CartoDB is being promoted as a more "flexible" alternative to Google's . The tool had been in private beta for six months. It already boasts a client list that includes The Wall Street Journal, NASA and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The tool can produce maps of endangered species sightings, for example, or police activity. Developers can import and merge data sets in various formats, including .csv and KML, and layer them over a map from Google, Bing or OpenStreetMap.

Users can modify how much data is displayed and how it's displayed, seemingly simple functions which can be frustratingly difficult to achieve using visualization tools. A user can resize the data points or use different colors to indicate different categories of data. Endangered mammals could be shown in brown, for example, and endangered plants in green. SQL (Structured query language) handles CartoDB's database queries and CSS (cascading style sheets) controls how the data displays.

Visualizations, or maps, created in CartoDB can be displayed on any website. Whenever the database is updated, the map will be too. Map users can also select which parts of the data they want to see: plants or animals, or both.

In fact, CartoDB originated with an environmental problem.