This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
Proxi is the best new service for creating and sharing visual maps. Google Maps is fine for directions, but Google’s My Maps is clunky for making your own maps. Datawrapper is great for large-scale journalism maps with big datasets.
Run by female founders and an all-women team, Proxi enables you to easily and quickly create your own collection of places to share with friends or family.
Proxi is Canva for mapping
Start with a blank map and add some addresses. Better yet, begin with a template. I created a map recently of some spots my family enjoys in Boston. You can add places you recommend to my map, because I enabled crowdsourced contributions. That’s one of the best Proxi features. It lets you collaboratively create shared maps for events, group trips, conferences or anything else.
How to create a Proxi map
- Add a place to your map even if you don’t know the address. Just start typing in the name of a restaurant, museum or any point of interest and Proxi will suggest the address, using Google’s map database.
- Optionally add comments, images, icons, or links to any spot on your map.
- Give your map a custom URL; for mine, I chose map.proxi.co/r/bostontrip.
Useful features
- Add places from any site using a Chrome extension.
- Add dates & times to guide people through an event or conference.
- Make restaurant reservations from your map with OpenTable.
- See metrics about which points people are clicking on in your maps.
Examples
- Vancouver’s Downtown and Uptown Art Murals courtesy of Visit Vancouver
- Seattle Black and minority-owned businesses made by Traveling While Black
- Austin-area sober-friendly bars with mocktails and non-alcoholic drinks
- 48 hours in San Antonio, Texas
- Wine-country wedding weekend
Limitations
- No mobile app yet, and it’s not easy to edit maps on a phone. I spoke with founders Melinda Haughey and Chelsey Roney, who said they expect the mobile experience to improve in the coming months.
- No spreadsheet upload yet. You can import a .kml file or If you have a list of addresses, you can paste that in from a spreadsheet.
- Logging in with the Arc browser was glitchy for me, though Chrome was fine.
My video interview with Proxi’s founders
In a 15-minute chat [transcript & audio version]—Proxi’s founders spoke with me about what motivated them to create Proxi, popular maps, and what’s ahead.
Alternatives
- Google My Maps lets you make a map to share from your existing Google account. It’s functional but lacks Proxi’s editing options and collaboration features.
- Datawrapper lets you create multiple kinds of maps and you can upload spreadsheets full of points. It’s great for journalistic map-making. It’s easy enough to use, but not quite as simple as Proxi, and not designed for building shareable social maps.
- Storymap from Northwestern’s Knight Lab is helpful for creating stories online that highlight the locations of a series of events, like the most expensive football transfers.
- Mapchart is handy for creating custom maps showing patterns across countries, like the percentage of women in national parliaments or iOS vs Android global popularity.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
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