links is a multimedia board that can serve as a visual bookmarker, moodboard maker, playlist builder, mind mapper, or slideshow presentation tool — paste a url and it becomes a link, tag links into collections, then experience a collection as you choose. Audiovisual media streams directly from any open source (Youtube, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Vimeo, raw files), and tracks from Spotify get matched with a playable source. links takes direct inspiration from Pinterest, are.na, mac.are.na, Pinboard, Raindrop, and Google Tour Builder, aiming to combine the best of each into a functional interface. Links are private by default, but you can share any collection or selection as a read-only public snapshot via unique URL.
links.maphouse.ca is hosted free of charge by Oracle in Montreal.
You can reach the admin at maphouse@riseup.net
Accounts are invite-only. Admins can share a single-use invite link from the nav. Lost your password? Ask an admin to reset it for you (email reset coming soon).
Toggling on "evey image" means that linked images get auto-archived, so if the link dies, you still have a backup copy hosted in Montreal.
Hit + in the header to open the add box. Paste a url in and it becomes a link —
title, description, and thumbnail pulled for you. Add tags in the next box
(comma or ;, hashtags ok) to file it as you save. On a wide screen
the box opens as a panel down the right-hand side; on a narrow one it drops from
the top instead.
To save from anywhere else, drag the drag this to your bookmarks bar link above to your bookmarks bar; then click it on any page to add that page to your board.
The bookmarklet has nowhere to live on a phone, so there are two other ways in.
Install links as an app. Open this site in your phone's browser and add it to your home screen — Add to Home Screen in Safari's share menu, Install app in Chrome's menu. It opens without browser chrome, and on Android it also registers as a share target: from then on links appears in the share sheet of any app, so sharing a post or a track to it adds that url straight to your board.
Or message the bot. Send a link to the board's Delta Chat bot and it's saved to your board — handy from a phone, with no app to install beyond Delta Chat itself, which needs no email or phone number to start using. Tap below to add the bot as a contact, or paste the link yourself as a new contact within Delta Chat.
tap to add the bot in Delta Chat
Then, reveal your authentication key below and send it to the newly added bot. After that, any message containing a url gets saved.
No Delta Chat bot is running on this instance yet — nothing to connect to. Your key still works below if you want it for something else.
This key lets whoever has it add links to your board on your behalf. Treat it like a password. Regenerating or revoking it breaks any bot chat using the old key until you paste in the new one.
Logged in, links are yours to change: titles (✎), tags, and timestamped comments, any time. list view is best for reading and commenting, since it shows a link's full details; delete sits at the end of those details.
gallery is the other place to work on one link closely: the show/hide info button there opens a details panel down the right-hand side, carrying the same fields and the same edit controls as a list row while the link itself fills the screen.
To place links spatially, use canvas (or map, georeferenced): drag a card to move it. Select several at once — ctrl/cmd-click cards, or shift-drag a marquee over them — and they move together as a group. Plain click opens a card; drag the empty background to pan.
Five ways to look at the same board, from the bottom bar:
Two controls sit beside the view buttons and follow you into every view. − / + changes the size of whatever that view lays out: the tiles in board and list, the markers in map, the camera on canvas, the slide in gallery. show/hide info strips the text off the tiles for an images-only board — or, in gallery, opens the details panel described above.
Zoom out past the smallest tiles in board or list and the board regroups itself: instead of links, you get one tile per tag, each showing a few of the links carrying it. Click one to filter down to that tag and drop back into the links; ctrl/cmd-click to gather several. Links with no tags get a group of their own at the end. + takes you back.
Filtering: the chevron row under the header opens the filters — a panel down the right-hand side on a wide screen, a dropdown on a narrow one. Search text, tags, and types all narrow the board together. Closed, the row still lists whatever is currently filtering, so a selection you forgot about can't quietly hide half your board. Clicking a tag on a link filters by it too, and ctrl/cmd-click combines several.
Set any collection in motion: in gallery it plays as a slideshow; on canvas and map it plays as a tour — the camera pans (canvas) or flies (map) from link to link in your saved order. Queued audio keeps playing underneath the whole time.
Keyboard: esc steps back a view (pausing a slideshow first), p plays/pauses the slideshow, and ← → space step through gallery slides.
Some links play, not just open. Click one to play it in place, or hit
queue audio to build an auto-advancing background playlist that
mixes sources freely. It keeps playing while you switch views or run a
slideshow or tour, so any collection can carry its own soundtrack. Playable
directly: YouTube (incl. music.youtube.com), SoundCloud tracks,
Vimeo, Mixcloud, Dailymotion, and direct files
(.mp3 .mp4 .ogg .webm …).
Tracks from Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music, and Bandcamp play via a YouTube match found at save time (a yt-dlp search, nothing downloaded), badged playable via youtube. A match has to clear every check — title, artist, length, and whether it's a remix or a cover — or the link keeps its own player rather than risk playing you the wrong recording. Playlists, albums, and profiles stay visual slides, as do X/Twitter, Instagram, and non-track Bandcamp/Spotify pages. filter audio scopes the queue to your filter; include video audio folds videos in.
PDFs read in place. Link a PDF and it opens in gallery using your browser's own viewer — pages, search, and zoom included — as long as the hosting site allows framing; otherwise it opens in a new tab instead. Like every other link, it's fetched live from the source, not stored here.
Hit the share icon in the header to snapshot your filtered links to a
public, read-only page at /s/<slug>. Select two or more links
(ctrl/⌘-click, or shift-drag a box in canvas / map) and a second, yellow share
icon appears — same thing, but only the highlighted links.
Either way it's a live window — delete a link and it drops from the snapshot. The url is unguessable; nothing else on your board is exposed.
A share also remembers the view you were in when you clicked — so a link shared from canvas or map opens at the same framing (pan + zoom) you had on screen, and one shared from gallery opens on the same slide.
The export icon beside it writes the same visible set to a file you download, as W3C Web Annotation JSON — a standard other annotation tools can read, so a board isn't only legible to this app.