Mind Mapping?
 

It would be great if OmniFocus had an integrated mind mapper that you could turn into next action items for a project.

There is pretty good MindMapping in OmniGraffle.

Not sure how easy it would be to integrate.

BZ

A kludge
 

Mind mapping in OmniGraffle is a bit of a kludge if you ask me. When I'm mind mapping I just want a blank screen that I can drop ideas into very quickly. I don't like the way I have to use this outline and then move from their to the graph view. It's changing context (at least for me) and that interrupts the flow of brainstorming. Check out the way that MindJet does brainstorming (the Pro PC version) and also look at Inspiration's brainstorming mode. Very good.

You might want to try out working in the diagram view in OmniGraffle, selecting a shape and then Command-clicking the empty canvas to automatically create a connected child, or Option-Command-clicking to create a sibling.

This method obeys the Diagram Styling as well.

Unfortunately this does not work for me, when using the OmniGraffle MindMap Stencil. Not very convinient.

[QUOTE=Joel]You might want to try out working in the diagram view in OmniGraffle, selecting a shape and then Command-clicking the empty canvas to automatically create a connected child, or Option-Command-clicking to create a sibling.

This method obeys the Diagram Styling as well.[/QUOTE]

I ended up purchasing NovaMind and Merlin.
I do have OmniGraffle Pro and love it, but Nova Mind is more robust for Mind Mapping and integrates beautifully with Merlin 2. They used to have some video tutorials, but it seems they are currently being updated.
Within the mind mapping application you are able to define tasks, assign start/finish dates, show percentage complete, etc.
A 'parent' activity set gets automatically updated based on the status of its subtasks.
And Merlin can also import OMNI Outliner documents. I have not tried that feature yet, though.

Integration
 

Clearly Omni is in a good market position. And if they could offer integration across their apps they would dominate. Unfortunately it appears integration is a second thought and their data file don't facilitate even cross-application integration, even within their own apps. And currently do almost nothing to integrate with Apples data (eg in AB or iCal).

I'd second the mention of Novamind - for the money it is a great mind mapping tool, certainly better than the very expensive Mind Manager.

Cheaper tools such as Incubator are also really nice - if not quite as flexible as Novamind.

[QUOTE=Curlypaws]I'd second the mention of Novamind - for the money it is a great mind mapping tool, certainly better than the very expensive Mind Manager.[/QUOTE]
My friend bought MindJet MindManager, and I really like it better than Novamind - for me Novamind looks "childish", MindManager looks more "Pro".

[QUOTE=Guntis]My friend bought MindJet MindManager, and I really like it better than Novamind - for me Novamind looks "childish", MindManager looks more "Pro".[/QUOTE]

While looks are important, it’s not the most important feature for me.
Inbox, Cha-Ching, Disco, and many other applications look great. I would not use any of these unless I was in the mood for some beta-testing.

Novamind’s integration with Merlin is anything but childish, by the way.
I do know that MindManager has integration with FastTrack Schedule, although I did not try this feature when I tried the demo.

Some of the examples in NovaMind’s site are a bit cartoonish, but that does not mean that you can’t create professional looking documents with it.

Based on visuals alone, I could also work with Curio or OmniGraffle which are great programs as well. For me it was important to have some of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ features of NovaMind, such as the aforementioned integration with Merlin.

I would recommend that people try them both, as well as Compendium and other similar applications :)

Also, in addition to the cartoonish images NovaMind’s library includes many serious looking images. For some reason the examples they chose to display in their website are the more cartoonish ones.