Bubbl.us has been featured on Lifehack before as a top web-based tool for 2007. Now that we’re moving into 2008 it’s time to really kick this app into gear and show you ways to use it to make 2008 your most productive year.
A little background on Bubbl.us
bubbl.us is a flash-based mindmap creator, which enables you to create interactive mindmaps, which can be shared and added to. It is a free tool, which is fantastic as it is one of the tools that has been great for me towards the end of this year. The mindmaps can be exported, like the one above, and can be as small or as large as you want them to be.
The above example shows a quick brainstorming session for articles to write on Lifehack. Whilst jotting down a few ideas in their various categories, I decided to write on the tool itself as I had found it so useful for so many other things in my life.
5 ways to use Bubbl.us to explode your productivity
- Brainstorming ideas for business
Brainstorming is a process whereby one or more people come up with and record as many ideas as spring into their minds, whether they are ridiculous or brilliant. Every new idea can lead to another idea, which can eventually lead to the winning idea for your business.
The process of using Bubbl.us to brainstorm is quite simple. You designate someone who is familiar with Bubbl.us (and it only takes 5 minutes to get familiar with it) to enter in all of the ideas that they and everyone else comes up with. Once each session is complete, the session can be saved for future use, it can be printed out, and it can be saved as a jpeg or PNG or exported for use in a website or as an XML sheet.
- Use for family tree building
With the ability to create multiple ‘parent’ boxes and ‘child’ boxes, Bubbl.us is a fantastic tool for creating family trees quickly and easily. What would be good is if it could insert images into the child and parent boxes; however, it is still a good tool for this activity. So for the genealogists out there, you could start collecting your family data from anywhere in the world and add to your family tree map from anywhere in the world — and nvite other family members, wherever they are, do the same.
- Creating flow charts
This is another extremely useful way to use Bubbl.us. You have seen flow charts in technical books and software manuals, and they are great visual representations for training employees to use software, follow business processes, or anywhere a yes/no situation might occur. And when processes or policies change, they can be esily updated from any computer.
- For creating lists
I used Bubbl.us to create my Christmas list this year and it was a great way to visualize the list. I usually do this on a piece of paper which is then thrown away only to be done again the next year. Using Bubble.us this way means I always have a saved copy of my Christmas list and I never forget anyone. Plus, I can easily add more people whenever I need.
The same goes for birthday card lists. Again this is something that rarely changes; now I have my birthday card list with one box for each month, and around each all the people we need to send cards to each month.
I have also created lists for shopping, which I can use repeatedly as we tend to buy the same things every month.
- Money making ideas
I am always on the lookout for new ways to make money (legally, of course) but I find that ideas pop into my head at the most awkward times. Now, whenever I have one of these ideas I write it down in the notebook I carry around and transfer it as quickly as possible to my Bubbl.us account.
when I look at the Bubbl.us account under the ‘money making ideas’ file I brainstorm how I could make money from any particular idea. Then I either reject it and delete or keep it saved on the file.
This has helped me tremendously in my online money making activities as I have carried out a lot of research after brainstorming and this allows me to reject or keep an idea.
It also helps my conscious mind to stop rejecting ideas immediately, which tends to happen with many people. You know what I mean: you think you have a great idea and you say ‘yeah that could work’ and get all excited and then 2 minutes later your conscious mind rejects it and you forget all about it. Now every idea is a viable option and your conscious mind has been bypassed, to a degree, allowing your unconscious mind to work on the idea.
What other uses can you think of?
If you haven’t already done so why not visit Bubbl.us and let us know other ways you could use this versatile web app.
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Hmmm have tried and it’s nice, but prefer http://www.mind42.com, find it much more powerful as it allows to attach text, files, work several users at the same time…
Give it a try.
You might want to correct the spelling of the site in the article title, as “bubble.us” seems to be somebody else…
[...] Posted in Daily life, Software at 10:38 am by LeisureGuy Some people like mind maps, others (like me) are more reserved in their admiration. But if you find them useful, you will probably like Bubbl.us, a flash-based Web-resident program to create (and share) mind maps. Lifehack.org tells about it. [...]
I use mind maps to capture the contents and ideas from the books I read. It’s easy to forget what the book was about (especially if you read a new one every week like me), but if you create simple mind map for each book, it’s easy to refresh it in your mind in a minute just looking over the mind map. It’s well worth it.
For people who like mindmapping and want it free, I’ve just pulled together in one place the details of all of the web-based ones, over at
http://www.mind-mapping.org/web-based-mindmappers/
This shows what’s free (and how much the subscriptions are for the others), what can import and export MindManager and FreeMind maps and, of course, where to find them. These are all collaborative mindmappers.
Bubbl.us is there, of course, but so are many more.
Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software
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[...] amAdd comment I’m a fan of using mind mapping techniques in brainstorming sessions and for lots of other tasks. I’ve purchased MindManager from Mindjet after seeing a demonstration at a conference. While [...]
Just need to try out, hope it improves,
Thanks ,
Tracy ho
wisdomgettingloaded
Thank you for finding us useful and writing this article!
Kirill
Bubbl.us doesn’t work very well for family trees because each node can only have one parent.
It is _quite_ useful, though, for mapping out classes/objects in object-oriented programming, and for organizing books or documentation.
Chris
I have looked for mindmapping tools ever since I discovered the pen and paper system.
Exporting maps to HTML or XML and consuming the output with code processors/generators is too beautiful to keep secret.
Bubbl.us is so simple, fast, intuitive, user friendly, I wish I had been able to create my version first. They must be very organized in their development process.
Hi Steven
I have been able to use the help function on bubbl.us can’t find the instructions for using the website. How do you delete bubbles it doesn’t always appear easy to write in the bubbles I would be grateful for some advice.
Warmly Robert.
Great looking tool, but loses data. I’m not writing in frustration – a quick Google search shows this is an issue. The issue is simply that you create your account, save your work, and when you return it just is not there. Obviously for a brainstorming tool, where maybe inspiration and ideas have been put in, the absolute last thing you want is to find it has gone. And yes, this happened to me, both for real and in a later test. I tried to follow it up with bubbl.us to help create the issue, but they weren’t interested. Just don’t RELY on it.