I’m going to be giving a presentation on Web 2.0 in a few days for the Boston SPIN chapter (click here for details), so I thought it would be a good idea to update and revise my evolving mind-map on the topic. As usual, I’ve made it available for downloading, but it now comes in two different formats. The old, familiar PDF version can be downloaded by clicking here; for reasons I’ll explain below, it’s now grown to a rather large 25.2 megabytes, so it will take a while if you’re still accessing the Internet via slow-speed dial-up modem.

Based on a suggestion from someone attending my Web 2.0 seminar in Rome a couple weeks ago, I’ve also made the “native” mind-map document available; it’s about 21.4 megabytes in size, and you can download it by clicking here. You’re welcome to add, delete, or modify anything you want; but to do that, you’ll need the mind-mapping tool that I used to create the document: it’s called ConceptDraw MindMap, and it’s available for both Windows and Macintosh by clicking here (disclosures: it costs a couple hundred dollars, and I have no business relationship of any kind with the company that makes it). Alternatively, if you’re content to view the mind-map in a read-only format, you can download a free copy of ConceptDraw Viewer (in either WIndows or Mac format) by clicking here. I found the “viewer” program to be extremely slow and clumsy (though it might be speedier when dealing with a small mind-map), but it does give you the ability to expand and collapse the outline-hierarchy of mind-map branches, as well as navigating from page to page. For more straightforward uses of the mind-map, I think the PDF document is probably adequate, but the choice is yours.

The primary change in this version of the mind-map is a reorganization of subordinate topics (or sub-branches) into separate pages; the whole thing had gotten so complex that several of the pages were almost impossible to read, with tiny font-sizes required in order to cram everything onto a single page. As a result, what was previously a 16-page mind-map has now grown to a 32-page mind-map; everything is now simpler, larger, and easier to read. Unfortunately, it has also doubled the size of the PDF document from what it used to be; I hope that won’t be too much of an inconvenience.

I may need to make some additional refinements in future versions; among other things, on the PDF export (and with the ConceptDraw Viewer program) the hyper-linked navigation paths from various branches in high-level pages to the lower-level details on subordinate pages are not visually obvious. This is annoying, because the page-to-page hyperlinks do have a visual annotation in the native ConceptDraw mind-map document; but that won’t be of any use to you unless you decide to invest in a full-blown copy of the ConceptDraw mind-mapping tool itself.

For now, I recommend that you take a look at the names I’ve given to each page in the mind-map, which should help indicate which pages are “high-level” and which ones are “subordinate.” Also, roll your mouse slowly over any terminating branches in a high-level page, and see if a little pop-up message appears that says “go to page n.” If it’s an “external” hyperlink (i.e., a link to something outside the mind-map itself, somewhere on the Internet), the text will have the familiar blue, underlined format; but if it’s an “internal” hyperlink (i.e., to some other page of the mind-map), the text won’t show any special formatting, but when you roll your mouse slowly over the text, the cursor should change from a pointy-arrow to a pointy-finger (at least that’s what it does on my Mac; I don’t know how it behaves on other platforms). Also, remember that all of the subordinate pages are hyper-linked back to their parent-page; all you need to do is click in the central, yellow-colored “topic” bubble in the middle of each such subordinate page.

Meanwhile, here’s a summary of the changes and revisions that I’ve made in this version:

1. Several of the branches that had been highlighted in a red color, for the benefit of people attending my recent Web 2.0 seminar in Rome, have now been changed back to the original black (or blue) text format.
2. On the “Introduction - Society” page, on the branch labeled “Blogs”, I updated a link to a page describing current statistics about the state of the blogosphere — indicating that there are now 71 million blogs, with 175,000 new blogs being added every day.
3. On the “Conferences” branch of the “References” page, I’ve updated the link to last year’s WIkimania 2006 conference, and the link now points to the Web page for Wikimania 2007 in Taiwan.
4. On the “Trends - New UI” page, I’ve added a link to Apple’s web page for the forthcoming iPhone — having looked at it again yesterday while writing my blog posting titled “Waiting for Apple’s Leopard,” I really do think this is one example of a new UI trend.
5. On the “Trends - Social/Cultural” page, I’ve added a new link to the video clip entitled “Shift happens,” which I summarized in this recent blog posting.
6. On the “tools” branch of the “Themes - Mashups” page, I’ve added a link to a MacWorld article by Google’s MyMaps mashup.
7. On the branch labeled “Ed’s list of corporate blogging policies” on the “Business - Large Companies” page, I’ve added a new link to a blog article I wrote a couple months ago, entitled “What A Company’s Blogging Policy Says To Its Employees.”
8. On the branch labeled “Blurring of (some) political boundaries” on the “Trends - Social/Cultural” page, I’ve added a new link to the “Shift Happens” video clip mentioned above, which (among other things) points out that the 106 million registered MySpace users represent a “network nation” that ranks 11th in the world, between Japan and Mexico.
9. On the “References” page, I removed the branch (and link) to the “Dead Web 2.0″ site; it’s no longer functioning, though it promises to come back at some point in the future.

That’s it for now. I may add a few more odds and ends before I head up to Boston on Tuesday, but this should keep you occupied for a while…