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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/Agreements/Alliances, Announcements, People, New Products, Around the Web and Events Calendar.

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Susan Smith, Managing Editor

Industry News
Are Mashups Disruptive Technology, Consumer Toys or Enterprise Tools?
by Susan Smith

March 11th’s Power Panel at GITA 2008 entitled “Mashups – Consumer Toy or Enterprise Tool?” drew a large crowd that extended out the door.

Panel moderator and Speaker Award Winner Peter Batty, owner of Spatial Networking, defined “disruptive technology” as being too simple to address the basic needs of the market when it starts out, yet gradually, it meets the needs of the market in a simpler and cheaper way than what is currently available.

That definition certainly describes Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, two completely non-geospatial products that have changed the GIS landscape irrevocably.

Bryan Atwood of Google talked about Google mashups in the Enterprise. Google says that they are organizing all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usable – and they are also organizing all the world’s geospatial information.

Google Earth provides a 3D view of earth that you can zoom in and out of, comprised of compositing satellite imagery into one skin. The counterpart to that product is the 2D Google Maps, which can be viewed from within a web browser. The KML specification developed by Keyhole, dubbed by Atwood “the HTML of the geographic web,” is an XML type format that describes geospatial data, which allows you to see your data on top of different platforms. Recently KML was submitted to OGC and will be approved in the next month or two.

Funded in 2000 by In-Q-Tel, a company that identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), Keyhole was a separate company, acquired by Google in 2004. As a result of that purchase, in 2005 Google Earth was released.

Google’s enterprise philosophy is relatively simple: you can take a Google Map and embed it in your website. What these tools offer is very fast development. “You have two lines of web script to add to your website,” said Atwood. “Thousands of people know how to interact with Maps and Earth every day. There are more than 50,000 live API sites right now.” Available are enterprise support, service agreements, implementation partner networks, and behind the firewall options.

Speaker Award Winner Bill Gail of Microsoft stated that mashups are a consumer toy, which elicited a laugh from the audience. But Gail followed that by saying that enterprise applications use Microsoft Virtual Earth, and they don’t need to be complex to be useful (and that includes mashups). “They don’t need to be the hidden domain of IT specialists, and they can serve the needs of unsophisticated employees or customers.”

Enterprise applications are built with enterprise tools, and the enterprise tools to build mashups are available from Microsoft Virtual Earth.

Virtual Earth 2D/3D enterprise geospatial platform includes global and regional maps, satellite imagery, high resolution imagery, birds-eye imagery, and local maps with live traffic. This is all enterprise ready and has good integration with other enterprise tools on the market.

Gail said Microsoft was serving over 1,000 customers in 1995 with MapPoint and MapPoint web service, the basis for the company’s enterprise expertise. Since then, organizations such as British Petroleum (BP) are making asset management mashups with the help of integrators IDV Solutions. GIS visualization overlays on Virtual Earth are pulled out of ArcGIS Server. The Weather Channel overlays weather, clouds and Doppler on top of Virtual Earth.

The City of Houston overlays traffic conditions and situational awareness on Virtual Earth. Microsoft is moving quickly into the 3D arena with an emerging enterprise platform, which can produce geometrically phototextured cities with an average of 500 km per city.

Charles Swenka, CTO and owner of IFactor Consulting, said that their StormCenter uses Virtual Earth to communicate information to utilities.

“What we like about Virtual Earth or Google Maps is that they introduce a high amount of functionality and infrastructure behind the service,” said Swenka. “They do all support and availability. Also, there are so many investments going inside enterprise environments. We can have developers working with the new tools without high costs, a real benefit over legacy systems.”

Swenka cited an example of taking customer outage information, and converting it into a form that can be presented to the public. “Neither their outage management system nor enterprise system has that capability. One of the main drivers for this kind of information is that it is a great way to communicate with customers, and to offload demand on your call centers. A call to a call center can cost up to $3 per call during the high storm period, whereas with a web based solution like this it can be as little as ten cents per call.” Swenka added that you can also convey spatial information that can be difficult to convey by phone.

Florida Power & Light (FPL) uses a lot of GIS applications to cover territory ranging from Jacksonville to Miami, and Naples to Tampa. On the business side, they have developers who want to take their data in other directions, using MapPoint, Google Earth and Maps.

“We put it in Google Earth, and now we’re looking at how can we use this tool for presentation and provide a generic format that people can use to put up different information to present to the customer,” said Kirk Suscella of FPL.

It was agreed that the most powerful aspect of Google Earth and Virtual Earth was their ability to get siloed information out to the rest of an organization. This is a huge step forward for geospatial, since there is much data restricted by the tools that are available to use the data.

Should anyone be worried that Google and Microsoft may ultimately replace GIS tools, the panel believes this won’t be the case. Rather, they will complement GIS tools. The Google and Microsoft tools are limited in that they can’t do authoring, engineering or analysis but they may support more of what GIS can do.

Utilities are naturally concerned about security issues in dealing with these geographic visualization systems, and both Google and Microsoft are addressing the issues of making sure proper security is in place, such as having different access levels.

In summary, all participants had to agree that Google Earth and Microsoft Earth have caused a big shift in how we see the world. By taking on the distribution of data for the geospatial industry, Google and Microsoft can bring geospatial to people who might otherwise never experience it.

Is this disruptive technology? If Peter Batty’s definition is correct, then surely it must be.

Top News of the Week

An upcoming Internet seminar hosted by ESRI will teach geographic information system (GIS) professionals how to author, publish, and use Keyhole Markup Language (KML) services using ArcGIS Server 9.3.

Publishing KML Services with ArcGIS Server 9.3 will air on ESRI’s Training and Education website on March 20, 2008, at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. (PDT).

Acquisitions/Agreements/Alliances

Infotech Enterprises Limited, a Global Technology Solutions provider, head quartered at Hyderabad, announced that it has signed a new multi-year contract with digital map leader Tele Atlas to provide extensive map database and software development services. The agreement builds on a relationship that started in 1994 and reflects Tele Atlas’ continued confidence in Infotech’s abilities to deliver high-quality database and software services and solutions.

Adapx announced that it has received ESRI's 2008 New Partner of the Year award for the Olympia region. Adapx's CEO, Ken Schneider, was honored last night at the ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference held at the Palm Springs Convention Center.

Valtus Imagery Services, a leading Aerial Imagery management and delivery company, has partnered with InSequence, Inc. to provide commercial imagery through GlobalView. GlobalView is a Geospatial Data Storage and Visualization system offering customers a suite of standardized services allowing for the discovery and delivery of geospatial data. It is an ideal enterprise solution for large government and commercial organizations that have requirements for imagery across the globe from multiple locations.

MapQuest and INRIX announced a collaboration that will allow consumers and businesses to access the full breadth of INRIX traffic information across multiple MapQuest business units including MapQuest.com, MapQuest Wireless, and MapQuest Platform Services.
MapQuest has integrated INRIX's real-time traffic speed and incident information on the leading mapping site in the U.S., MapQuest.com. MapQuest.com users can now select a "Traffic" view which allows them to visualize traffic flow and incidents along major roadways in more than 100 U.S. markets.

Announcements

Infoterra Ltd supports MapAction's relief operations with the donation of two ERDAS IMAGINE licenses.

"In the field, it's often necessary to manipulate Earth observation data quickly to produce the most relevant image-based maps for disaster relief organizations. ERDAS IMAGINE is an ideal tool for this work, and we are very grateful to Infoterra for donating licenses for use by our team during our humanitarian response missions," commented David Spackman, Director of MapAction.

Pixxures, Inc., a division of XçDAR Corporation, a leading provider of geospatial services including data acquisition, processing, image analysis, data storage and Web services, has received their fourth consecutive Certificate of Recognition from Harris Corporation for their work on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Accuracy Improvement Project (MTAIP).

The Sidwell Company has been selected to provide GIS professional services to Santa Fe County, NM. Specifically, Sidwell will be converting the County’s GIS from an existing coverage format to the tagged data model in ESRI’s Geodatabase data format; installing, configuring and versioning ArcGIS Server; implementing the Parcel Builder map maintenance solution; and providing focused ArcMap and Parcel Builder training. Sidwell’s Parcel Builder-Administrator™ software module will also be installed, which will enable the County to generate state-mandated unique parcel codes (UPCs) from the GIS.

New Products

Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging announced the release of IMAGINE Developer’s Toolkit 9.2. This set of libraries and documentation was designed exclusively for ERDAS IMAGINE 9.2, the industry’s leading and most complete collection of software tools to manipulate, process and understand imagery.

Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging announced the release of ER Viewer 7.2. Previously an ER Mapper product, ER Viewer is a free, easy-to-use image viewer featuring interactive roaming and zooming of very large JPEG 2000 and ECW files, as well as the ability to read most other common file types. Additionally, ER Viewer 7.2 also provides the ability to save and print data. The save feature allows users to stream data from a site and save a subset locally.

Gulfport, Mississippi was essentially ground zero when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August of 2005. The eye of the storm passed within miles of the city center. The devastation left behind was extensive.

As part of the overall push to rebuild the community, Gulfport Police Department recently implemented CrimeView. Through the efforts of The Omega Group, law enforcement staff now have another tool at their disposal in the fight against crime. CrimeView helps maximize limited resources by allowing command staff to place officers at the right place at the right time.
The desktop mapping application utilizes numerous data layers such as calls for service, incidents, warrants and field interviews. Command staff are notified twice per day regarding recent activity through CrimeView’s Threshold Alert routine. Detailed crime analysis maps and reports for any geographic area in Gulport can now be created in minutes.

Caliper Corporation is pleased to announce the release of Data CDs containing 2010 and 2008 demographic projections and 2006 demographic estimates for U.S. Census Block Groups. These data are provided for the 211,655 Block Groups, which are groupings of Census Blocks and are also subdivisions of Census Tracts.

The demographic data include July 1, 2010 projections, July 1, 2008 projections, and July 1, 2006 estimates with counts by age, race, sex, and Hispanic origin. The equivalent data from the 2000 Census are also included.

GeoLytics now has the latest 2008 demographic estimates and 2013 population projections available for purchase on DVD. These data are the most up-to-date estimates of the current US population, available at the state, county, zip code, tract, and block group level.

The 2008 Estimates and 2013 Projections provides demographic variables for the current U.S. population and 5-year projections of population trends. Variables include total population, population change, total households, race, age, gender, household income, owners vs. renters, and more. For more information go to: http://geolytics.com/USCensus,Estimates-Projections,Products.asp

National Geographic Maps announced an agreement to provide National Geographic’s TOPO! maps and i-cubed’s domestic aerial imagery (USA Nationwide Prime) through i-cubed’s DataDoors imagery services. The agreement signals an important fusion of high-quality topographic maps with one of the world’s most comprehensive and efficient delivery systems.

Around the Web

Case study: Dundee City Council - Disabled Parking Bay Application Process Public Technology.net

CX2 Technologies, Inc. Announces Consulting Agreement With GEOCommand, Inc. CNN Money.net March 10, 2008

Noted Cartographer Illustrates Ways To Design Better Maps Wireless Workforce Online, March 10, 2008

Exploring the geospatial frontier Your Daily Camera Online

Upcoming Events

2008 ESRI Technology Showcase
Date:	March 1 - October 31, 2008
Place:	California, Hawaii, Nevada, USA
ESRI invites you to attend a one-half day event featuring demonstrations of ESRI’s latest technologies that illustrate how these tools can be deployed to address common organizational needs. If you are responsible for making decisions about GIS in your organization, attend the showcase to evaluate the fit of specific ESRI products. If you are focused on applying GIS technology, the showcase offers content to help you be more productive with ESRI tools. 8:30 a.m.—Noon
6th US Missile Defense Conference and Exhibit
Date:	March 31 - April 3, 2008
Place:	Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center Washington, DC USA
A key objective of the 6th Annual U.S. Missile Defense Conference is to ensure that the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) Team maintains critical relationships, communication channels, and strategic direction as the BMDS continues its development and global deployment.
Spatial Analysis for Business 2008 Conference
Date:	April 5 - 8, 2008
Place:	University of Redlands Redlands, CA USA
The University of Redlands School of Business invites you to participate in the 2008 Spatial Analysis for Business Conference organized by the University of Redlands in partnership with the Small Business Administration and ESRI. This conference brings together noted experts in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), researchers, and business professionals to create a unique learning experience. The conference will consist of refereed paper and panel presentations, workshops, hands-on GIS tutorials and key note speakers.
URISA/NENA Addressing Conference (formerly GIPSC)
Date:	April 7 - 10, 2008
Place:	Doubletree Hotel - Lloyd Center Portland, OR USA
The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) have announced a new name for its joint conference. The 2008 conference will be the first one presented under this name: The URISA/NENA Addressing Conference.
Map Middle East 2008
Date:	April 8 - 10, 2008
Place:	Dubai World Trade Centre Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Map Middle East 2008, the Fourth Annual Middle East Conference on Geospatial Information, Technology & Applications will provide a platform to showcase the innovative applications of the Geospatial domain.
2008 North American Snow Conference
Date:	April 13 - 16, 2008
Place:	Kentucky International Convention Center, Louisville,, KY USA
National conference and tradeshow specific to snow & ice control and winter operations.
2008 Southeast Regional User Group Conference (SERUG)
Date:	April 14 - 16, 2008
Place:	Hyatt Regency Riverfront Jacksonville, FL USA
Join other Southeastern Regional GIS users April 14-16, 2008 to discuss challenges and solutions that are unique to your area. Learn from your colleagues about successful GIS applications in many business and government agencies that can provide new ideas and inspiration.
AAG 2008 Annual Meeting
Date:	April 15 - 19, 2008
Place:	Marriot Copley Place and Westin Copley Place Hotel Boston, MA USA
The Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers attracts geographers and related professionals from around the world. Our meeting forum stimulates discussion about research, education, accomplishments, and developments in geography.
Disaster Management 2008
Date:	April 16 - 18, 2008
Place:	Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
Disaster Management 2008 would be a platform to attract exhibitors from all over the world and would not only provide an opportunity to tap huge markets, but at the same time allow them to personally interact with the big-wigs of the industry.

You can find the full GISCafe.com event calendar here.

To read more news, click here.


-- Susan Smith, GISCafe.com Managing Editor.