There’s a new brainstorming/mindmapping service in town - bubbl.us, and I decided to compare it with two older ones: Thinkature and Wridea. Since all three have a quite different approach, rather than competing, they actually complement each other quite well.

bubbl.us

First, we have Bubbl.us, the simplest of the three. The service lets you create a diagram - you start with an idea in a single bubble, and expand that idea horizontally or vertically. Select the name of the bubble, press Enter, and you get a child bubble. If you press Tab, you get a sibling bubble. If you drag a bubble onto another bubble, it will become its child. Simple and effective. You can save as many diagrams as you like, and you can print them out when you’re done. Fun fact: when you delete a bubble by pressing X in the upper right corner, first it counts down 3 seconds, then it blows up.

All this was created in less than a minute. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

The whole interface can be zoomed in and out (middle mouse button works). It looks very similar to Geni’s interface, and works just as good. Learning curve is non-existant: you’ll be using all that Bubble.us can offer in less then a minute.

Bubbl.us really more about mind-mapping than brainstorming, as the service is not meant to be used by multiple users, however you can simply share the account password amongs several people who can then add to the diagram as they please. The lack of multiuser functionality is my only objection: otherwise Bubble.us is a great little service that does only one thing, but it does it well.

thinkature.com

Thinkature is at first glance the most ambitious service in this roundup. It’s a true multiuser service, which means that it gives you a virtual workspace where you can collaborate with others. This makes it great for ‘true’ brainstorming sessions.

Thinkature - it’s perfect for planning bank robberies.

It also offers the most functionality. You can draw diagrams and flowcharts with boxes similar to bubbl.us, but you can also draw free-form shapes, add images, connect boxes with arrows, and point out various elements on your workspace to other users. Editing, moving and connecting the elements is mostly done by mouse, and it’s pretty easy to get the hang of it. Adding images is done especially well, because it’s integrated with a Yahoo web search, which means you can add dozens of images to your workspace on every imaginable topic within seconds. Of course, workspaces can be saved for later, and you can have as many as you like.

On top of all this, it supports both text and voice chat, so Thinkature can really be used for a true, virtual meeting. Actually, the service is flexible enough that it can be used for a myriad of uses, some of which you can find here.

There are some minor drawbacks. The relative complexity of Thinkature can make it pretty slow - for example, the default, tutorial workspace takes about 15 seconds to load. Also, it’s not badly designed, but it’s definitely not the prettiest service out there. Still, Thinkature is a pretty mature product and it deserves to be tried out. It would work particularly well in combination with another collaboration tool, such as Campfire.

wridea.com

Wridea has been around for at least 6 months, but it’s still in beta stage. It takes a different approach to brainstorming, as it’s based on idea sharing. After signing up, you are presented with a sample idea, which is basically a little text note. You can change the text, categorize it (you have to add some categories first for this to work), and change its visibility from private to friends only (public visibility isn’t enabled yet, but it’s planned for the future).

As you can see, I don’t really have that many ideas.

You can also organize your ideas into pages, manage your friends, and export your ideas into XML format. Lastly, there’s a feature called Idearain, which is basically a visualization of your ideas as they drop down from above, quite similar to Digg Stack.

While all this works pretty well, the basic idea seems to be lacking at this point, as it boils down to writing categorized notes with a bit of text. The list of new features is interesting and it could really add some flavor to Wridea, however the date for which it’s planned has long passed. I hope that the developers haven’t given up on this project and that we’ll still see some improvements in the future.

In this roundup, there is no winner. Each service has a completely different approach, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. For quick diagram/flowchart creation, I’d choose Bubbl.us. Thinkature is the best for brainstorming sessions with friends and colleagues, while Wridea is about sharing ideas, but some of its announced features should definitely be implemented to make the service really useful. Brainstorm away!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Reviews, Web, Web 2.0, Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.