Link Safe

The ZeeMaps website (zeemaps.com) lets you create maps, customise them in various ways and then share or save them. It uses Google Maps to create the maps but has a selection of different options for what you can do with them. The site makes money by charging companies for professional features, but a free account lets you create and store five maps. You can even use it without signing up for an account. Click ‘Create a Free Map’ on the homepage to bring up a form. It has spaces that let you password protect your maps with an administrator password, so only you can make changes, but you can ignore these password boxes and simply enter a location such as ‘NewYork, US’ to bring up the map.

A menu at the top of the map provides tools for drawing shapes, including circle, rectangle, polygon and freehand. Add Marker lets you drop pins on the map to highlight places and you can enter a title and add information for a message to pop up when a pin is clicked. You can also add annotations. When the map is finished, click the ‘Print or Share’ menu and choose Share Link/URL to get the link to the map. Copy this and pass it on to your friends for free. They can click the link, view the map, click the pins and so on. Some of the other features such as saving maps as an image or PDF file require payment, but there are plenty of other things you can do on the site for free.