Looking for an online tool to create diagrams, mind maps and flow charts? Diagramly is an online diagramming app, and while it’s not quite a powerful as desktop apps like Visio, it’s perfectly capable of producing fairly complex diagrams and charts.
Shapes, a simple diagramming app for Snow Leopard, may be just what the average business user ordered. With a simple interface and a limited, but well-chosen assortment of tools, it avoids the overkill of more powerful apps and does it all on the cheap.
Collaborating isn’t just a matter of sending Word files back and forth: most organizations routinely need to use diagrams and flowcharts to get a good idea of what needs to be done. LucidChart is a graphically-rich web application that makes collaborating on diagrams easy.
Drawings and diagrams are playing an increasingly important role in creative, marketing and technical communications. If you are an independent web worker who needs to create diagrams, you need to choose your drawing tools carefully, especially if, like me, you are not a skilled artist
Microsoft Visio (s msft) still reigns as the standard tool in diagramming for business, project management and technical communications. While you don’t have to be an artist to use Visio productively, in my experience a lot of users still very intimidated by this application.
Like most of the product in the Office suite, Microsoft Visio 2010 beta has been overhauled, making it easier to use and offering better options for creating and managing Visio diagrams, while also integrating real-time data into your drawings. Read More about 3 Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta Productivity Enhancements
We are big fans of eReader here and have used eReader for years on both Windows Mobile devices and the iPhone. The folks at eReader just informed us that they have a special deal with Random House and are offering 9 ebooks for free. We’re all about ebooks and free ebooks are the ultimate holiday gift for us. These free ebooks are not the standard public domain stuff you might expect, these are Random House books that cover everything from humor to historical fiction.
Authors include Alan Furst, Julie Garwood, Charlie Huston, David Liss, Laurie Notaro, Arthur Phillips and Simon Rich. We’ve included some seasoned titles like Liss’ “The Whiskey Rebels”, Notaro’s “The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death”, along with some recently-published titles like Rich’s “Free-Range Chickens”. The e-books include the full text and are not abridged.
I’ve been curious about mind mapping and how it might help me with my work. I did a search on Web Worker Daily for references to mind mapping solutions to see what my fellow bloggers have said in the past to help me vet out the best software or site for my needs. That’s where I saw some mentions about bubbl.us, a Web-based “brainstorming” application.
Before I proceeded testing out an application, I wanted to have a better understanding of what mind mapping was all about so I went to Wikipedia for a definition:
A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.
The more I read, the more I was excited to try mind mapping in some form because I certainly could use some help with organization, problem solving and decision making in my Web working business.
After all of my raving about the Asus Eee PC, it’s only fair to rant about my biggest gripe: the placement of the right-side Shift key. I could rag on the size of it too, but as we say in the world of mobile tech, life is full of compromises. Anyway, I was counting how many times I hit the up arrow key instead of the Shift key. I lost track somewhere around 847… or was it 848?I’ll be prying off both keys to give them the flip-flop and since I’m currently running Windows XP on the Eee, I figured I’ll have to some digging in the registry for the keys to work correctly in their new homes. Or… I could just use SharpKeys, a free key-mapping application for Windows XP and Vista. SharpKeys provides a simple GUI and does the heavy lifting on the registry for you.
(via How-To Geek)Update: All iS RiGhT WiTh ThE WoRlD AGAin. Oops… I got carried away now that I’m hitting the right button… carry on.
More Joost Content Deals; European Joosters get Turner’s TV (CNN, Adult Swim); Bollywood movies are coming to the P2P TV service via Eros Intl.; and Aniboom will launch a branded animation channel. (Turner: Rapid TV News; Eros: Variety; Aniboom: release)
Cable Trying to Catch up to Satellite HD Offerings; DirectTV fired the first salvo by saying it’ll have 100 HD channels by year’s end, now cable companies are fighting to overcome bandwidth constraints. (Wall Street Journal)
Video PMPs Shipments to Hit 130 Million; hunger for video will fuel the portable media player market, with shipments projected to exceed that number by 2011. (Parks Associates)
Chris Holland sent me an email informing me that Earthlink is getting into the VoIP business. (Press release!) To extend the benefits of its newest VoIP offering, EarthLink has partnered with other SIP providers to exchange calls. These partnerships give EarthLink Free Online Calling subscribers free VoIP access to anyone using SIP-based services, including SIPphone and Free World Dialup.
EarthLink just released their free online calling for members. What I like is that I can get voicemail sent to my earthlink e-mail address. That’s really cool and something Skype isn’t in the business of doing. And I’d venture to guess that as time goes by, we should see more convenient integration between voice calling and other earthlink services. This is really cool. Like any other EarthLink member, I’ve got 8 online accounts, out of which I haven’t been making any good use, but I’m thinking of handing out a couple of accounts to Mom, Dad, and Little Sis back in France, so they can more easily call me from their computers. WAY COOL. In other news, I’ve been meaning to try out the new Total Access for Mac that was just released a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been told there’s a nifty RSS News Reader bundled with it?
Earlier, the good old Speakeasy had launched its VoIP package. I don’t care for Speakeasy very much, but being an Earthlink customer in the past, I am pretty certain, it is going to be nice little package.
