Accessing Mapufacture from your Mobile device

Mapufacture Mobile is built on the WHERE platform. You will need to install WHERE first and then add Mapufacture to your widgets.

To begin using Mapufacture Mobile, select "Mapufacture" from the WHERE menu. This will take you to the frontpage where you can quickly search for items near you, or use Maps that other people have created. Using Maps from other Mapufacture users is a good way to find out more about a town that you may not have known about.

Search

Select "Search Nearby". You will see a search box, and also a list of items from the Mapufacture geoindex that are near you. You can push 'down' on the arrow keys to select any of these items, and 'enter' to select them and view them on a map. The bright red star is your location, and the black circle '1' is the location of the item.

Press the 'back arrow' < button to go back to the Search page. You can see an overview map of all the items by pressing the 'menu' button and selecting "Show Entire Map". This will show markers and numbers for all the items currently show in the nearby results list.

You can search for items by entering a phrase into the textbox and pressing "Search" button. For example, enter "restaurant" to get a list of restaurants and reviews in the area.

Maps

You can login to use your maps and feeds. To login, press the "Menu" button on the lower-right and choose "Login". This should take you to a login and password form. These credentials are the same as Mapufacture.

Once you've logged in on a device, your device information is stored at Mapufacture so you don't have to login in the future. This makes accessing your personalized maps quick and easy.

After logging in, you'll see a list of your Maps. At the top, you'll also see a general "News around the world". This is map of several major news sources that is made available to all users as a general resource. The maps below are ones you create on the Mapufacture site.

Click on any of your maps to see the current events and points of interest near you from the selected bundle of feeds of news, restaurants, photos, and crime reports (it's important to stay safe). You can click on any individual item to see the location with respect to your location. You can also select "Menu" and then "Show Entire Map" to see all the map's items near you.

When you're on vacation or travel, you can use a prepared map like a "Trip to London" to see various events and hotspots there.

Feeds

From "Menu", selecting "Your Feeds" lets you select from any of your favorited feeds, or data sources, and find items near you. This is useful if you have not made a 'map' of an area, but have a specific feed you want to geographically search - for example friend locations or restaurants.

Lastly, you can go back to the "Front Page" to select "Maps Nearby". These work like the your maps, but are chosen from maps made by other locals or travelers near your location. This is useful for finding out new sources of information and interesting items from locals that you may not otherwise have known about.

Future Directions

The Mapufacture Mobile brings the GeoWeb, especially personalized geospatial search, to mobile phones. In the future the mobile phone will integrate more with the GeoWeb by being able to publish locations onsite back to various services and also provide better tracking and live updating.