Welcome to GISWeekly! This week GISWeekly spoke with Jaron Waldman CEO of PlaceBase, which is one of those ingenious companies. PlaceBase has been working on integrating GIS technology into websites since 2001. “We've seen over the past year that Google Maps has become a very popular platform, mainly for hobbyists to create web based mashups and web applications, etc.,” noted Waldman. Enter PushPin LE, a hosted mapping platform with the familiar API, similarly high quality mapping output [as Google] but also offering its client live support, total control of branding, no ads on the maps, no limit on transactions and much more. Read about it in this week's Industry News.
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Industry News
PushPin LE Offers Google Map-like Interface for Developers
by Susan Smith
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This week GISWeekly spoke with Jaron Waldman CEO of PlaceBase, which is one of those ingenious companies. PlaceBase has been working on integrating GIS technology into websites since 2001. “We've seen over the past year that Google Maps has become a very popular platform, mainly for hobbyists to create web based mashups and web applications, etc.,” noted Waldman. “The popularity was driven because Google Maps is a great product, it's got a clear, easy to use API and it has very generous licensing terms for people who aren't using it for commercial purposes.” Many professional developers were also taking a close look at Google Maps to integrate into their websites, and according to Waldman, although they love the Google Maps look and feel, the licensing and support terms were not appropriate for what they needed.
Specifically, Google Maps doesn't offer any support at any price, the maps are always branded and powered by Google and Google terms state that they have the right to include ads on the maps or change the programming interface at any time. “It's impossible to build internal, corporate applications or intranet sites on Google Maps because of their terms of use, and there's no upgrade path for more advanced GIS types of features, and for custom cartography or data visualization like thematic mapping,” explained Waldman. “At PlaceBase, we developed PushPin LE, a hosted mapping platform with the familiar API, similarly high quality mapping output [as Google] but also offers our client live support, total control of branding, no ads on the maps, no limit on transactions, an upgrade path to more advanced features that we have in our Pushpin CX product and licensing terms that are geared to the needs of professional web developers.”
PushPin LE and CX's customer is the developer who is working with a commercial general public. These developers may have an existing mapping solution but feel pressure from their public or bosses who are asking for something that works like Google Maps, why isn't it faster, why don't the maps look better, etc. “They may want it to look like Google Maps and be fast and draggable, but they won't necessarily want Google's logo on every single page, and they don't want to violate Google terms of use by putting it on an intranet,” Waldman added.
How do you get around the fact that Google can change the interface at any time? “We have developed something that looks and feels a lot like Google Maps, but we've built ours from scratch,” Waldman explained. “We have our own programming interface which is not exactly the same as Google's but if you've built your mashup on Google's API then it's very simple to switch over to ours. We've talked to professional developers to find out what they need and we provided that. We provide certain things that Google doesn't, such as geocoding and they provide certain things we don't provide.”
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What Google provides that PushPin LE and CX do not are routing, such as driving directions. Users could conceivably use both Google Maps and PushPin LE in order to derive the benefits of both.
PlaceBase's mission clearly has been to bring advanced GIS types of features out to mass audiences via the web. “We think GIS on the web is in its early stages right now,” remarked Waldman. “The features in our CX application are the ability to control cartography, to make presentation more effective, the ability to put themes on the map, and ability to do spatial querying and many capabilities you find in a traditional GIS. Gradually we're going to migrate those over into our LE platform as the market matures and as people become more familiar with maps on the web.”
Additional features in PushPin CX are, geocoding on the fly and the ability to layer different maps on top of one another. For example, a person has her own sales territory and wants to see that on a map, or wants to see area data on a map. “To do that effectively we have developed an approach in CX that disaggregates all the layers,” noted Waldman. “We cache everything, as image data, i.e. we take the vector data and we turn it into raster image data. We do this for each layer on a transparent background and then we can composite them together when they're requested and send them over to the browser as a single layer of images, which means it's very fast. In order to do that customization we've developed an approach that breaks the layers apart and stores them separately on disk as cached imagery.”
Google Maps is obviously responsible for exposing a large number of people to power GIS and mapping through an easy-to-use web interface. PushPin LE will take this one step further: by bringing the power of mashups and GIS beyond the hobbyists to a much broader community of users.
Top News of the Week
Editing in ArcGIS 9: Tips and Tricks II, a new live training seminar from ESRI Virtual Campus, explores the newest tips and tricks in ArcGIS Desktop. The seminar is ideal for experienced ArcGIS users who edit features in ArcMap and want to learn techniques to increase efficiency and precision. The Web seminar will be presented on April 27, 2006, at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific time. Visit the website.
Intergraph Corporation and TerraGo Technologies announced that MAP2PDF versions for Intergraph product lines, GeoMedia and Digital Cartographic Studio (DCS) are now generally available. GeoPDF embeds geospatially referenced data for map coordinate readouts, distances and bearing information in an easy to understand PDF format.
The new MAP2PDF will export geospatial data from GeoMedia or DCS to a georegistered PDF with layers and feature attributes. This GeoPDF™ can be easily distributed and used in connected or disconnected modes with TerraGo's free Adobe Reader® software. Users are able to view maps, turn layers on and off, query attributes, display coordinates, GPS track and create redlines and notes.
John Copple, CEO of Sanborn, announced that the company has been selected to provide digital orthophotography for the state of New Hampshire through a multi-year statewide project. Sanborn, an industry leader in geospatial solutions, has been selected by the State of New Hampshire to provide one foot resolution color and color infrared red digital orthophotography. Using digital camera technology, Sanborn has acquired approximately 1700 square miles of imagery in the first year of the contract with the balance of the state to be completed in subsequent years.
In order to facilitate critical decision-making before, during and after a catastrophic event, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has established an Emergency Mapping and Analysis Center (EMAC) located in their new Advanced Radar Research and Development and Production Center, based in Melbourne, Fla.
The EMAC will help the state of Florida enhance its preparations for hurricanes and other disasters by allowing the Emergency Operations Centers' Incident Management Teams to visualize events from a geographic perspective. The intent is to help incident managers rapidly direct their resources to the areas in which they are most needed.
The new version of MapViewSVG 5.0 offers powerful tools for ArcGIS professional user to produce web mapping solutions based on the W3C SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) standard. MapViewSVG allows you to convert maps with all layout settings, defined in ArcMap, to the SVG format (Scalable Vector Format). You can publish your maps as vector data on Internet/Intranet or on CD-ROM. MapViewSVG supports vector and raster based data and also annotations coming from ArcView, ArcInfo or from CAD sources.
Digital Data Technologies, Inc. (DDTI) installed in Ohio's Huron and Erie counties an Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) system designed to aid Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) like sheriff's offices and 9-1-1 dispatch centers in locating and tracking the activity of their fleet. The AVL is an enhancement to DDTI's AccuGlobe® E9-1-1 Dispatch software that pinpoints the location of emergency calls to 9-1-1.
Acquisitions/Agreements/Alliances
NAVTEQ, a global provider of digital map data for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions, and CBS RADIO have teamed up to begin offering a new traffic information service via the Radio Data System (RDS) protocol. Through the use of CBS RADIO's transmission facilities in major metropolitan markets across the country with a combined population of more than 120 million people, NAVTEQ Traffic RDS(TM) is displayed on Portable Navigation Devices (PND) and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA).
Announcements
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC(R)) has issued a Request for Quotes/Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) for the OGC Web Services, Phase 4 (OWS-4) Interoperability Initiative, a testbed to advance OGC's open interoperability framework for geospatial capabilities. The RFQ/CFP is available at OGC website.
The OWS-4 sponsors are organizations from multiple countries seeking open standards for their interoperability requirements: GeoConnections (Canada), Oak Ridge National Laboratory ORNL (US), BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the US National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), the US General Services Administration (GSA), other major US agencies, the National Technology Alliance, the NATO C3 Agency, the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, and TeleAtlas NV. OWS-4 activities are proceeding in coordination with other standards initiatives in OASIS, IEEE and IAI.
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced its innovative software subscription for municipalities. Called the Municipal License Subscription (MLS) program, it offers municipalities all the software they need for the mapping and engineering of all their infrastructure for a fixed annual fee, based on population.
Often, because of budget constraints, municipalities have an incomplete or unintegrated set of software tools to map and engineer their infrastructure - an essential function for these governments. With the MLS, they can slash their software and administrative costs, outfit their entire mapping and engineering organizations with fully integrated software, and realize a more efficient government.
Hitwise UK, the online competitive intelligence service, announced that Multimap was the top-performing website by visits within its 'Travel - Maps' category for the whole of 2005. The announcement was made at Hitwise's Annual Awards at the Institute of Directors, 31st March.
The Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) announced the addition of extensive One Call programming at Annual Conference 29, slated for April 23-26, 2006, at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla. The One Call Connection includes a half-day seminar, seven paper presentations, and a special panel discussion-offering case studies, best practices, details on new technologies, and more.
“This new feature will showcase how geospatial technologies can significantly strengthen the efforts of One Call notification centers,” said Bob Samborski, Executive Director, GITA. “It will also provide information that utilities and local governments need to know to fully leverage those centers.”
Awards
ESRI congratulates the Spanish company Datatronics for winning the Social Networking Application award in the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge. The LBS Challenge was a location-based services (LBS) application development contest held in conjunction with 3GSM in Barcelona, Spain. Datatronic's application, based on ESRI technology, was chosen from among 141 companies by a jury representing hardware and software manufacturers, magazine editors, and other technology leaders.
Skyhook Wireless' Loki, the industry-first mass consumer LBS application that automatically incorporates a user's exact location into Internet search through the use of WiFi access points, has been selected by NAVTEQ as a category winner in the Navigation Applications Category of the Global LBS Challenge. Executives from wireless carriers, hardware and device manufacturers, and other influential players in the wireless industry served as the official judges and based their final decisions on three criteria: usability, applicability and ease of use. Skyhook Wireless' Loki took highest honors and was named the official winner in its category.
The Department of Interior (DOI) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) recently won the Excellence.Gov award for the Geospatial One-Stop Web portal. In its sixth year of existence and sponsored by the American Council for Technology, the award was presented to five winners selected for demonstrating best practices in information sharing for federally led information technology program implementations.
The ASPRS Journal Review Committee announced the winners of this year's ESRI Award for Best Scientific Paper in GIS. The First Place winners are Bisheng Yang, Wenzhong Shi, and Qingquan Li for “A Dynamic Method for Generating Multi-Resolution TIN Models” (PE&RS, 71-8, pp. 917-926). Second Place goes to Rodolphe Devillers, Yvan Bedard, and Robert Jeansoulin for “Multidimensional Management of Geospatial Data Quality Information for its Dynamic Use Within GIS” (PE&RS, 71-2, pp. 205-215). Third Place was awarded to Xutong Niu, Ruijin Ma, Tarig Ali, and Rongxing Li for “Integration of Mobile GIS and Wireless Technology for Coastal Management and Decision-Making” (PE&RS, 71-4, pp. 453-459)
Contract Awards
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that the City of Trois-Rivieres, Canada, has selected Bentley's water resources modeling software to support the operation and management of the city's newly consolidated infrastructure.
Due to recent mergers among six municipalities in Quebec, the water, sewer, and storm drainage networks of the City of Trois-Rivieres encompass nearly 2,000 kilometers of piping. To successfully operate and manage these independently designed networks as a single massive network, the city needed to:
-- Seamlessly integrate the data from three separate network models and diverse databases
-- Develop accurate hydraulic models of the networks in order to meet the new water management requirements imposed by Quebec's Environment Quality Act
CarteGraph Systems announced the addition of seven new client organizations-Auburn, WA; Upper Leacock, PA; Rosemount, MN; Oak Forest, IL; San Angelo, TX; Westford, MA, and Yorkton, SK, Canada. They join the hundreds of other entities utilizing CarteGraph Software to achieve better efficiencies in their organizations.
Late afternoon on April 3, the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO) requested that EarthData provide orthoimagery to support the state's response to the April 2 tornado that destroyed a reported 80 percent of Marmaduke, Arkansas. Having recently completed aerial data acquisition over the entire state for the AGIO statewide digital orthophotography program, EarthData readily agreed to produce 1-meter orthoimagery as quickly as possible to map the tornado's destruction.
"We received the imagery less than 24 hours after our request," explained Learon Dalby, AGIO GIS program manager. "The most current data we had was color-infrared photography created in 2000. The new orthos gave us several advantages: They're up-to-date since the imagery was just acquired this spring, and because they are 'all-digital' they have much sharper contrast - clearer resolution - than our film-based imagery. As important, the new orthos were produced in natural color, which means non-GIS users found them easier to use, a fact that is particularly important in emergency response."
People
James W. Sewall Company announced that Bruce Oswald, a nationally recognized expert in GIS program implementation, has joined the firm as Vice President for Public Sector Geospatial Solutions.
Prior to joining Sewall, Mr. Oswald was Director for the New York State Center for Geographic Information and Assistant Director and Chief Information Officer for the New York State Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination.
Spectrum Mapping, LLC, a provider of remote sensing, photogrammetry and mapping, announces the addition of Kumar C. Navulur, PhD to its management team as Chief Technology Officer.
New Products
Synergos Technologies, Inc., an innovator of timely and accurate consumer data products for retailers, announced the updated quarterly release of STI: Workplace, the retail industry's first and only quarterly workplace population estimates. This is the 8th release of the product, which launched in April 2004 as a powerful complement to Synergos Technologies' flagship product, STI: PopStats, the company's quarterly population estimates.
Garmin International, Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd., is offering a version of its highly-acclaimed StreetPilot c330 that allows North American motorists who speak Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, or Taiwanese to experience the convenience and safety of GPS satellite navigation in their native tongue.
Linxoft Solutions Incorporated launched MapLinXWeb, a spatial analysis plug-in for Microsoft CRM 3.0. MapLinXWeb allows CRM users to visualize, analyze and plan using the power of location based intelligence.
MapLinXWeb uses the power of Microsoft MapPoint web services. The MapPoint Web Service is Microsoft's hosted platform for integrating maps, driving directions, proximity search, geocoding and other location-based functionality into applications and business processes. Today, hundreds of companies around the world utilize the MapPoint Web Service to offer mapping and location services.
Around the Web
Red Hat scoops up JBoss, Martin LaMonica, April 10, 2006, CNET News.com - Linux distributor Red Hat said on Monday that it has signed an agreement to buy open-source company JBoss for at least $350 million, a move that expands Red Hat's product line and adds to its growth potential.
Google Chief Rejects Pressuring China, by Jim Yardley, April 13, 2006, The New York Times (registration required) - Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, whose company has been sharply criticized for complying with Chinese censorship, said on Wednesday that the company had not lobbied to change the censorship laws and, for now, had no plans to do so.
Upcoming Events
GITA Annual Conference 29
Date: April 23 - 26, 2006
Place: Tampa, FL USA
GITA's Annual Conference and Exhibition is the most highly regarded educational event for professionals involved in geospatial information technologies.
PROGIS-Conference 2006
Date: April 19-20, 2006
Place: Vienna, Austria
The event explores background, legislation, needs and technologies for farm advisory systems, as they are necessary to comply with the new situations like commitments regarding Cross Compliance, documentation needs to ensure food- and feed-traceability, to calculate, to map etc..