Points of Interest: January 20, 2005

Ricoh Camera Really New? I had trouble with Ricoh's latest press release. (The release is not yet on the company website [WHY NOT?], so far as I can tell, but is available here.) The release says the GPS-enabled digital camera images, when "transferred to a PC� are automatically converted to shape files," when, in fact the GPS location points are actually converted to shape files. But, there's more to pick a fight with than that, in the release, says a blogger on Engadget. The camera is not the first of its kind (Kodak's predated it) and it's not a new camera according to his post. The camera is identical to one released a year ago, he offers, and that was confirmed by a call to a reseller he states.

Highest Ever Revenue for MapInfo. MapInfo reported its highest ever quarterly revenue this morning. Net income for the first fiscal quarter nearly doubled, while revenue climbed 21 percent. Net income for the three months ended Dec. 31 was $1.16 million, or 6 cents a diluted share. This includes 5 cents a share in charges related to the company's previously announced write-off of the remaining value of its investment in Alps Mapping Co., which were partially offset by benefits from changes in federal tax law. In the year-ago quarter the company showed net income of $637,000, or 4 cents a diluted share. Revenue was $34.7 million, the highest quarterly revenue ever, up from $28.6 million a year earlier. Full year revenue is expected between $149 million and $154 million. I tried to listen to the webcast of the conference call, but it was too scratchy can gave me a headache.

ESRI Plugs Sun. Back in the day GIS was big reason for the sale of high end computers. As GIS moved to the desktop and could be run on pretty much any decent machine that connection weakened. But, it's back. CXOToday reports that ESRI is touting Sun's latest servers, the Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 released last fall. "Says Ian Sims, ESRI ArcGIS server test team, 'We tested first with two CPUs, then four and then eight and went from generating about 4,000 maps to 14,000. We were consistently able to reconfigure in a lights-out data center from a remote location.'"

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Source: Material used herein is often supplied by external sources and used as is.