


Everything in Personal Faves is included in The Mobile Master List. If you can spend a little more time looking at alternatives, and many of them are imaginative and interesting, look down the page at the Mobile Master List and browse. Some, like Popplet, Pearltrees, Lucidchart and Kidspiration have more specialized uses and you’ll need to be sure that they do what you want. If you’re looking for a quick choice, I don’t think you’ll go far wrong with any of these in Personal Faves. A couple, iThoughts and SimpleMind, went the other way: Mobile version first and desktop later. Here, you’ll find mostly the well-established mappers that already have desktop or online versions and have added a mobile app to their stable.

The most popular formats for inter-operation between different mapping tools are FreeMind, MindManager and Xmind. Or – if the publisher of your desktop software has not produced a mobile version – you’d best look for an app that can import and export files in a format that your existing software can read. Personal Faves is the best place to start in that case.

If you already use a desktop mapper, you’ll probably want to find a mobile version of the same software. There are two sections here – Personal Faves and the Mobile Master List. Most have some personal observations – some drawn from experience, others by looking at available on-line information. The entries quote each publisher with an extract from the apps iTunes or Google Play page for the app. You may be as surprised as I was at just how many there are in Google Play and the Apple iTunes App Store. Here then is an almost complete view* across the apps that can make mind maps and concept maps on iPhones, iPads and Android devices. The field now deserves a comprehensive look as more and more of us do at least some of our mapping ‘on the run’ so this is a total re-write. This piece first went online in early 2010 and plenty has changed since then.
