Map Your Mind -- No Charge

FreeMind is a terrific brainstorming tool. As its name implies, you can get it for no charge. The software falls into the category of mind-mapping, i.e., getting concepts, essays, songs, web site structures, marketing campaigns, anything you can think of into a graphical, flexible, easily modifiable form. OK, you might just be happy with a pencil or pen and paper--but this application allows you to drag branches/nodes of your mind map from one to another instantly, including all sub-branches/nodes. No eraser required!

Among other things, you can embed hyperlinks in these nodes and assign styles and graphics to them. You can link to files on your own computer as well. I recently used FreeMind in a cowriting session (my cowriter's willingness to try working this way is much appreciated), and we both found it to be quite useful in our quest to get to the bottom of a hook we liked. The icing here is that you can save your files in outline and/or picture form, right to a web page of your choice--so your map is structured with collapsible/expandable branches or categories.

You can download FreeMind here: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Happy mind mapping!

NanoIndependents

I'm one of the nanoindependents. Trying nanomarketing. Let's bring it all to the subatomic particle level, okay?

The power of small. Coming to a pinhead near you.

del.icio.usly Digging BlinkList

I'm del.icio.usly Digging my blinklist feed.

As if enough time isn't already spent checking out the syndication sites, software, social bookmarking and more. It's a quest though--see which page, which tool works the best. It requires time to do this, but the effort seems worthwhile. Who will come out on top with the best centralization of all of this? How does one choose the champion? Seems like there's great opportunity here. The ultimate one stop shop, whether it's desktop/web.

I'm really not stoned. Just enthusiastic about this technology and all of the brilliant folks assembling it, debugging it, attempting to make it profitable. There's a win-win here.

RadioHead, MP3's, Music Is Dead

At the top left in my IGoogle is the SEOBook blog. Search Engine Optimization interests me. How we are in this electronic jungle, and the primates have to come up with the tool to end all tools, to gain some form of dominance.

It entertains, it frustrates, it challenges. What can we do technically to build the advantage and keep it?

So in my looking at this top blog, I discover these potent comments on our musical world: Aaron Wall spoke of RadioHead's offering of a free download--it looks like the entire album. I also saw a great take on it in the Lefsetz letter. Not sure why it has to be news, but it is. Members vying for attention, position. TIME writes, people react, servers get overloaded, and the name gets memed. Stickiness achieved.

Round here, it seems like music is dead, or dying, or just flat out being victimized. But what's new? I hope my own music will be listened to at some point without my having to pay people to listen to it. All this woogydeedoo is inspiring me.

Mashups - So Now, So Future, So Yesterday?

I've been blown away by web software mashups. Just getting my feet wet at this point with Yahoo Pipes, Microsoft PopFly, others. I'm curious what folks will be coming up with. It seems that FeedBurner's one mashup example. The possibilities seem to be endless, creating remixed content, all dynamic.

wikipidia's got a killer page on them.

A whole new dimension to our fair cyberworld is taking further hold. Can't wait to dig in more here. The quest continues...

Get Your Keyword Feet Wet Now

What a difference keywords make in the songs we write, in our conversations and stories, and in our efforts to discover and be discovered on the web.

Here's a pretty easy way to get your keyword feet wet: go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com. This is a "lite" version of a subscription-based keyword suggestion tool (there are many of them), but in just seconds you can catch some insight on what people are searching for on the web. Results are sorted from most popular search on down ("nashville music" showed some healthy results). Focus on where you fit in. What do you do? How are you known? How do you want to be known? Have at it and see how many searches are done daily on what you do. Use these numbers as a springboard to clarifying your marketing message. If you have Internet Explorer 7 or FireFox, you can also click http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/plugin/freekeywords.xml to get the keyword search tool added right to your browser। Have Big Fun!

Pundits, Spongemongers

Would it be real to assume the tendencies of the milieu?

Soggy afterthoughts dominating the landscape of our shaky subtleties.