Caught in a Web of Collaborative Concept-Mapping

I always knew this day would arrive. After being a dedicated user of Inspiration software for almost two decades and having seen related services such as Cayra, CMap, FreeMind, Mind42, Mindmeister, and Mindomo pop up on the web, I wondered when Inspiration would follow suit and unveil its own flavor of collaborative concept-mapping tool. Well, the wait is over. It's finally here.


After signing up for a beta account and playing around with the resource, I was able to generate a concept map in pretty short order. The experience was not unlike using Inspiration. That's a definite plus. For example, the user-interface for the original, offline version looks like this:


The newer, online version of the product is very similar to its predecessor. There's not much more a user must learn in order to get started. Tinkering with Webspiration is relatively easy as the trappings are pleasingly familiar. The web version of the user-interface looks like this:


It's easy to migrate to Webspiration. As with Inspiration, users are able to switch to outline mode at any time, a feature that other online mapping resources haven't fully mastered at this point. That said, I am puzzled about one aspect of the new version. Webspiration currently lacks Inspiration's ability to automatically rearrange symbols in a concept map into configurations such as Top-Down or Right-Tree diagrams like the original program does. I'm confident that users will want this functionality.


Still, Webspiration is in its beta iteration. There are bound to be a few kinks that'll need to be ironed out.

Related links:

• Let others see what's on your mind with the nifty, free resource called Text2MindMap.
• Looking for information? Trying to find your way around a particular topic? Feeling a little lost? Consult a map--a mindmap--from MindMapPedia?
• If fact, mind mapping is on your mind swing by Mappio–the Mind Map Library.