Last year was the first SOTM, and that event fully assured me that OpenStreetMap was in good hands, many good hands, and here to stay. Now so much happens with OpenStreetMap, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with everything, so SOTM will be an intense immersion. Schuyler and myself (Mikel) will be talking about our experiences with FreeMapIndia2008.

Mapufacture.com supports OpenStreetMap as a map option through Mapstraction, for a start, and there are all sorts of more interesting potential integrations. So we’re happy to give back and sponsor SOTM. And it’s really neat to see our little 128 pixel logo over there!

The most common difficulty we see is that lots of people are creating maps but not adding any layers. We recently released a number of improvements to Mapufacture, the primary feature being much improved map and layer editing.

Now you can edit your map and add new layers all within the same view of your map. This should make it much easier to quickly make changes without having to go to a new page.

To start, click the “Edit Map” menu on the right-hand side, and choose “Add Layers”. You’ll see a new panel underneath your map with a number of options. Based on your map location, title, and tags Mapufacture suggests several feeds that may be interesting. There is also a list of your Favorited, or bookmarked feeds.

You can also use the Search box to look for other layers based on any keyword, and even limit searches to feeds that correlate with your map’s location.

If you like a feed, click on the title, or the feed [+] sign to add it as a layer to your map. Click “Save” and you’re map should be updated.

You can also quickly add any data source to your map while viewing the feed using the “Add this feed to a map” quick select in the “Share” section.

We’re definitely interested in hearing from you on your thoughts about the new interface. Does it make finding feeds and layers easier - or is there something else we could do?

To let us know, check out our new GetSatisfaction feedback forums where you can ask questions and give feedback about Mapufacture and other tools we help build and support.

The OGC has different types of groups: Domain Working Groups (DWG) and Standards Working Group (SWG). Where SWGs are very formal, and working on defining a specific standard, such as WFS, a DWG is a more broadly scoped discussion about an area or application space.

One of the DWGs we participated in was the Mass Market (MM) DWG. Ed Parsons shares his thoughts on the benefits of the MM-DWG. Namely, to track standards and trends that are occurring outside the OGC, especially outside GIS-specific domains.

So for the session, I put together a presentation briefly outlining some of the very recent happenings in standards: REST, AtomPub-geo, OpenSearch-Geo, GeoJSON, and GeoRSS-Multi.

These formats have been very successful in their development and adoption. GeoRSS was one of the first and took awhile, but is now supported by most of the major mapping libraries and many GIS tools. GeoJSON and other formats have seen a much quicker adoption (GeoJSON is still ‘going 1.0′ but already used by Yahoo Pipes and FireEagle).

One of the big reasons these formats are so popular is that geo-developers worked to add geographic capabilities to already ubiquitous standards (e.g. RSS, Atom, JSON, OpenSearch) instead of trying to create a geographic specific format and redesigning the system and bringing people to them (e.g. SLD, WFS, GeoRM).

We’ve been tracking and help to put together a number of these agile geography formats with the rest of geo-community and also keeping a mind to what’s already been developed outside of the Geo world.

The OGC is starting to engage the non-geo community by championing how GML can be the geographic markup within other standards such as GeoPriv, GeoRSS (non-simple) and so on. This is the right approach, though GML is still too heavy for your average non-geo developer to just pick up and easily add into their toolset.

Mapufacture utilizes a number of these formats. We’re huge proponents of supporting and sharing data via standards - especially ones that encourage broad adoption. It allows customers and developers to more easily integrate with your software and data sets. This is especially true since we’re working with non-GIS experts who want to utilize their common tools for building maps; whether they are spreadsheets, wikis, or RSS readers.

The slides are very XML oriented - keeping a mind to my audience.

In a couple of weeks we’ll be demoing at the OGC Technical Committee Meeting on the power of mixing OGC WMS interfaces with KML visualization and large GeoWeb datasets. It’s been an interesting, and enlightening 6 months working with the OGC on standardization and advancement of the KML. There have also been a number of discussions in the larger geo-community on Atom links to OGC services, OpenSearch-Geo interfaces to KML and pagination link within KML. We’ve been adding these quietly to Mapufacture and in the near future we’ll have more information on why it’s useful.

We’ve also been working with a number of really great projects in advising and building their collaborative mapping solutions. These are really grass root projects that need to easily bring together data from a variety of sources and systems, and then visualize these and share them back out. With Mapufacture we’re showing them how easy this is, and doesn’t disrupt their workflow, but actually fits into it.

We’re also slowly improving the user experience of finding data and building maps in Mapufacture. We want it to be easy for non-GIS experts to easily build geospatial visualization, so understanding the expectations and workflows has been interesting. We’re always looking for more feedback and will soon be opening some community tools for more Mapufacture users to share their experiences and ideas. You can also always ping us at human@mapufacture.com for immediate feedback.

Happy Mapping!

There were two main tasks. A system to geotag UNDP environment projects, and a pretty map display. We decided to do both decoupled, in their way, from the UNDP CMS. Through RSS/GeoRSS it was just easy to link together the UNDP CMS and Mapufacture. The CMS produced an RSS feed of projects, and Mapufacture was set up to aggregate this feed. This was then made available for UNDP users for item level editing — dragging and positioning on the map. And as usual, Mapufacture made this feed available for export as GeoRSS, which was aggregated back by the UNDP.

Item level editing? Yes. Mapufacture has a lot of features built up but not just yet ready for launch, which line up even greater control over the GeoWeb for our users and customers. So from existing feeds, “private” copies can be made for editing, while still keeping them up to date from the source, or feeds can be created from scratch, and editing access controlled, etc. Sure elements of this have existed for a while here and there, but combined with Mapufacture’s existing tools and future features .. I’ll just say I’m pretty excited by what this all will offer.

Making a pretty map from that GeoRSS feed didn’t involved Mapufacture direct, but did invoke all our map making skills and hacks. Used Mapstraction to easily build marker filtering and brought back MGeoRSS for greater control over the loading of GeoRSS feeds — GMaps native GeoRSS handling just isn’t nuanced enough. The biggest trick was getting the map to display above the page. We were working within the limitations of the UNDP templates — and the middle column just didn’t provide enough space for the map to breath. Starting from leightbox I got the map overlaying on top of the other content properly .. that took a good deal of tweaking! And it uses anchors so that the back button works correctly and all.

So a fun project overall with the UNDP, pushing forward their technology, one of several I’m working on at the moment — not all map related but pretty interesting stuff. And we pushed forward Mapufacture. Perfect pushing.

In the end, he posits that neither solution is quite perfect, but suggests a solution.

Ideally, we’d have a tool where an owner is in charge of a map to which anyone can contribute their own placemarks, no-one can alter others’ placemarks, and where the owner can weed out the spoilsports. In Tagzanian parlance, that would be the equivalent of “owning” a specific tag name, and being able to disallow inappropriate placemarks from using it. Neither Tagzania nor Google Maps gives us that kind of tool at the moment, but Tagzania’s comes closest to what we need.

Well, this is a feature supported by Mapufacture, and in fact a primary aspect of the benefit of a geospatial aggregation system.

Users can generate their KML or GeoRSS with whatever tool they want: CMS, Blog, Platial, MyMaps, Tagzanize, and the map “curator” can import everyone’s feed/document.

Then users can each update or alter their own feed and these edits will be consumed by Mapufacture.

Mapufacture doesn’t currently support single editing by a curator of individual items, but they can remove or hide individual feed sources. And of course, they could also take the aggregated GeoRSS or KML document from Mapufacture and drop that back into MyMaps or something else and then modify things that way.

That’s the nice thing about these open standards, it allows users to choose how they want to mix and match their data with the appropriate tools.

That third green button links to the GPS page for the feed/map. We’re still thinking about good iconography for GPS.

On the GPS page, you can download GPX (supported by most all synchronization software). Or if you have a Garmin GPS, you can use the Garmin Communicator plugin to download directly to your device to your device.

A nice one to try is the Wikitravel GPS export.

GeoRSS on your GPS is pretty woo!

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.

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.

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.