Sprouts will be a free online service that lets you create graphical trees of related items using a visual designer. You can create your own projects, or publish your trees to share with others.
The program is brand new and still has some bugs to work out, but it looks really promising. Although the program is in pre-alpha you can e-mail Greg, the designer and he will create an account for you. He is also very open to suggestions and even implemented an embed option at my request. You can see a small sprout I made up below.
I really like some of the features. After you create a node, you can add nodes manually, or via RSS and Search.
You can then edit each node individually and add pictures, tooltips and even notes about the node.
I could see this being very useful to teachers and students for a creative representation of an idea they are working on. How could you use this?
2 Comments
Thanks for the write-up Jeff! You make -even- me look good. Let me know when you think up something else and we’ll see about getting it in. Because Sprouts is written in Adobe Flex, adding in new functionality is pretty much a joy. But like I told ya, I think you’re going to like the new thing I working on – it’s in Apollo Air and might be right up your alley…
Jeff
This kind of technology has been around for sometime – this web site has been using similar technology to produce fascinating word maps – have a look – http://www.visualthesaurus.com/