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|| personal development | PROGRAM AIDS
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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