Mindtop is an idea of the desktop replacement build on a mind mapping concept.

The whole theory combines two separate issues:

1. For some time I've been thinking that the current desktop is a terrible waste of prime real estate. That's the place where EVERYONE goes every once in a while and it's only occupied by icons (either app. links or folders/files). Mezzo Desktop goes in the good direction but it still involves traditional system of menus, icons and so on. It often makes the user lost and disoriented.

2. That is where mind mapping kicks in. One mind map can contain all the information presented in readable and easy to understand manner. You can easily choose the elements that You want to see all the time and which should be hidden under more general topics. You can see where You are at all times. But what if the mind map gets too big and it doesn't fit in the screen? Well, thanks to cairo, we've got beautiful vector graphics and we can zoom it back and forth as much as we need or want. And if You connect that zoom with the system of auto-collapsing/expanding branches of the mind map You are always home. I could write a complete web page about what can be done but really the sky is the limit...

Of course all of what You can see below is just a rough scratch of the concept. It was not even created with my own mind mapping software. Click on the pics to see the full size version.

Scenario 1.

You hover to the Banshee topic in the Multimedia group. It displays two callouts for available actions:

Run - default for all applications
Switch to - available for all running applications

Scenario 2.

You hover to the Search for topic and type in whatever You feel like. In a few seconds Beagle returns all the data it found and You get a few topics containing search results. When hovering over the search result subtopics some callouts appear showing You what can be done with that result.

Browse - You have found a web page with a content related to your search so the Mindtop suggests the browse the web site with appropriate application.

Play - a song was found in your music library, so Mindtop suggests to play it and also shows You that You already have an instance of your multimedia player running.

Send - if the search result is a file You may want to send it to someone with an email client

or Share it with some other tool.