Mapmatica- Location Manipulation BlackBerry App

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A versatile development tool for text-based manipulation of location lists to fullfill a variety of common needs for a mobile device. Many location apps are big on pictures, as in fact are many other desktop applications. Cell phones are clumsy for user input, so menu's and graphics normally are a good alternative to command line and text applications. This app however is designed for testing- what would you do with groups of points culled from various criteria to form a tractable set of relevant targets?
Note:This is just a fishing page for SEO testing- not designed to be all that helpful for humans but see pictures below.

[ this form has worked in the past but is quite clumsy now as you must enter latitutde and longitude and enter expiration time in Java millisecond format ]
Make this more interesting, enter your own Point-of-interest now
or get an account and use our API to upload from other sources( under construction ).

Need to make best use of your time?

Curious to know what opportunities may be in your immediate area when you have an unexpected event occur or an appointment is cancelled or late?

Need or Offer services of products on short notice ?

Need a worthwhile approach that is cheap and easy ?

Various services like Craigslist exist but they tend to be constrained by locality and not offer fine tuning of either location or timing. Mapmatica offers better response time as situations come up to make marginal transactions more worthwhile by minimizing scheduling or travel and reducing some of the risks of dealing with strangers or with remote counterparties.

Need to facilitate impromptu encounters or commerce?

Do you have specialized interested or curious about other SIG's?

Did you ever want to know where some good locations are for finding mushrooms? Did you always have an interest to go mushroom hunting but never had time and now you find yourself with a cancelled flight and looking for ideas on things to do? Wouldn't you like to know if the Rolling Stones decided to appear at the hotel across the street? Well, now you can post and query all kinds of databases and ad hoc postings from others with a single versatile application.

Could use 2 million refernce locations in USA?

We already have a diverse array of general interest landmarks through out the USA. Interesting destinations of their own or useful reference points for context and orientation.

Census files

This includes the following types of things, 204632 Church 188694 School 126659 Cemetery 75187 Reservoir 74678 Building 69685 Valley 66774 Summit 65049 Lake 63252 Park 56872 Dam 55921 Civil 38178 Well 20612 Canal 18837 Airport 16490 Tower 12708 Hospital 10428 Trail 10032 Bay 8444 Gap 7391 Swamp 6458 Bridge 5335 Bar 4270 Basin 4128 Cliff 2329 Falls 2082 Area 1991 Pillar 1945 Beach 1753 Military_ 1753 Historical 1242 Forest 1154 Rapids 988 Reserve 724 Bench 677 Tunnel 641 Woods 545 Levee 443 Arch 357 Slope 355 Glacier 318 Plain 141 Crater 118 Geyser 69 Lava 16 Isthmus 13 Sea

We hope to have complete street level information either at Phluant or through another service and offer entire Census Tiger file feature list.

Maybe you could use Mapmatica

Phluant is developing a single app that let's you query many differnt location databases, ranging from the US census landmark database of over 2 million landmarks in the USA to garage sale ads of local and temporary interest, collate search results based on criteria you select, and then either map the results, share them with friends or strangers, or save for later refinement. You can also post interest points of your own, either social or commercial or just to note an opinion. Have an item you want to sell and make it known to a potential customer who is waiting in the parking lot of a mall for his spouse? Perhaps you could hook up if you had a cost-effective way to advertise and the loitering spouse had a way to find you? Mapmatica can make it happen.

So How Does it Work?

Right how, it is just a test progam. We have a few databases, some capabilities for you to enter your own locations of interest ( from desktop or phone), and a Blackberry application to get relevant points and collate them. However, the user interface needed is currently a bit difficult to learn because we haven't figured out how to offer this much power and flexibility on a phone with a more intuitive approach. In fact, the name Mapmatica is a play on "Mathmatica" which is known to be a powerful program even if it can be difficult and annoying to learn. We'd like to transition this into something more like pointillism , generate harmonious pleasing results from groups of unrelated points.

Request points

Plot or list points

Build-a-Map Burger King approach with only what you want

Step by Step Options You Can Use

The regular menu structure makes it quick to learn but may still be a bit cumbersome for simpler tasks ( more I think about this, the more I really like it MJM). You move the cursour around and pick database(s) for nearby features and then operate on feature lists, preview, and iterate until you have something to publish- either a list or a point of your own related to yourself or others.

Pick a location	Get features	Operate	Plot and List	Share and Post
ZipCode	Census	Common	Overlap	ToGroup
Coordinates	Zipcode	freatures	Map/Chart	ToFriend
City	Sponsored	grep	...	...
GPS currnet location	Friends	novel	...	...
...	recent reqs	...	...	...
...	SIG's	...	...	...

I. Pick a Location

Tell Mapmatica about the general location of interest- this could be your current location, somewhere you will be later, a place with a waiting friend, or some place you saw while browsing. You don't need to be too specific yet as with a search engine you can refine your results as you go. Set Cursor near Location of Interest using any of the currently supported approaches,

goto zip code

type coords

City

current location

II. Get Features

Go to any of the databases that we have or offer and add to you local collection of points. Don't worry if you have too many or aren't sure how to focus your request, you can sort them out with the operations in the following steps. This is better than local yellow pages or other single database sources as you get all things of interest in one, interoperable format. Each result can be used as an operand in a flexible manipulation algebra. Some existing databases now available include,

census

Need some context or landmarks? Over 2 million fixed natural and human points of interest available.

zip codes

Looking for a post office or just need to translate a location into something like a zip code? Take a look for nearby zips and names

Various commercial products may be available in your immediate area. By confining search radius, it is practical to find all things even if you hadn't thought about searching for them ( while you are at the mall, see if any stores there have a sale etc).

friends

Any friends in the areas?

recent requests

If you really get bored, see what other people are looking for and try to get some ideas.

SIG's

Looking for ideas for new hobbies or interests? While you are here, see what Special Interest Groups there may be.

strangers

itinerant services

Curious to see if the ice cream man is in the area? Someone passing through for a blood drive you didn't know about?

III. Extract features

The is the "Mapmatica" aspect of the product- powerful set operations can be applied to the point collections you have obtained so far. This can include things like finding common entries or entries that are only in one place. For fine tuning, see the list options under "sharing" that allow you to create lists that can be exported to others or back into Mapmatica for your own continued use.

common ground

common features

Just interested in all the stuff they have there that we have here or you have at your third location.

grep

Look for certain words, numbers, or characters in the selected lists.

novel to one group

What do they have there they don't have here?

clear all features

clear all

IV. Plot features

This program is currently text oriented with very little impressive graphics- no satellite imagry or cool maps but perhaps we can partner with someone for this. What we can do is present the points you have selected in arbitrary ways either in text formats suitable for email or other documents or with limited vector graphics that don't hide the information of interest with extra artwork.

overlay

Add another set of points onto an existing "map." Maps right now are just uniform backgrounds. Points showed on an x-y grid with labels and color/shape code. However, we are looking for adding our own vector graphics as well as more familiar maps or images from commercial vendors.

new map

Erase any current map, add selected points to clean screen.

list

Show a hierarchial text description of the point list you now have.

var list

tree order

Reorganize the list hierarchy

disp order

V. Share Features

Once you have an interesting set of points, useful to you or others, you need to do something with it. Or, you may have your own location or "point of interest" that you want to add to one of the existing databases.

to group

to friend

dump to self

post note

Sitting around with nothing to do? Advertise your availability to others defined by group and location.

post web

RFP/order/shop

So, you have a list of 10 pizza places and can't pick? SPAM them with an RFP and see who gives you the best deal?

Want to see this develop? You Can Help

Tell us what you are looking for, what you have looked at, and what you can't find. We'll consider your advice to make a better product. If you would like to beta test or have an immediate need, please include your contact info and we'll add you to out lists. The form does NOT work right now, just email marchywka@phluant.com Disclaimer: The product is currently under development and we are fishing for interest. So, we have added the following keywords as bait for searchers and surfers. Social networking. Garage Sale. Used household goods,furniture, clothing, or other consumer items. used auto parts. Ride offered or needed. Itinerary planning. Spare and dead time diversions and amusements. Travel planning and tourism interest. Special interest group and points of interest to specialized audiences. set operations for a mobile phone. temporary services needed. temporary services offered. chore and errand planning. Uses Census and US Geological Survery data files as well as other public location lists. Hoping to obtain various special interest collections from industry groups- hotels, restaurant chains, vineyards, junkyards. Global Positioning System(GPS) or Pesudolites or cell tower triangulation or assist can be used. If you have a personal navigation device or just interest in Trimble, Garmin, TomTom, or Navteq, or SiRF or Globallocate, you may have interesting thoughts. At some point, hopefully to be renamed after a famous pointillist who could turn a collection of points into something recognizable. [ Downloaded from http://www.math.utah.edu/faq/mathematica/ and http://www.codart.nl/images/RysselbergheYoungWomenOnTheBeah1901BrusselsBozar.jpg ]