MindManager - A good RSS Reader?

In a post on the Mindjet Blog Francois Lavaste suggests that MindManager could be used as your RSS reader. If you don’t know what RSS is about have a look at this explanation from Feedburner. It’s worth finding out as may change the way you find and read web content.

While the RSS capability of MindManager is very useful I don’t think it’s an efficient reader unless you only track a few feeds. You may start with a few but I find they rapidly accumulate. In June 2004 when I first posted about RSS I had 72 active feeds and thought that was a lot. It’s now 338 even after a recent clean-out!

I don’t read all the posts but do scan all the headlines for articles of interest. It’s this ability to rapidly scan lots of content from multiple sites collated in one view that makes RSS such a powerful tool. Its also what I find harder to do in the Map format than with my favourite RSS Reader’s conventional folder/list view (see screen-shot). This may be just my preference, habit or because I’m scanning a large number of post headlines.

Although its not my primary reader RSS smart map parts are a valuable tool in my MindManager maps. I use them to allow quick reference to feeds related to the topics/projects I’m mapping.

This is great as article links you want to retain can be easily “torn off” to become static topics (inc post text in the notes and a hyper-link to the web post) permanently integrated into your map . Its a nice way to combine a “live feed” with your map and also exploit it to capture related references.

The image shows the RSS feed map part (shaded grey) with “live topics” that refresh when the map part is updated. One topic has been dragged out of the feed to form a static topic. When you update the map part the “live topic” is recreated as they are rebuilt from the feed. Feed updates will mean that eventually that “live” item may disappear as only the latest topics are displayed. The static topic dragged from the feed remains until you delete it.

Francois has step by step instructions to create your own RSS map parts in his post: The Mindjet Blog » MindManager: Your New Visual RSS Reader