Alpeon Magazine Alpeon | Page 50

48 || personal development | PROGRAM AIDS S tatistics confirm that the more ideas a person gen- erates, the greater the chances that there will be good ones among them. Electronic brainstorming allows us to maintain our brains in a constant state of active creativity; after all, smartphone apps open up the possibility of engaging in the process no matter where we are, and to propose ideas not just during a small amount of time at the workplace or a meeting, but at the moment when an idea actually dawns on us. And if the digital environment today is your everything, we invite you to brainstorm with apps for smartphones. ARTI suggests that you choose a suitable applica- tion and begin the hunt for ideas. Lino (iOS; Android) The phone app takes you to a free service that presents you with a virtual bulletin board, or canvas, onto which you can fix colorful sticky notes with your ideas, pictures and video, appointment reminders, and any kind of file. Several can- vases are available for different projects. Your stickies can be posted, moved, peeled off, organ- ized, and edited in versatile ways to suit your tasks, all from your phone. Ac- cess is available on a PC Web browser only to those to whom you have sent an invitation. You can open the discussion to those with whom you’re sharing your can- vas. In general, there’s room to let yourself go; you just have to be able to make sense of it later. iCardSort (iOS) This application is similar to lino: cheerful cards to move around and organize, a pleasant textural back- ground, and a large assortment of accessible content. The iCard is available to owners of iPads who pony up ten bucks. ALPEON.COM MindNode (iOS) MindNode is a high-quality application accessible to owners of Apple products. You create the point of departure of your problem or task with the tools of the app and begin weaving around it a network of all accompanying thoughts and circumstances to create a so-called mind map, a kind of flow chart that helps you lay out thoughts, organize and connect them, and get a clear picture of what’s happening with your task. As you may surmise, there’s a multitude of ways the program can be used, from simple brainstorming to global plans for creating your own business. Perhaps the application’s only shortcoming is its price. The free ver- sion has extremely limited capabilities, and to synchronize MindNode data with other devices, add multimedia, and so forth, you’ll have to get the Pro version. Then again, there are some pretty good free alternatives to MindNode. There’s Mindjet Maps (Android, iOS), Mindomo (iOS, Android), MindMeister (Android, iOS), and Simple Mind Free for Android, for example. These services and apps can do everything that MindNode can, but for free, and in most cases they’re cross-plat- form capable. To choose an appli- cation suitable for solving your problems in particular, give each one a try. Brainstorm Lite (iOS, Android) This is a unique applica- tion for recording ideas that makes it completely impossi- ble for you to try to enter any corrections into ideas that have been recorded. That’s right—the program won’t let you correct or remove entries, so not a single bright thought that pops into your head will be mod- ified, get lost, or disappear altogether. Trello (iOS) This is another service for those whose heads spray ideas all over the place. The principle of the hierarchical