Topic
Allows you to add selected Topics, (providing they have a numerical text title), and have the sum either displayed on screen or added to the map.
Topic2CallOut/CallOut2Topic
Change Topics to Call-Out Topics or back again with a single click.
Topic2Date
Takes the selected Topic and inserts a user selected date. The user can select to have the day of the week added to the Topic if desired.
Map2Left
This function allows you to open a map which has its Topic alignment set to Left so that all new Topics created are added to the left hand side of the map.
Topic2Notes
Takes the selected Topic and steps through the sub-topics and converts them into Text Notes of the selected Topic.
Topic2Resource
Takes the selected Topic and its first Sub-Topics and creates a new Map Marker Group and adds the Sub-Topics as Resources.
Topic Calculator
Use this on a numerical Topic to display different conversion such as Miles/Kilometers, Inches/Feet etc. Also allows basic math calculations to be carried out on the selected Topic and the result added to the map.
Topic2Vertical
Takes the selected Topic and makes the Topic orientation vertical. This allows the user to select the character spacing of the resulting Topic as well.
As noted I found Olympic Utilities easy to use and found some of the commands quite intriguing. I really enjoyed being able to quickly insert the date into a topic using Date2Topic and the TopicCalculator was outstanding and very well implemented. The ability to quickly change the text in a topic from horizontal to vertical orientation using the Topic2Vertical could come in handy as was the ability to lock the text in a topic with TopicTextLock. The Link2Attachment is one of my favorites and one that I will use often. With Link2Attachment you are quickly able to turn your links into attachments thereby embedding the document in the map. The more you use Olympic Utilities the more it grows on you. I was wondering what your favorite Olympic Utilities feature is? If you enter at the right top of the blog page your name and email you will be in the running for a FREE copy of Olympic Utilities- but you have to be in it to win! You can also purchase a copy of Olympic Utilities in the in the AssistiveTek Prostore. So check it out!
No comments:
Post a Comment