bubbl.us: A great little tool for flowcharts

As I've gotten serious about this whole dissertation thing, I've realized that the process can get pretty complicated. "Before I can launch the survey, I need to draw the sample and write the questionnaire. But before I can write the questionnaire, I have to read the three papers that talk about measuring ideology, and ..." To cope, I've found myself drawing a lot of flowcharts to map dependencies.

Two days ago, I found this great little tool for flowcharts: bubbl.us. It's free, unless you want the premium license, and it has a really nice interface. Once you learn how to tab and shift-click and everything, you can sketch out complicated charts very quickly. If you allow it some room on your hard drive, you can even save maps between sessions. As I said, I'm using it primarily for mapping workflow, but I could see it being useful for brainstorming, simple org charts, or flow diagrams too.

And with that said, here's the map through the dissertation quagmire to the end of the semester.