Sarah Beckham over at statesman.com provides a nice overview of mind mapping and the way it enables us to see new connections and relationships between pieces of information. She draws upon the research of Katherine Brooks, director of Liberal Arts Career Services at the University of Texas. Brooks works with job seekers to randomly write down their life experiences, and then find patterns that can lead to fulfilling career choices. She is quoted as saying that, with mind maps, “You see different patterns. It allows your mind to play with the information you already have, but in a different way.”\n\n[caption id="attachment_138" align="alignleft" width="169" caption="Katharine Brooks offers this example in her book 'You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career.'"][/caption]\n\nWhile Brooks uses paper and pen, SpicyNodes can serve the same purpose. The key difference is that, instead of a flat set of nodes with lines between them, you can put more information into a node and can click from node to node.