
Mind maps can also be e-mailed as attachments.įor serious work, you need a serious office suite. One of the most interesting features is iThoughts' built-in file server, which can be accessed over a Wi-Fi network from a computer's browser, allowing you to download and upload files to and from the iPhone directly - perhaps a quicker way to share a mind map than having a dozen team members go to Box.net or their shared Dropbox folders. Or you can share finished mind maps as PDFs, images or OPML files, which many other apps can import. Mind maps can be exported and imported in iThoughts' native format, or for team members who don't have iPhones, in any file format used by the most popular mind-mapping applications: Freemind, Novamind, MindManager, XMind, iMindMap or Mindview. iThoughts ($7.99) from CMS is an intuitive mind-mapping app that leverages Box.net and Dropbox to allow you and your team members to share mind maps and build off one another's ideas. Mind-mapping is a powerful brainstorming tool with which you free-associate ideas in an unstructured way, clump related concepts together and note relationships as they emerge.


(Of course, you can also add files from your computer by logging into your account at Box.net's Web site.) You can upload photos from the iPhone's Camera Roll we'll be looking at applications that save other kinds of documents directly to Box.net below. The iPhone app allows you to share individual files or whole folders stored on Box.net, open files using the iPhone's built-in file viewer, and leave comments on files. When you access the site on a computer, you can edit files with Zoho's full-featured Web 2.0 office suite, use third-party plug-ins and much more. Each of these storage services also offers an iPhone app of its own that lets you manage your stored files by, among other things, organizing, sharing and setting permissions for them.īox.net has long been a popular online file storage service, and it gets better and better with each update.

As long as you have an account with one of those services, you can access and save files there. Fortunately, there are plenty of clever programmers who have designed their apps to use the online storage and sharing services Box.net and Dropbox.
