If anything positive is coming out of the devestation in California, it’s the responsiveness of the GeoWeb .. lack of information is not a factor in the response.

FortiusOne is collecting data and visualizing. Chris Schmidt is building an impressive collection of sources here, including MODIS layers, KML, OpenStreetMap, and the latest processed diy aerial imagery from PictEarth.

We’re building up an aggregated view on Mapufacture. The time navigation might be particularly useful.

The past few weeks have been exciting for the GeoWeb. The concept of a fluid, openly accessible, device independent, interconnected network of geographically keyed data has great mindshare among the technologists and in the press. Practical and business developments mean its soon coming to reality. And from a hack two years ago to growing startup, Mapufacture is doing what it says on the tin — helping to build the geospatial web — through aggregation, openness, and engagement. First the news from the web, then our position.

Here’s what we’ve been tracking. Last week Platial acquired Frappr. Congrats to them — they’re all good people. This kind of consolidation shows a maturation in the space, a joining up of similar ideas that will lead to new market niches. And directly for a richer GeoWeb, perhaps we’ll now see GeoRSS out of frappr. Microsoft exposed their new geo-index of GeoRSS and KML within Live Search. Functions similarly to Google geo-index — an additional layer of search results for user facing queries. The Dash net-connected GPS will load GeoRSS, a powerful mobile navigation view on the GeoWeb, which hints at even more open collection of geodata .. perhaps paired with OpenStreetMap for an alternative to TomTom/TeleAtlas-Nokia/Navteq. FortiusOne, in building their geodata, wonder aloud again over openness — with the emerging GeoWeb, won’t all data be really free? Platial, ever sharp on the bottom line, sketch out how free and open data could create business opportunities.

Mapufacture’s contribution is to aggregate the GeoWeb. Data and services, in web or even traditional GIS formats, collected together from across the GeoWeb, are explorable, searchable, and reusable. We’re committed to doing this openly .. so our catalog of sources can be browsed by human or machine, sources easily added, and collections and slices and views on geodata are redistributed as GeoRSS and KML for reuse in any way. The service itself gives sophisticated views and choice — we’re agnostic to web mapping APIs and support OpenStreetMap, and push the limit of visualization with time navigation and in browser 3D (ala FreeEarth). We want the GeoWeb to be accessible everywhere, so there’s views for Mobile devices, widgets, and soon GPS (net connected or not) and even that old favorite - Paper! We work hard to make this all accessible to non-mapping geeks, and at the same time extend the technology for developers with work on standards like OpenSearch Geo, KML 2.2.

We want to integrate with everything. We want to integrate with your service and data. And we want to improve, continuously. Any ideas or plans at all, drop us a line on human at mapufacture dot com.

We’re excited to announce the release of Mapufacture Mobile. All your maps and feeds are now available whereever you are, and geolocated to your position. We partnered up with uLocate to develop our widget on their very powerful, and easy to develop for, WHERE platform.

Mapufacture Mobile is an extension of the website. Through the website users can find interesting feeds and sources and put these on maps in various areas of interest. For instance, you can build a map of your community with local government notifications, weather reports, news, and friends’ locations. You can also build a map of a city you are traveling to with the locations of your hotel and venues, travel information, and restaurants.

Then, using Mapufacture Mobile, these maps are then available and show nearby items from the selected feed sources. So your community map would show news, events, and friends that are nearby using the geolocation on Mapufacture Mobile. Similarly. when the you move, new nearby items are shown and can be viewed on the map. Individual feeds that user has favorited are also available to view as desired, sorted by their distance from you.

Think of it as a geolocated, mobile KML and GeoRSS reader.

Besides the user’s own maps and feeds, Mapufacture Mobile allows you to view any feed or map that covers the area you are in. So if they are in a new city, or looking for some new local information, you can just view other feeds and maps made by other users.

Mapufacture Mobile also provides a general search mechanism to search the entire Mapufacture geoindex for any interesting items near you. These can also be shown on a map to give you an idea of the layout of the area around them and find interesting and informative things around you.

Mapufacture Mobile is currently only available on Sprint phones through the WHERE platform, but as the platform expands, we’ll expand with it. We also plan on offering mobile interfaces through a variety of other systems that we’ll announce in the near future.

The Mobile version was originally released at Where2.0 this year. You can find the uLocate Press Release and the O’Reilly Radar post. Since then we’ve added a lot of enhancements both to Mapufacture and Mapufacture Mobile.

To read more information on Mapufacture Mobile, and how to use it, check out the Mapufacture Mobile details page.