Tools
Some of my current favorites for product/idea development, collaboration & presentation.
My Maps I use mindmapping from the start of every project. I document notes, capture thoughts, details. Then I rearrange relationships between the ideas, capture URLs, graphics, pdfs - you name it, I place them together in a visual form that conveys the connections and the supporting references.
I use it to create, publish and track features in Marketing Requirements Documents, Product Requirements Documents, Customer Segmentation reports. I can turn it into a pdf, a word doc, a blog posting, even a power point with just a couple of key strokes. I've used it for doing wire frames for websites and product ideas. It is excellent for conveying competitive space and ecosystem layouts.
Docs, Sites, Maps, Earth, Gmail,
These are some of the Google products I utilize
with clients and recommend to lean start-ups
because they are free, they enable collaboration,
they make it easy for people who don't care about technology to communicate about what they do care about within short learning curves.
Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Great for aggregating customer sentiment and market space.
This is a great tool for wireframing software applications or websites, showing clients or end-users a product right from conception, and explaining to developers what you're visualizing. Don't worry, it won't put UI Designers out of business, but rather allow collaboration to happen from inception.