Cardflow: Create and share interactive mindmaps on your iPad

Seattle based Qrayon today released Cardflow 2.1 for the iPad, a major update to their popular digital index card App. Cardflow 2.1 adds major new features including the ability to insert links to web pages and online videos, and create tappable hotspots to navigate between cards. This can be used for mind-mapping and to create interactive experiences without any coding. Links continue to work in exported PDFs, which can be shared with colleagues and friends. 

Cardflow is a popular tool for novelists, screenwriters, students, educators, and business decision makers. The new features in Cardflow 2.1 dramatically expand its capabilities.

Familiar Tools, New Powers:

What makes a great tool is how closely it maps to the way we think, and how well it fits with the ways we already work. Cardflow's interface was deliberately based on index cards because a lot of people already know how to use them. It fits an old and comfortable way of thinking, allowing you to be productive right away.

But of course, a digital index card can do a lot more. It's not really constrained by size, or what you can put on it. It's like a blank digital canvas, limited only by how we choose to think about it. 

So, what else could go on a "card"? These days, the ultimate piece of content is a web page. 

Your Personal Web:

In Cardflow 2.1 you can now insert a web page on a card. This will place a thumbnail screenshot of it as the card picture, and add a dynamic link in the upper right corner. Tap the link in Selection mode to open the page. 

This is ideal for linking to online articles, videos, and references, but you can also use it to link to your own private documents stored in the cloud. Services such as Dropbox allow you to copy links directly to your files. Simply paste this link into Cardflow's web browser to create a card for that file.

You can now use a board as a virtual desktop to store links to files for a particular project or client.

Mapping The Mind:

Index cards are great because they let us store a single thought or concept on them, and easily organize these into bigger ideas. In the real world, we arrange index cards spatially into clusters or stacks, and even the first version of Cardflow made this easier with Magic Arrange.

With Cardflow 2.1, you can also link cards to each other. Tap and hold on a card, then drag to another card to add a link. Each link is represented by a hotspot on the source card. Tapping on the hotspot takes you to the linked card, and the hotspots can be resized and positioned.

At its most basic level, this lets you create networks of ideas, just like you can with more specialized mind-mapping tools. Oh, and you can export the text from linked cards in the OPML format which can be imported into most outliner and mind mapping Apps.

But you can do so much more with links...

Prototyping Interactions:

Position the link hotspots on your cards to create sharable interactive "tap-through" experiences. Both card and web links continue to work in exported PDF files. You can even publish these PDFs online. 

Use Cardflow to prototype interactive user-experience designs, share branching presentations and narratives, or even create self-contained wiki-style references. 

For example, Cardflow can be used to create interactive "walkabout tours" of your house or office: Put a picture of each of the main rooms of your house on a separate card, and add links to connect them spatially. You can even add hotspots to "zoom" in and out of detailed areas like your desk. Share the PDF with your friends and family so they can view it on their own devices. 

First-Class Keyboard:

Cardflow 2.1 also comes with a number of other refinements. It is now much easier to use Cardflow primarily from a hardware keyboard. Use the arrow keys to select cards, then press Enter to open them. Cmd T toggles text mode, allowing you to rapidly type on new cards with just a keyboard.

Pro Thinking Tools:

Cardflow's design goal is to expand on what professional-grade creative and "thinking" tools really mean on the iPad. Like pen and paper, the iPad excels at capturing handwritten and hand drawn information. But the difference is that you can easily layer on additional structure and relationships, and readily incorporate them into the rest of your digital workflow. 

This ability is what differentiates the iPad in the future of computing, and the updates in Cardflow 2.1 are meant to be another significant step in that direction.

Key Features:

* Magic Arrange: Group cards into stacks and rows by swiping with three fingers

* Card and web links: Add interactive links that continue to work in exported PDFs

* Silky smooth vector ink. Resizable without loss of resolution.

* Shape recognizer to help draw straight lines, circles, and rectangles

* Color-select allows you to separate overlaid ink

* Text editor with formatting (bold, italics, and headings)

* First-class hardware keyboard: Navigate and edit text with just the keyboard

* Export to JPEG, OPML, and high-res interactive PDF

* Color-coded project organizer

* Full iPad Pro and Apple Pencil support, with multitasking 

Device Requirements:

* Compatible with iPad and iPad Pro

* Requires iOS 8.0 or later

* 19.7 MB

Pricing and Availability:

There are two editions of Cardflow. Cardflow (Standard Edition) is Free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Business category. Cardflow  has additional features, and is priced at $9.99 USD (or equivalent local currency).

Cardflow 2.1: http://www.qrayon.com/home/Cardflow/

Download from iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/app/cardflow-index-cards-flashcards/id1020780942