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..

You can find the full GISCafe event calendar here.

To read more news, click here.

-- Susan Smith, GISCafe.com Managing Editor.