Welcome

This is a gingko tree.

You can use it to write and organize your thoughts, ideas, and projects.

Go ahead, look around!

(use ←, ↓, ↑, → keys.)

Watch the “Getting started” video first,
if you haven’t seen it (< 90 seconds).

Why should I care?

Gingko gives you superpowers.

Spreadsheets are such a powerful tool for handling numbers, that their first users seemed to have superhuman powers.

Gingko is like that, except it’s for handling
knowledge and ideas.

There is no other tool that lets you work on the big picture and the details in the same flow.

Whether it’s a project report, or your third novel, with gingko you’ll be able to write better, faster.

Power

The simplest way to show how gingko lets you work with ideas and words faster than any other tool, is with an example:

Collaborative writing, without gingko:

Does this sound familiar?

Set a time to gather team for brainstorming, using whiteboards or mindmaps.
Draft an outline.
Email outline back and forth, till complete.
Use outline as reference, write document in word processor.
Switch back and forth between outline and word processor, till first draft is complete.
Email draft around, till complete.
Send this final giant document to whoever needs to read it.
Hope they at least read the important parts.

With gingko:

Create a gingko tree and invite collaborators.
Together flow smoothly from brainstorm to outline to final document, on the same page.
Share link to final organized document with whoever needs to read it.
Know they will read the important parts.

What can I use it for?

Writing:
- your book or novel.
- your screenplay.
- your thesis or research paper.
- software specs.
Organizing:
- your projects.
- personal todos.
- your development workflow.
- your ideas.
- your study notes.
Working together on any of the above.

And much more.
For more detailed examples, look right →.

For Blog Posts

Blog posts are challenging to write, because we need to keep them brief and to the point.

Here is a method that works*:

Determine how long the post will be.
(e.g.: 125, 250, 375, 625, or 1000 wds.)
Write a 1/4th scale version in the first column.
When you’re happy with card 1, create a child (Ctrl+→).
Write a 1/2 scale version in the middle column.
Repeat once more, to write the full-sized version in column 3.

Seem like more work?
You’ll be surprised by how quickly you can write the second and third columns, once you know what you really need to say.

Stick to the word count limit at each step, even if it feels restricitve. You determine first what you want to say, and then you can think about how you want to say it.

* Adriano first used this method when writing a physics paper, so it’s very general.

For Business Plans

Start with your “Executive Summary” on the far left. Then add sections such as Marketing, Product Development, etc, to the middle column. Add more details to each of those sections by adding more details to the right column.

For Screenplays

Gingko is great for screenwriting and playwriting, because it follows the natural progression of “Logline > Act summaries > Scene summaries”.

What can’t I use it for?

So far, we haven’t found a single case of a project big or small, where we couldn’t use gingko to help in some way.

We use gingko for everything here. This ranges from 125 word blog posts, to our core development and marketing cycles.

We use gingko to organize our grocery lists, recipes, planning our trips, creating slideshows, planning Adwords campaigns, and even (experimentally) as a functional programming language!

Admittedly, gingko is our hammer, and we might be “seeing nails everywhere”. But we hope that by pushing the limits, we can see what needs to be added to make gingko more powerful and more useful to you.

How?

Gingko is powerful, but it’s quite simple to use.
You only need 3 keyboard shortcuts:

Edit/Save: Enter/Ctrl + Enter
New Card: Ctrl + <arrow>
Delete Card: Ctrl + Backspace
Move Card: Drag a card from the top left corner.

On the Mac, use Cmd instead.

For more info on formatting, search, tags, and images, look at this card’s children →

Search & Tags

To Search your tree, press / and type your query.

The search function hides everything that doesn’t match what you type in. To show everything again, just clear the search box (Esc).

Since search is also a filter, you can create your own tags in any format you like. For example, @todo, or :tag. Typing /@t+Enter is a quick way to find your tagged cards.

Formatting

with

Markdown

Edit this card to see how formatting works. BOLD, italic, verbatim, a link.

a list item
- indented
- again
back to start

# Formatting
## with
### Markdown
Edit this card to see how formatting works. **BOLD**, *italic*, `verbatim`, [a link](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax).

- a list item
  - indented
  - again
- back to start

Inviting collaborators

To invite collaborators, or to share a read-only link, click on the tree title at the top center.

Images

Add images by URL, like this:

Protip: You can use your Dropbox images using the “Share link”, but you will have to change the URL from:

https://www.dropbox.com/...

https://dl.dropbox.com/...

Support

If you need more help, or have any questions, comments, or suggestions, don’t hesitate to Contact Us!

If you’d like, we can help you organize your gingko trees as well.

We can help you in:

English
Русский
Español
Français

Cool, but what about…?

We’ve gotten hundreds of emails recently from people raving about Gingko… and saying “if only it had feature X.”

Overwhelmingly, “X” was either offline mode, or more than 3 levels. So we’ve made those our top two priorities.

We also have many other features coming, which we’ve listed on the right.

Other features in the pipeline

(in no particular order)

More exporting options
(formatted, HTML, one column only).
Better tablet/mobile support.
LaTeX equations.
Linking to cards.

To start a new tree, click on (top left).

This is a clone of Getting Started tree. You can always remove it by clicking Tree Settings (or the title).