A few min­utes ago I stum­bled over an inter­est­ing arti­cle over at Life­hacker. The new beta at Bubbl.us allows users to do some pro­duc­tive brain­storm­ing by offer­ing a free, web-based and sim­ple to use soft­ware. You can start to pro­duce good-looking mind maps with­out reg­is­ter­ing. If you want to save your mind map though, you should reg­is­ter. It’s free and they don’t want your e-mail address.

Bubbl.us is very easy to use and you will intu­itively grasp its options. Most options are very stream­lined and can be accom­plished with­out ever need­ing your mouse. Best of all, apart from print­ing your mind map, you can export it to JPG or PNG. If you did reg­is­ter, you are able to share your mind maps with oth­ers. It’s very speedy although it took me a while to prop­erly save a mind map I created.

It’s good to know that there is a free, web-based solu­tion out there that’s easy to use. If you are not into web-based prod­ucts, take a look at Free­Mind which is a mind-mapping soft­ware writ­ten in Java. Free­Mind offers some attrac­tive fea­tures licensed under GPL. Let’s get to work and sketch out your ideas for world domination!