2007 January 25

This issue sponsored by

ESRI

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Editor's Introduction

This week I report on DigitalGlobe's deal to provide satellite imagery to Lowrance for display on its GPS receivers and on MapInfo's release of a new version of its GIS Component for MicroStrategy; I also bring you one more set of responses to my geospatial industry survey (more next week). Plus, the usual round up of news items from press releases.

— Matteo Luccio

DigitalGlobe Partners With Lowrance

The rapid, parallel growth in the popularity of high-resolution satellite imagery and of GPS- based portable navigation devices (PNDs) is generating demand for the former to underlay maps on the latter. High-res satellite imagery can be viewed via Google Earth, Microsoft's TerraServer and Live Search (powered by Virtual Earth), ESRI's ArcGIS Image Server, the Geography Network, TerraFly, GlobeXplorer's Image Atlas, MapMart, NASA's World Wind, and other such services. PNDs include handheld GPS receivers, car navigation systems, and GPS-enabled PDAs and cell phones.

To meet this demand and greatly expand the market for its satellite imagery, DigitalGlobe has partnered with Lowrance, a fifty-year-old manufacturer of marine electronics that has been making GPS-based navigation systems since 1992. DigitalGlobe will provide the satellite imagery for the Lowrance iWAY 600C. According to DigitalGlobe, which demonstrated the device at the recent International CES Conference, the iWAY 600C offers detailed satellite imagery of select metropolitan cities, NAVTEQ road maps with voice and visual navigation, more than 5.5 million points of interest, nautical charts for U.S. lakes and coastal waters, an MP3 player, an FM radio receiver, a picture viewer, a 5" high-resolution display, a touch-screen display, and a 30 GB internal hard drive.

Read more…

MapInfo Releases New GIS Component for MicroStrategy

Business intelligence (BI) systems and GIS come from different traditions and do different things. Ultimately, however, they are both decision-support systems, intended to help organizations see patterns, drill down to details, monitor change, and manage operations. Whenever business data has a spatial component, BI and GIS overlap. There are different approaches to integrating BI and GIS and creating what are sometimes referred to as geographic business intelligence solutions (GBIS). One approach is to build filters to import data from various databases into a GIS and then use it to analyze the data geographically. Another is to develop a GIS component for a specific proprietary BI system.

MapInfo, a provider of location intelligence solutions, took the latter approach when it partnered with MicroStrategy, a developer of enterprise reporting and analytic solutions, in September 2004. Yesterday, at MicroStrategy World 2007, in Las Vegas, MapInfo released the newest version of this integration, the Location Intelligence Component, which integrates its geographic querying and visualization capabilities with MicroStrategy's BI platform. It also "provides a bi-directional geographic interface—enabling users to move in and out of the data, whether they are generating maps based on reports or reports based on maps," according to a MapInfo press release.

Read more…

Geospatial Industry Survey

Here's one more set of responses to my questions, by Alain Lapierre, Chief Architect, Bentley Geospatial. I will publish a final batch next week; if you'd like to submit your responses, please send them to me by COB on Tuesday, January 30.

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. The U.S. Department of Defense's Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program Phase I contract to Avineon, Inc., a provider of IT, engineering, geospatial, and program management services. Read more…

    2. Leica Geosystems has acquired Svensk Byggnads Geodesi AB (SBG), Mikrofyn AS, Scanlaser AB, and Scanlaser AS, thereby increasing its visibility and product offerings in machine automation. Read more…

    3. Pierce County, Washington, has selected as its enterprise LIDAR software solution LP360, the LIDAR extension for ArcGIS by QCoherent Software, provider of Limitless LIDAR software tools. Read more…

    4. During the 90 day period from 2006 October 1 to December 31, Pictometry International Corp. , a provider of digital, aerial oblique imagery, and measuring software, secured new government agreements to provide oblique aerial data to 150 counties in 19 states.Read more…

    5. The Colorado Division of Wildlife has chosen XMap 5.0 GIS enterprise software by DeLorme, a GPS receiver manufacturer and GIS software and data developer, to complement its existing geospatial software. Read more…

    6. The City of Shelby, North Carolina, has elected to implement Telvent Miner & Miner's (TM&M's) ArcFM and Responder as their solution for enterprise GIS and outage management. Read more…

  2. PRODUCTS

    1. TDC Group, Inc. has extended Freeance, its Web mapping application, to create GIS and database applications for BlackBerry handsets from Research In Motion (RIM). Read more…

    2. IDELIX Software Inc. has released LookLOCAL beta 2, a public online mapping site. Read more…

  3. CONFERENCES & TRAINING

    1. ESRI Canada will hold the 2007 Regional User Conferences in 16 cities across the country. Read more…

    2. The 2007 ESRI Developer Summit brings new capabilities to developers who plan to use the ESRI software development platform to build, customize, and deploy spatially-enabled applications. Read more…

    3. Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging will participate in the third annual European Defense Geospatial Intelligence Conference. Read more…

  4. PEOPLE

    1. DMTI Spatial (DMTI), a provider of location intelligence solutions in Canada, has promoted Misha Byalik to Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Read more…

  5. OTHER

    1. Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP), the water and sewer utility serving India's western state of Maharashtra, has won a 2006 BE Award in the "Geospatial: Public Works" category for its use of Bentley software to help develop a disaster mitigation plan. Read more…

    2. The Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions (EIGS) and the Geospatial Council of the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) have announced the establishment of a geospatial high school adoption program with five Mississippi high schools. Read more…

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Matteo Luccio, Editor
GIS Monitor

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