Thinking Space

If you've never used mind-mapping software, here's the elevator pitch explanation: Mind maps are freeform ways of organizing your thoughts, brainstorming ideas, or keeping track of meetings or projects. Thinking Space is a mind-mapping app for the Android platform that gives you a pocket-size interface to a powerful tool for organizing the chaos of your mind into something capable of generating new ideas, or repurposing old ones.

Each mind map begins with a core idea, or node. Around your node, you can create subnodes, where you begin to break your main concept into its constituent parts. For example, you might want to create a better mousetrap, and your subnodes may consist of topics like previous successes and failures; new ideas; and planned features. Off of each of these subnodes, you'll write branches that give a greater level of detail the further you get from the original node.

Where Thinking Space really shines is in the simplicity of its user interface and how you can create your first mind map without much effort. Thinking Space is also entirely compatible with files created in the Freemind mind-mapping desktop application.

Thinking Space can even store a mind map on a special Web portal the developer operates, which gives you (and, if you choose, others) a way to collaborate on a mind map using other platforms. Astonishingly, Thinking Space (and for that matter, Freemind) won't cost you a penny, so now might be the perfect time to brainstorm the details of that planet-saving invention you've been thinking about.