So i've written before about how much i love mindmapping software, such as MindJet, or the open-source FreeMind. I recently stumbled across a web-based mindmapping site that is truly excellent.

It's called Mind42 and it's free, at least as of this writing. It's ultra "web 2.0" and it feels quite like a desktop app. You can attach notes, files, and links to nodes of your mindmap. You can open it up for collaboration and allow other to shove your mind-map around.

It will import a wide variety of other mindmap formats, including FreeMind files. In my usage, the FreeMind map came across with no loss of fidelity. It also allows easy publishing of your mindmaps to the web, letting you send a url to anyone you want to view your mindmap without installing any software or downloading any files.

Check it out »

If you've never used mind-mapping software, you're missing out on a great way to quickly organized your thoughts, brainstorming sessions, high level site-maps, etc. Mind mapping tools allow you to rapidly group ideas, created structured trees, and easily move ideas from one parent to another.

I've used MindJet Mind Manager for a few years now, and it's a truly great tool. It's 'lite' edition runs 100 bucks and the pro edition runs 350.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to an open source variant called FreeMind. It lacks some of the more advanced features and OS integration that Mindjet offers, but for 95% of my mind mapping uses, it works just fine.

It's a java app, and generally i don't like java apps as they often take longer to launch, but FreeMind fires up surprisingly fast.

here's a screenshot:

Most of you probably have heard of, or used 37signals' Basecamp. It's a great Project Management tool, and i've used it on a number of client projects. It's a subscription based, hosted service with various packages based on number of users, features, etc.

After using Basecamp for a while i heard about ActiveCollab, an open source software package offering much of Basecamp's core functionality. What made it most appealing to me was it's cost (free) and it's self-hostable implementation. I'd rather install an app on my own servers and 'own' my data than rely on a hosted solution that could close its doors or kill my access to data at the flip of a switch.

However, at version 1.0, ActiveCollab abandoned its open-source roots and moved to a subscription based business model. That's fine and well, and I hope they make tons of money, but they no longer had much differentiation from Basecamp.

Shouldn't live without anyway. Here's a rundown of some of my personal favorite tools for web development. All software and plugins i mention and link to in this posting are open source / free unless otherwise specified.

Many of these are dependent upon Firefox, if you don't have firefox get it here:

(The google toolbar adds the ability to instantly see page rank of any site you're looking at.)

Diagnostic plugins for Firefox