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.