The idea behind sharing codes is that a lot of people will want to share their location with friends and relatives who may not want to sign up to mapme.at, we recognise that and wanted to give you a way to share your location with some people while keeping your default public settings to something more restricted.

To get started log into mapme.at and click on the new “Sharing” tab at the top. You’ll be taken to a page that should look familiar, it shows you your current group accuracy settings but below you’ll also see the new “Sharing Codes” section:

It’s quite a big form but don’t worry, it’s quite simple really! The only thing you absolutely must enter is a description; this gives you a way of tracking what sharing codes you’ve created, whether it’s one for your parents, friends or perhaps even an employer, simply enter a description and save and you’ll get a new sharing code. We recommend that you create a new code for each person or purpose, that way if someone finds out one of your codes you can easily delete it and create a new one. The other fields let you specify how long the code is active for and the accuracy and amount of history to show, here’s a full breakdown off the sharing codes:

Sharing Code

This is the actual sharing code you’ll be giving out. Most people will simply want a link to the history page so that’s the link we give you, the sharing code can also be used with the API, more about that later.

Description

A short description so that you remember who you gave the code to.

Accuracy

The level of accuracy you want to show for this code. Standard options from “Country” to “Full Accuracy”, you can also set “No access” if you want to disable a code for a time.

History to show

Perhaps you’re happy for someone to see your current location but you don’t want them to be able to see everywhere you’ve ever been. This setting allows you to restrict how much of your history they can see.

Expires

If you want the sharing code to expire after a while enter a date and time in this setting. Various plain text times are accepted, once the code has been saved we’ll show you the accurate time we’ve determined. We won’t recalculate this until you edit the text. If you don’t enter anything for this then the sharing code will be active indefinitely.

Delete?

Want to delete a sharing code? Check this box and click “Save” below.

Remember that you must only share these codes with people you really want to see your location. If anyone else finds out a sharing code they will be able to see your location.

As mentioned above the sharing codes can be used with the API, simply pass sharing_code=[SHARINGCODE] and the API will your return your history to the level of accuracy you have specified. This is great for simpler applications where full OAuth access would be overkill. You can also use the sharing code with the export API but remember that if you put a sharing code on a webpage, even in the HTML, others will be able to read it and read your history, perhaps to a greater level of detail than you intended.

So play with the codes and let your family and friends find out where you are! As this is pretty fresh code there may be bugs so if you spot anything, let us know!

As mentioned in the previous post, mapme.at aims to make it as easy as possible for you to keep a complete location history. If you’re a regular twitter user then a really convenient way to do this is to send your location out whenever you twitter. By simply placing an address or the name of a favourite in brackets before your message you can tell twitter where you are. It’s unobtrusive, and it generally doesn’t hurt to tell your twitter friends whereabouts you are (especially if it makes them jealous!)

Getting mapme.at to read your twitter updates is very simple. You will need a twitter account so if you haven’t got one already then you’ll need to head over to twitter.com to sign up.

Once you’ve got a twitter account head over to your Location Sources page on mapme.at and scroll down the page until you see the Twitter logo. Enter your twitter username in the box provided but also take a look at the checkboxes and the different options for how you can update your location via twitter. By default all three should be checked allowing you four different ways to update your location via twitter, if you have a habit of sending messages with bracketed prefixes, or just don’t like how we geocode your messages then feel free to uncheck some of the options. Once you’re ready click “save” and we should begin reading your messages. Our twitterbot will only check every 5 minutes, but if you’ve sent multiple messages during that time we will notice and log them at the correct times in your history.

Twitter was actually used as an example in the first mapme.at blog post of something that you would like to geotag. When sending twitters myself I usually like to make sure I have already stored my location so that I can tie the location in at a later date, but this method allows you to tie the location right into the twitter itself. If you don’t like the idea of telling your friends where you are in every twitter, but you like the idea of the convenience of using twitter then a direct message should be right for you.

There are lots more ways to store your location so come back soon to find out more.

Setting up Fire Eagle is pretty easy to do. You’ll want to start by heading over to the Fire Eagle website to sign up for an account. Once you’ve created your account on Fire Eagle you’ll need to come back to mapme.at and go to your “Location Sources” page (labelled “Sources” on your homepage). Scroll down until you see the fire eagle logo and you should see a link labelled “Click here to authorize your FireEagle account for use with mapme.at”. Click on that link and you’ll be taken to the Fire Eagle website and be asked whether you want to allow mapme.at to update and access your location.

We recommend that you allow mapme.at to both update and read your location, and that you give us access to your exact location. You can then use our controls to allow your contacts to have different levels of access. Whether you do this or not is up to you of course.

If you agree to let mapme.at access your location we will ping Fire Eagle around every 5 minutes and ask them for your location. If it’s changed since the last time we looked, we’ll store it in our database. Also every time you update your location on our site, we will let them know (if that’s what you have requested).

Having support for Fire Eagle gives access to a huge number of services for updating your location, take a look at the Fire Eagle Gallery to see which ones are useful for you. Not all services are compatible with Fire Eagle though, and some are unique to mapme.at. I’ll be posting a few more blog posts telling you about more of these methods over the next few days.

The main way to expose your location to people within mapme.at is to create a list of contacts that are also using the site. Currently there is no search mechanism for finding people so you will need to find out their username through some other means – twitter, email and instant messenger are great ways for communicating this information with people (ok, maybe a search function would be good, coming soon…)

Once you have the username of someone you want to share with you’ll need to login to mapme.at and look at the contacts tab on your homepage. You should see a simple form with a box for the username and then a few choices for how you want to identify the person. Now for the important bit:

MAKING SOMEONE A CONTACT MAY ALLOW THEM TO SEE WHERE YOU ARE

This is very important to realise. mapme.at is all about sharing your location. This is a great thing and has many uses, but you may not want everyone to be able to find out your accurate location. Please think very carefully about who you share your location with. We’ve given you three options to allow you to filter people, if you’ve used flickr before you will have seen something similar. Some photos may be just for friends, some for family and some for everybody to see. In the same way mapme.at allows you to give friends, family, other contacts and the world at large access to see your location to different degrees. Think carefully before deciding which group you want to put someone into. Other contacts can’t see what group you’ve put them into so hopefully they won’t be offended (though they will be able to tell what accuracy level they can view your location at).

Once you’ve decided what group you want to put someone in you need to enter their username and select the correct option. Click on the button and you’ll now be in contact with that person. They will be sent an email to inform them of the fact and be given the option to get in contact with you too. Be aware that at this point you have only given the other person the ability to see your location, you will not be able to see their location until they make contact with you. You will also need to set your permission levels, read on to find out more about that.

When you sign up to mapme.at initially, the default settings don’t allow anyone to see your location. To alter these settings and share your location you’ll need to go to the contacts management page, here you’ll find entries for each of the groups that you can assign contacts to, and one for the general public, and settings that modify the amount of access you’re giving that group. Modify the settings to suit you and click “Update” and you’re ready to share your location with people. Be aware that if you modify these settings they apply to previous locations that have been stored. If you open your privacy settings for a specific trip, people may still be able to look into your history to find places you’ve been previously. In the future we’ll be looking at improving this mechanism but for now be aware of what you’re doing when you make changes.

Now you should be all ready with a few contacts and be able to see where they are. Notice that contacts show up on the map on your user homepage so that you can see who is around you at any time, you can also drag the map around and it will update to show contacts in the area you’re looking at. If you want to see where someone has been previously you can take a look at their history page, you’ll find this at mapme.at/where/<username> – or simply click on their name in the contacts section on your homepage. If you’ve set your privacy level so that members of the public can see your location then they’ll also be able to use that URL to track where you are.

This blog post may come across as quite serious, all this stuff about “be aware of what you’re doing” may seem over the top. At mapme.at we’re really concerned about privacy and want to make sure we don’t confuse you and cause mistakes to happen. As mentioned above we’ll also be adding more features in the future to give you finer control over what you share and what you don’t. Keep an eye on this blog for future updates.

While location is very important and helps to convey meaning, it often isn’t enough on its own to illustrate your current situation. Saying that I’m “In San Francisco, California” might make it sound like I’m in holiday. If I added a label such as “where2008″ and a description of “Where 2008 Conference” that should hopefully make it clearer that I’m actually there on a business trip. Adding a few tags such as “maps, location, conference” should make sure that anyone who doesn’t know what “Where 2008 Conference” is now has a better idea.

So, on to the instructions. Before you can create a favourite you’ll need to set yourself up with an account. You can either follow the links on the front page or just click on this link to register your mapme.at account. If you’re all trendy and futuristic and setup with Open ID then you can go ahead and enter that, alternatively you can fill in the full form and password. You can attach an Open ID to your account later, and you can also add a password to an account later so don’t worry too much that the decision you make now will haunt you in the future. Either way you will still need to enter a username and your email address. The first so that people have a way of finding you on mapme.at and the second for important emails such as if you forget your login details or when someone adds you as a contact.

When you’ve filled the form in you should get an email that contains a link, we do this to confirm that you’ve entered your email address correctly as it’s going to be the only way you can get your password reset if you forget it. Click on that link and you’ll be taken to your user homepage. Initially this page should be centered somewhere near to you though for me it tends to be about 40 miles away. If you’re using a modern JavaScript enabled browser you should be able to drag the map somewhere close to the location you want then right click on the map and select “New favourite here”. Alternatively you can enter something in the search box in the top right and the map will re-center. Now just fill in the form on the right entering a label, a description and any tags you want then click “Create”. Your favourite should appear on the map and the information with some links will appear on the right hand side.

If you want to then “map” yourself at one of your favourites you can either click on the label on the right hand side, or visit mapme.at/label – if you’ve created a label for “home” or “work” one of the following should work – http://mapme.at/home or http://mapme.at/work

So now’s the time to go a little bit crazy and start creating favourites for some of the places you go most often. In later posts I’ll show more ways that you can use your list of favourite places to map your location when you’re out and about, there’s lots of ways now and more being created all the time. I’ll also show you how to make friends with people and how to see the history for people that you’ve already made friends with. For now though I’ll just leave you with a screengrab showing some of my favourites from the center of Liverpool: