Overview

FreePub is a Creativity Support application built on top of Freemind, a popular open-source, mind mapping tool.

What are Creativity Support (CS) applications? CS applications "promote idea generation and brainstorming tools for divergent thinking followed by knowledge organization and concept mapping software for convergent processing" (see here).

What are mindmaps? Mind mapping refers to graphical representations of elements such as concepts, ideas, notes, tasks, or other items related to a topic of study. Mind mapping elements are organized in branches or groups according to the semantic interpretation given by the user. However, everything is built around a central topic. The key feature of mind mapping is that the elements are arranged in a non-linear fashion, which encourages brainstorming and idea generation. Mindmaps is an excellent model for setting up workspaces for internet search, project and task management (including links to necessary files, executables, source of information), knowledge base organization (notes, references), and essay writing and brainstorming.

What does FreePub offer? It supports creativity cycles, assisting users to:

  1. set up their domain of interest using mindmaps,
  2. browse mindmaps and launch search tasks to gather relevant documents from several data sources,
  3. identify support material for those documents (e.g., blog posts, presentations, etc),
  4. organise all retrieved information in mindmaps.

Click next figure to see FreePub in use (for more details check some screenshots and a use case here).

pubFreeMind on use!

Documentation

A short paper with a brief description of features and technologies used in FreePub is provided here.

Some early-stage prototypes to clarify the user requirements of FreePub have been developed from undergraduate students in KDBS Lab, NTUA Athens, in cooperation with IMIS/"Athena" R.C. for their diploma thesis:

  1. Web Retrieval with Faceted Classification and Clustering (in greek), P. Georgiou, 2009.
  2. Knowledge Collection and Organization Tool Supported by Web Meta-Search Mechanisms (in greek), Argiris Kollias, 2009.

Screenshots

Download

Binaries. You can download FreePub here.

  • LINUX:
    1. Uncompress the file.
    2. Copy the freepub folder inside plugins folder of your local FreeMind installation (usually /usr/share/freemind/plugins):

      sudo cp -r ..../FreePub_v0.3/freepub/ /usr/share/freemind/plugins/

      sudo cp ..../FreePub_v0.3/FreePub.xml /usr/share/freemind/plugins/

    3. Change file permissions as follows:

      sudo chmod -R a=rx /usr/share/freemind/plugins/freepub/

      sudo chmod -R ug=rwx /usr/share/freemind/plugins/freepub/

      sudo chmod a=rw /usr/share/freemind/plugins/FreePub.xml

    4. Launch FreeMind. FreePub can be started through the menu item Tools->Search for publications.
    • http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=build+plugin+for+freemind+tutorial&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
  • Windows (XP):
    1. Uncompress the file in the plugins folder of your local FreeMind installation.
    2. Launch FreeMind. FreePub can be started through the menu item Tools->Search for publications.

Sources. You can download FreePub sources here (available under GPL).

Contact

For any information, please contact Dr Theodore Dalamagas.