Concept Modeler

Web Environment (or Network) Management sample diagram

nmarcel — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:48:15 +0000

The next is an example, created with ThinkComposer, of an informal Web Environment Management diagram.

The symbols and connector types are encapsulated in a user defined Domain, that can be reused for creating new diagrams.

The “Access Perspective” folder content is…

You can download the Domain (containing this diagram as template) from here.

ThinkComposer Beta 2

nmarcel — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:48:17 +0000

After many, many, many days of hard work I have a new version of ThinkComposer and its website.

It includes more examples, plus half of the PDF documentation.

Still a Beta, but stable enough and improving towards launch.

Only for very Early Adopters: ThinkComposer public Beta launched.

nmarcel — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:03:00 +0000

Finally! I deployed the website for my product ThinkComposer and company (Instrumind Software).

A preliminary and undocumented Beta version is also available.

The documentation about how to use the software will be created and published in the coming weeks.

If you wish, download and use it at your own risk and imagination!

The URL is: http://www.thinkcomposer.com

ThinkComposer is the versatile tool to Express the Challenges, Solutions and Knowledge of your Unique World.

(for Windows 7, Vista and XP)

It can create Concept Maps, Mind Maps, Models and general purpose Diagrams with rich and detailed content.

You can define your own “Domains” creating specialized Concepts and Relationships, considering its symbols, visual style, associativity and structured information.

This Beta will expire on Jan-01-2012, but more versions will come. Stay tuned!

Mind mapping in the old way

nmarcel — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:26:02 +0000

Last weekend I started watching again (since childhood) a cold-war era spy tv series: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (this 2011 a film remake is being done).

It was funny that, expecting do distract myself away from my job of develop a concept/mind mapping software, I found an example of the good old way to do that…

Genealogy Tree sample

nmarcel — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:23:29 +0000

Although not exactly a tree (i.e.: born from a root), a genealogy tree is an specialized graph of nodes depicting family lineage.

The next is an example made with ThinkComposer (click to enlarge):

ThinkComposer pre-beta screenshot

nmarcel — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:26:11 +0000

I’m working hard (really hard) to complete the first Beta version of my product.

So, here is a screenshot of the software with a generic business sample (click to enlarge):

Hope to launch the (internal?) Beta by mid-year.

Little Demo of My Product

nmarcel — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 03:59:51 +0000

As stated on my personal blog (see this) I’m creating a software for making concept maps, mind maps and other types of diagrams.

See here the very first demo of an alpha version:

Hope to launch a Beta release in 2011.

Programming Software: Less text, more graphics.

nmarcel — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:41:50 +0000

Since introduction of CRTs and keyboards programming software has been doing writing plain text. Initially using simple text editors, then evolving to the Integrated Development Environment which incorporated also the rich features of Graphical User Interfaces. Most of the graphical development work was related to designing visual interfaces (arranging windows, buttons, lists, etc.) and drawing diagrams (for design and documentation). But the programming itself is mostly text-based.

Currently, most (source code) programming interfaces look like this one…

However, the use of graphical feature towards programming is growing. Either to simplify the error-prone text programming, or to rise the level of abstraction used in writing software. Let’s see some products and ideas going on this direction…

1.- Constant Velocity IDE.

This is just a concept vision project of a future idealistic programming environment.

Just see how a class (a programming abstraction) can look like:

2.- Code Bubbles.

This project is pretty interesting in about how to make programming more fluent. Instead of having long text files with code, it represents code parts as “bubbles” which can be graphically arranged, linked, annotated and grouped together as needed.

Let’s see this innovative environment…

3.- 12 Blocks.

This is my favorite, a product for Robotics which present programming parts (sentences, loops, calls, etc.) as jigsaw alike pieces called blocks.

You can see the simple, but intuitive design, showing connectable/pluggable parts, nested loop zones and their parameter inputs…

I know that the idea of graphic programming has been around since the GUI inception in the 70s but, due to complexity of software programs, it has not advanced so much it productivity and acceptance. Hopefully, the current trends of making software more descriptive (less “how to do”, more “what to do”) will rise the abstraction level enough to take advantage of graphics and depend less on detailed text code.

A Visualization Periodic Table

nmarcel — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:46:05 +0000

Most of us know what the Periodic Table of the chemical elements is, but there is more application to that paradigm other than just chemistry.

This is a very interesting and complete table showing Visualization Methods…

The original interactive version is here (put the mouse pointer over each symbol and see).

Visual Languages Primitives

nmarcel — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:32:39 +0000

Visual languages are based on certain common primitive elements for express the intended message, situtation or subject.

As far as I can see, the most used are…

Concepts: Individual visual representation of ideas.

Concrete objects: Object with at least a name or title for identification purposes and with the capability of being resized or moved across the containing layout.
Grouped objects: Shown as one, later expanded in the same space or in a new one. This is the base for composable visualizations.
References: Shortcuts to external objects, either respect to object of the same document but in another page or links to files or internet URLs.

Relationships: Connections between ideas, representing a semantic nexus.

Communication: Sending/receiving of information.
Action: Process execution flow.
Structure: Set of well arranged components that constitute an entity, so that it shows their association and dependencies.

Layout: Acomodation of the visual elements in a predefined way.

Centered (such as in mind maps, using radial or hyperbolic trees).
Table (rows and columns, also called Tabular)
Hierarchical Tree
Column based flow (made for vertical expansion, such as UML Sequence Diagrams)
Row based flow (made for horizontal expansion, such as Gantt Charts)
Free (such as in concept maps), but mantaining a relative distance between nodes for comfortable reading.

Title and Accesories

Main title, maybe with a context reference.
Notes and visual cues (such as icons and legends, the later is very important for non domain-versed audience)
Extra Information (References, summaries and tables)