What a FriendTrack map is
A FriendTrack Map is an image of a real place, tied to the real world tightly enough that a phone standing in that place is drawn in the right spot on it. That is the whole idea, and everything in the Map Editor exists to serve one half of it or the other.
What a Map consists of
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| The image | A picture of the venue — a piste map, a site plan, a floor plan |
| Anchor Points | Spots on the image, each tied to one pair of real-world coordinates. At least three |
| Areas of Interest | The named parts of the venue — a stage, a bar, a lift queue, a car park |
| Its name and icon | How it appears in a list of maps |
The Anchor Points are the part that makes it a map rather than a picture. Without them the app has no way to turn a Position into a spot on your image, and with only bad ones it will draw people confidently in the wrong place.
What it does for the people using it
Somebody who installs your Map sees their own Position and their friends’ drawn on your image instead of on a street map. They get the venue’s own names — she’s at the food court, not she’s 14 metres north-east of you — and arrival notifications naming the Areas you drew.
When it is worth making one
Make one when the place has a shape a street map does not show. A festival field, a ski area, a campsite, a large venue, a conference floor, a market. The test is whether the useful landmarks are things a street map would draw: if they are stalls, stages, lifts and gates, they are not.
Do not make one for a city centre or a normal street network. FriendTrack also works with no Map at all — people still see who is sharing and how fresh it is — so a Map that adds nothing but a picture is work for no benefit.
What it costs to make
Time, and coordinates. The image is usually already available; the part people underestimate is that you need real-world coordinates for at least three spots on it before you can finish. See what you need before you start.
The Map Editor is a browser tool at friendtrack.net, signed into with the same phone number as the
app — sign in to the Map Editor. On the free allowance you can own
one Map.
What happens after you make it
You choose. It can stay private to you, be shared with your own Group without ever being published, or be submitted to the public catalog for anybody to install. All three are covered in keep it private, or list it publicly.
The whole sequence, start to finish, is the whole arc.