2006 November 09

This issue sponsored by

ESRI

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Editor's Introduction

This week I report on Skyhook Wireless' enhancement of its wireless positioning system and I bring you the second part of my interview with Bibiana McHugh, of Portland's TriMet. I also include a larger-than-usual compilation of news items that I have selected and condensed from press releases.

This week I am at the ESRI campus in Redlands, California, for a two-day training in ArcGIS Desktop. (In the future, I plan to also get trained in the use of products from other vendors, as well as open source software.) I have also been doing preliminary research toward a GIS project that I will start in the next couple of weeks. The training and the project will allow me to improve my reporting on GIS, by actually using the tools and facing the challenges that you, my readers, face every day — rather than only interviewing GIS analysts, technicians, developers, and managers about their work. Stay tuned!

— Matteo

Skyhook Wireless Introduces "Location Pull"

In April I reported on Skyhook Wireless' launch of its wireless positioning system and its free location-based Internet toolbar, Loki. The system uses existing WiFi devices to locate a user and then leverages that location to customize websites. The company has now introduced a new version of Loki with new features, such as local advertising capabilities, and, it claims, performance improvements.

Loki's new features include:

  • Time zone changer, which automatically adjusts the time on laptops depending on their location
  • SMS location, which enables users to push their current location instantly to someone else's mobile phone
  • Customizable toolbar, which enables users to add new "toolbar channels ," such as the Yahoo! Flickr channel, and to configure Loki to focus only on the user's favorite location channels
  • Optimized scanning, which improves the accuracy of WiFi location and the speed of the location lookup.

Read more …

GIS Shops in the Portland Area: TriMet (Part 2)

Last week, as part of my systematic exploration of GIS shops in the Portland metropolitan area, I featured an interview with Bibiana Kamler McHugh, IT Manager of GIS & Location-Based Services for TriMet, the city's mass transit agency. Following are some additional excerpts from that interview.

Read more …

News Briefs

Please note: I have culled the following news items from press releases and have not independently verified them.

  1. CONTRACTS & COLLABORATIONS

    1. SPOT Image Corporation has recognized East View Cartographic (EVC) as one of the top producing resellers of SPOT's line of satellite imagery products. Read more …

    2. The GPS Wing of the U.S. Air Force has awarded to ITT Corporation one of two contracts to begin to develop a Modernized Space Receiver (MSR)—a GPS receiver that will operate in space on low-Earth orbit satellites and will be able to receive new, modernized GPS signals. Read more …

    3. Airborne 1 Corporation—a provider of LiDAR services, rentals, and software worldwide—has purchased its fourth Optech ALTM sensor to expand its fleet of LiDAR systems.

    4. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has selected OneGIS to implement a Geospatial Fiber Optic Network Management System in conjunction with their existing ESRI ArcGIS enterprise GIS. Read more …

    5. Trimble has added TrimPix technology to its Mapping & GIS handheld product line. Read more …

    6. ESRI and ICMA, a local government leadership and management organization, have worked together to produce a virtual library of resources for using GIS for brownfields redevelopment. Read more …

    7. Digital Quest, Inc.'s flagship product, SPACESTARS—a fully-developed series of "turn-key" geospatial curricula for workforce development, technical schools, colleges, and universities—is listed in the newly published Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge. Read more …

    8. The Douglas County, Kansas, Appraiser's Office has contracted MultiVision USA, a provider of high-resolution oblique imagery and 3D viewing software, to create an aerial photo library of properties throughout the county. Read more …

    9. The USGS and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources have selected Sanborn to perform LiDAR acquisition and three-dimensional mapping services for the state of Iowa. Read more …

    10. Intermap Technologies Corp. has completed the proactive data collection of the entire country of Germany (357,000 square kilometers / 137,838 square miles) to complete its NEXTMap Deutschland initiative. Read more …

    11. Textron Systems Corporation has acquired Overwatch Systems. Textron, which has a solid reputation in the defense business, did not previously have a large footprint in the intelligence community. Read more …

    12. Intermap Federal Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Intermap Technologies, Corp. has received a $1.3M contract to provide digital elevation data to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Read more …

    13. DMTI Spatial (DMTI), a Canadian provider of location intelligence solutions, is partnering with GlobeXplorer, a geographic data integration and publishing company, to resell GlobeXplorer's imagery service. Read more …

    14. The City of Woodland, California, has been successfully using for its maintenance management needs Cityworks, by Azteca Systems, Inc., a provider of GIS-centric asset maintenance management solutions. Read more …

    15. CompassTools Inc. , a provider of GIS field data collection tools, has formed a new division as an Autodesk Value Added Reseller in Colorado and New Mexico. Read more …

    16. GeoDecisions has contracted with the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) to plan, design, develop, and implement a Web-based image log viewer. Read more …

    17. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has awarded a contract to Leica Geosystems to supply high-definition surveying equipment. Read more …

  2. PRODUCTS

    1. ESRI will showcase ArcGIS 9.2 at the GEOINT Symposium in Orlando, Florida, November 13-16. Read more …

    2. GDC, a UK provider of geographic information (GI) solutions, has unveiled GeoReveal 2.0 Studio, the new version of its Web-based tool that reveals the geographic trends in statistics by turning them into interactive Web pages and presentations. Read more …

    3. DeLorme has launched its new XMap 5.0 GIS Enterprise suite of products, which includes a wide range of mapping, routing, navigation, GPS, and GIS file management features. Read more …

    4. LeadDog Consulting, a provider of street and road maps, has released detailed island-wide geographic databases for Aruba. LeadDog maps support military, government, asset-tracking, and commercial GIS applications.

    5. Navman, a designer and manufacturer of GPS technology, has launched the smallest, autonomous GPS receiver available, the Jupiter 32. Read more …

    6. Intergraph Corporation has launched ImageStation PixelQue, an application offering several finishing tools needed in orthophoto production for image inspection, quality control, image enhancement, and image editing. Read more …

    7. Leica Geosystems has launched the DISTO A8, the first handheld laser distance measuring tool with a built-in digital viewfinder and tilt sensor. Read more …

  3. CONFERENCES

    1. This week, ten subject matter experts from Intermap Technologies, Inc. are presenting and/or moderating at various sessions and workshops during the 2006 ASPRS / MAPPS Specialty Conference. Read more …

    2. R.A. Smith & Associates, Inc.—civil engineering, planning, surveying, landscape architecture, GIS, and visualization consultants— of Brookfield, Wisconsin, is accepting registrations for several upcoming ESRI-authorized GIS courses. Read more …

    3. Civil engineering will now be a central component of ESRI's annual survey and GIS conference. Read more …

  4. PEOPLE

    1. Airborne 1 Corporation has hired a new CFO, Ted Lanes. Lanes, a USC graduate, has ten years of CFO experience in both the private and public sectors.

    2. MapInfo Corporation, a provider of location intelligence solutions, has appointed John O'Hara to the position of Executive Vice President of International Operations. Read more …

    3. James W. Sewall Company has hired GIS specialist Rick Martens as GIS Project Manager. Read more …

    4. Pacific Alliance Technologies has hired Anthony M. Bonnici (B.Sc. Comp. Sci.) fulltime as a Principal Technical Consultant. Read more …

  5. OTHER

    1. The Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS) has praised U.S. Senator George Allen (R-VA) for introducing the "Imagery, Mapping and Geospatial Enhancement (IMAGE) Act" before Congress recessed on September 29. Read more …

    2. MapInfo Corporation, a provider of location intelligence solutions, has been named to the 2006 Forbes list of the 200 Best Small American Companies. Read more …

    3. Intermap Technologies Corp. has added a fourth aircraft to its fleet of planes equipped with its proprietary IFSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) airborne data collection system. Read more …

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Matteo Luccio, Editor
GIS Monitor

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