Mindmeister.com is an online mind mapping website. It takes planning and brainstorming to the internet, where people can comment and help with brainstorming. Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. MindMeister helps bring people together that are working on the same problem from all around the world. Check out this video to get a closer look inside MindMeister.

A Tour of MindMeister

Do you know if your company’s website is better than your competitors? Well if you don’t, you should. Doing competitor research is a major way to be a successful company in your niche. You should know exactly what your competitors are doing as far as what their homepage looks like, what plugins/technology they use, and what customer reviews or testimonies they have posted.

After picking apart the other companies websites, you should have a good idea of what you need to do to optimize your site for your niche. Make your homepage look very professional, while still making it feel inviting. Post raw feedback from customers. Also, a very important piece is who you link to. Lets say you are a local health clinic. You do workshops with teachers at the daycare across the street as well as with the grocery store employees. Have them link with you! Google links links, and your customers like to see your interactions in the community.

Graduating soon and looking for a companion? Animal Planet’s Dogs 101 is your one stop shop for knowledge of different breeds.   Each video discusses the pros and cons of each breed as well as a history of where they came from.  Check it out!

Be sure to check out local humane societies!

This weekend I went geocaching. If you don’t know what that means, I’m not surprised-I didn’t either until a few days ago. If you have heard of geocaching, I’m also not surprised-apparently it is becoming increasingly popular around the globe. Geocaching utilizes online collaboration to allow anyone to enjoy a treasure hunt for hidden containers(geocaches).

You are given the latitude and longitude coordinates of where the treasures are and typically also given what the “treasure” looks like. People then use a GPS or even just GoogleMaps to locate the geocache. Often it is something small like a dispensable film container. Inside the containers are often names of people who have found the geocache. There are also sometimes little trinkets, which geocashers are encourages to exchange with a trinket of their own.

The beauty of Geocaching is that it doesn’t require any planning as most treasure hunts do. This is because users around the world hide their own geocaches and submit the coordinates and clues online. It is also free. Another advantage is that it can be as time consuming as you want to make it. We spent a little over an hour searching for six geocaches and found four of them. Also, geocaching is everywhere, even in other countries. Within five miles of my home town, there are 55 geocaches waiting to be found. Overall, geocaching is a ton of fun with little preparation required.

Jimmy Wales, founder of wikipedia, answers questions from fans all over the world.  Wikipedia is one of the largest and most well known mass collaboration sites on the web.  Listen in as Jimmy discusses wikipedia: