I added Ikonmap to Mind-mapping.org a few months back, but only now am I blogging about it.
Ikonmap is an online, Flash-based mapper so it runs in your browser, but it is not collaborative software – there’s no multi-person editing. You can’t even share a map for viewing online.
It is free, so I mustn’t be too critical but there’s not much that can be done to make a map look interesting. I quickly tired of the limited control it offers to colour, shape, size, font and all the things that make up the appearance of a map. The second level is always a blue cube, the third level a yellowish sphere and so on. It’s not even clear why they are there – the words are what matter.
Other limitations are that there is no way to attach images to the map, no undo, and the only ways to get your map out of the software are to use PrintScreen, or to print to PDF if you have suitable software. It will export to Word, and does so as an indented list with bullets.
One benefit is that you can describe inter-node relationships, so it is half way towards being a concept mapper. But the map is strictly limited to a tree form, so the cross links required for a concept map are not possible.
Vic
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