A: map256 is a tool for someone to show where they have been. map256 gathers information from Foursquare, Twitter, and other services to figure this out, and then provides a variety of ways to visualize your travels, showing timelines, (and soon) heatmaps and more.
Q: How do I make my checkins/tweets/etc show up on map256?
A: You can head over to your profile page, and authorize map256 to access data from the services you want to see mapped.
Q: Why do I have to sign in to my Google Account to use Map256?
A: To ensure you will always have control of your data, map256 requires a login to make sure you are who you say you are. map256 uses Google Accounts so that you don't have to remember "yet another password".
Q: I just checked in/tweeted, why hasn't it shown up on my map yet?
A: map256 looks at checkins every 5 minutes, to avoid overloading our data providers. Wait a couple of minutes, and try again.
Q: Why is the map not accurate? I didn't do anything where it's showing I did!
A: map256 uses the information provided by Foursquare, Twitter, and others to plot locations. That information isn't always 100% correct, due to a variety of issues (incorrect street address, out-of-date GPS location, etc). At this time I can't think of a great way to correct this information. Got a suggestion on how to make it better? Send it to service@map256.com.
A: For the moment, map256 should only be used if you're OK with your location history being available to the world. On your profile page, you can choose to hide the most recent 24 hours worth of information.
Q: Are you going to "tweet" anything or otherwise bug my friends without my permission?
A: Currently, no, map256 is a "read only" app. In the future I might add the ability for people to configure announcement-style things, but I will set that to be "opt-in" for anyone that hasn't previously configured it.
Q: I've signed up, but now I want to get rid of my history, what do I do?
A: Sign in to your profile page, and you can delete any given service or account. Note: Deletions are immediate, but some aggregate statistics may take several hours to be removed.
A: Send a quick email to service@map256.com with either your Twitter username or Foursquare ID# (or the map256 link to your profile), and I'll remove you from map256 as soon as possible. (You should probably also remove map256's authorization over at Foursquare/Twitter/etc.)
Q: What's with the "www" on your domain? Haven't you heard of no-www?
A: I agree that a www subdomain is excessively annoying (and Google's URL redirection doubly so), but until naked domains are officially supported under Google App Engine (which I suspect will be a while), I'm stuck with the "www".
Q: When are statistics calculated?
A: Statistics are calculated once an hour, every hour. For the "weekly" statistics, they're calculated for all checkins that are seen after 11:59:59PM Sunday night, and for the "monthly" statistics, they're calculated for all checkins that are seen after 11:59:59PM of the last day of the previous month.
Q: Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
A: For now, there's a blog available for news and information.
A: map256 is available at github.com/map256/map256, under an MIT-style "you're on your own" license. Contributions are welcome.
Q: Who wrote this abomination anyways?
A: That would be me, Eric Sigler. You can stalk me on Twitter or map256.
Q: I have a question not answered on this list, who do I talk to?
A: Sending an email to service@map256.com
Comments, questions, concerns? Check out the FAQ