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GISWeekly examines select top news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from around the web, and special interest items you might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature Industry News, Top News of the Week, Acquisitions/Alliances/Agreements, Announcements, Financials, People, Around the Web, New Products, and Events Calendar.
 
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Industry News
TerraGo Goes Forward with Venture Capital Financing
by Susan Smith

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TerraGo Technologies announced recently that they have raised $6.3 million by way of a Series A round of financing led by venture capital firm RedShift Ventures, along “with participation from CNF Investments, the private equity and venture capital arm of Clark Enterprises, Inc. and In-Q-Tel, the independent strategic investment fund that identifies innovative technologies to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the larger U.S. Intelligence Community,” according to the press release.

TerraGo is responsible for creating its geospatial distribution and collaboration format, GeoPDF, a one-of- a-kind PDF based data distribution and collaboration solution. GeoPDF leverages the Adobe Acrobat PDF standard and Adobe Reader which is installed on millions of computers worldwide. GeoPDF allows users, both geospatial and non-GIS, to easily distribute intelligent, interactive georegistered mapping data in the PDF format.

According to James C. Davis, president and CEO of TerraGo, the new investment will allow the company to do some things faster. “It really allows us to accelerate a number of things we’ve been working on for some time,” said Davis.  “We’ve been growing independent of this investment based on our own ability to invest in the company. We spun out of Layton Graphics in July 2005, a year and 10 months or so ago, and we’ve gone from 10 employees to 40 plus employees. This will allow us to be able to grow even faster and invest in people and other things.”

The main thing you’ll see us doing is expanding our product teams, adding more people from a development standpoint, quality control people, and technical product managers,” said Davis. “They will allow us to speed up projects that we have under way as well as be able to work on more projects at the same time. We’ve got a pretty complete product vision of where things are going, and this will allow us to get further on that vision faster. We’ll also be adding the infrastructure support for customer support for all of our operations etc. and also we’ll expand our sales and marketing teams to be able to get our message to more folks and allows us to accelerate selling internationally.”

TerraGo has some customers in countries outside the U.S., but has not marketed internationally up to now.

From a product direction, Davis noted that they are seeing more interest in using GeoPDF as a collaboration platform. Last year TerraGo introduced the ability for users who have  just the Reader product to be able to make markups and comments and be able to export those out as shapefiles. GeoPDF is also being used and evaluated n the emergency management area.

The possibility of collaboration has grown as Adobe has expanded and the Reader 9 platform that was released this year strengthened some of the horizontal functionality of collaboration.

A number of users use GeoPDF for markups and comments nearer real time. It becomes a way to synchronize collaboration both in a connected and disconnected mode. “That’s the beauty of the PDF file -- that it provides a static foundation of the GIS data. If when you are making markups and comments, you do have a connection that allows you to, you can  do that collaboration in near real time. We’re seeing more users using this so we’ll be looking at how that’s used in our early use cases.”

TerraGo has been working with RedShift Ventures (RSV) for some time now. RSV is an early stage venture capital firm focused on commercializing advanced technologies that provide compelling solutions for rapidly growing markets.

TerraGo has garnered a customer base in both the commercial and government marketplaces, as well as utilities and other private enterprises.

Top News of the Week

LocatioNet Systems Ltd., a provider of mobile mapping and location applications, and DigitalGlobe, the provider of the world’s highest-resolution imagery and geospatial information products,  announced a partnership that adds DigitalGlobe’s global satellite imagery to the amAze mobile service.

This collaboration means that for the first time, worldwide voice-guided GPS navigation is enabled over high resolution satellite imagery and aerial photos on mobile phones with either external or internal GPS receiver.

Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging  announced that it has acquired all assets of Earth Resource Mapping Ltd (ER Mapper), a geospatial software company headquartered in Australia. ER Mapper is a world-class provider of geospatial imagery processing solutions that prepare, manage, compress and deploy imagery, thus complementing Leica Geosystems’ existing product portfolio.

Alliances/Acquisitions/Agreements

Pictometry International Corp., a leader in digital, aerial oblique imagery and easy-to-use measuring software systems, and MapMart, an IntraSearch Company, announced  that MapMart is now a Value Added Reseller (VAR) of Pictometry's images for its business customers. MapMart is a professional services firm specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) solutions for both public and private sector clients. Under terms of the agreement, MapMart can offer its business customers in architecture and engineering, insurance, financial services, oil and gas, legal services, and commercial real estate, the ability to purchase Pictometry's oblique aerial images using Pictometry's Server-to-Server solution.

1Spatial and QC Data announced a partnership to provide an innovative data quality solution for the UK and Irish utilities marketplace. The partnership unites industry knowledge, technical expertise and innovative technology to deliver a combined software and services solution for data quality auditing and improvement. Utility organizations working in gas, electricity, water or telecommunications in the UK and Ireland can now take advantage of this pioneering approach.

SRC, LLC, a developer and provider of geographic business intelligence technology and solutions,  announced a strategic relationship with Experian Business Strategies. Targeting retail, restaurant and real estate businesses, Experian Business Strategies provides solutions to improve the customer’s ability to forecast accurately for enhanced retail performance. Experian Business Strategies has selected SRC’s geographic business intelligence technology to give clients accelerated application deployment, streamlined access and increased control over their customized modeling solutions. This partnership will give users the ability to quickly analyze what drives certain consumer and market behaviors and quantify the impact of "real world" variables on their bottom line.

TENET is pleased to announce a new partnership with Open Spatial Australia. Open Spatial will be the master distributor of TENET’s MapRite Positional Accuracy Improvement solution in Australia and New Zealand.

TENET‘s MapRite is the UK market-leading PAI solution provider, based upon an established product technology proven in over 100 organizations, including Local Authorities, Utilities and Central Government, for the re-alignment of assets and the continued management for superior data quality. MapRite is a robust, scalable solution with the lowest cost of ownership for Positional Accuracy Improvement.

Announcements

NAVTEQ’s Map Network announced that it has been chosen by the Smithsonian as part of an effort to enhance consumer outreach and engage Smithsonian visitors before their trip.  Using Map Network’s customized, location-based content, visitors are able to navigate Washington, D.C. ’s collection of museum artifacts and landmarks in rich detail with the click of a mouse. The full collection of maps can be seen here

Derby City Council (UK) has chosen an ultra-detailed, digital photomap from aerial survey specialists BlueSky to provide an up to date view of the city. The imagery, flown in 2006 using the latest digital imaging technology, provides a map accurate photographic view of the East Midlands city detailed enough to view property boundaries, road markings and street furniture. Users throughout the Council are accessing the imagery via a central server using desktop photo viewing software while specialist users have access to the data using the Council’s geographic information systems (GIS).

Marking its 20th consecutive quarter of server shipment leadership, HP  once again was No. 1 in total server units shipped, according to first calendar quarter 2007 server market figures released  by industry analyst firm IDC.(1)

HP grew overall server shipments by 16.6 percent in the first quarter, growing faster than the top 10 vendors in the worldwide server market. Driven by strong growth across its ProLiant, Integrity and BladeSystem families, HP captured 33.6 percent shipment share in the first quarter, shipping more than one out of every three servers in the world. These strong results were underscored with the fact that HP again tied for No. 1 in worldwide Q1 server factory revenue for the third year in a row. See press release

Financials

Autodesk, Inc. reported record quarterly revenues of $509 million, an increase of 17 percent over the first quarter of fiscal 2007.

Autodesk's performance was driven by strong increases in revenue from its model-based 3D design products, maintenance revenue from subscription, revenue in the emerging economies, and revenue from new seats. See press release

People

Data Transfer Solutions, Orlando, welcomes Bill Baldus to the DTS team. Bill will be the Florida Business Manager in charge of new business development throughout the state, as well as providing key project management on such projects as the Collier County Asset Management System (AMS) and the City of Jupiter AMS projects.

New Products

The speed, ease of use, and accuracy of Business Analyst Online with the new 2007/2012 demographic data update were previewed at the 2007 ICSC Spring Convention, May 20–23 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Conference attendees saw demonstrations of the new capabilities of Business Analyst Online, ESRI's Web-based on-demand analysis product, including how live thematic mapping and more flexible study area definition with ESRI's 2007/2012 demographic data improve target marketing capability.

DMTI Spatial (DMTI), a provider of location intelligence solutions, enhances its Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) product with verified unit floor counts and actual suite address numbers. Canada's premiere MDU data product is designed to help businesses improve the accuracy of marketing analytics, distribution and service provisioning. Characteristics such as building type, number of floors, unit numbers and additional information provide a level of detail required to drive precision decision making.

Trinity Technologies Corporation, a business consulting and technology service company, announced  the release of GeoISE, a geographically enabled content management solution for utility companies. Powered by MetaCarta, a leading provider of geographic search solutions, GeoISE combines powerful geographic search with traditional text or keyword search so that content in EMC® Documentum® repositories can be mapped, categorized, and displayed using geographic parameters on maps, GIS systems, and virtually any spatial display.

Intergraph Corporation announced the latest release of TerraShare. Image management is a rapidly growing segment of the GIS market worldwide; TerraShare provides organizations a full return on the millions of dollars invested in imagery by immediately providing access to all their users. With TerraShare, organizations are integrating imagery into time and mission critical applications like emergency response, highway design, and land information management applications for which imagery was not extensively used because it was too difficult or costly.

Intergraph Corporation introduced a major enhancement to GeoMedia(R) WebMap, its Web-based map visualization, enterprise application and analysis tool, which will facilitate easy creation of a "mashup," a Web site that takes data or functionality from multiple sources to create a new view and application.

GeoMedia WebMap 6.1 will allow administrators to use WebMap Publisher to easily create a web site that, in real time, combines their data and queries with either the Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth map data. End users can then easily view and interact with any of their data or spatial queries geographically overlaid on the Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth background using the Google and Microsoft controls and interface. The Web site can be created without any programming, eliminating the need to learn the geospatial browser's Application Programming Interface.

Around the Web

Reaping Results: Data-Mining Goes Mainstream  by Steve Lohr, May 20, 2007, The New York Times (registration required)

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