Thursday, May 20, 2004

NovaLIS Technologies Awards Partners

NovaLIS Establishes “Excellence in Partnership” Awards to Recognize Outstanding Partners

Charlotte, NC, USA: NovaLIS Technologies – the leader in the supply of land information management products to governments – is pleased to announce the initiation of an annual awards program that recognizes superior service from our business partners.

“We have long recognized the crucial role our partners play in the successful implementation of our software,” says NovaLIS President/CEO Gary Waters. “It is time we recognized this effort by publicly honoring our strongest partners through this new annual awards program.”

The newly established “Excellence in Partnership” awards will be presented to three worthy partners each year. Partners will be selected based on the results of four equally weighted criteria including:

Number of projects in which the business partner has played a role.
Nature of customizations performed by the business partner for client solutions.
Number of employees trained to deliver NovaLIS products that have participated in project delivery.
Client satisfaction and project completion, where the business partner participated in some role.
There is no nomination required. All signed and active NovaLIS business partners will automatically be considered for an award. Candidates eligible for this year’s awards will be evaluated based on their performance from October 2003 to September 2004. The first annual awards will be handed out November 8th during the opening reception of the NovaLIS User Conference.

NovaLIS is a solutions company that maintains a strong network of business partners to act as its representatives in specific market areas. NovaLIS works with partners to provide services to implement its integrated products and custom solutions. The NovaLIS Business Partner Program is designed to foster business relationships with organizations offering a wide variety of GIS-related services in the land records industry. NovaLIS partners demonstrate specific expertise with the ESRI’s GIS technology, and share the vision to deliver integrated land records management solutions.

NovaLIS Technologies: Established in 1992, NovaLIS Technologies designs and delivers products that streamline land records management and improve access to information relating to property valuation, property taxation, land tenure, cadastral mapping, and land development. ESRI Canada, ESRI Inc., and Leica Geosystems jointly own NovaLIS. NovaLIS’ corporate headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Regional offices are strategically located across the United States and Canada. NovaLIS is committed to providing land and government agencies with outstanding business solutions. Through its network of partners, NovaLIS works with corporations, agencies, and national, regional, and local governments worldwide.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

GISNews is accepting applications for Blogger Editors. We are looking for people who would volunteer their time to blog on the subject of GIS. Just a few posts per month on the topic per editor.

Interested volunteers should e-mail their resume to maps@reach.net.

We plan on having a small group of editors, posting several times each month.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

ARCGIS 9 Now Available

ArcGIS Family of Products
ArcGIS is an integrated collection of GIS software products for building a complete GIS for your organization. The ArcGIS framework enables you to deploy GIS functionality and business logic wherever it is needed—in desktops, servers (including the Web), or mobile devices. This architecture, coupled with the geodatabase, gives you the tools to assemble intelligent geographic information systems.

Desktop GIS Overview

ArcGIS Desktop software products allow you to author, analyze, map, manage, share, and publish geographic information.
ArcReader ArcView ArcEditor ArcInfo
ArcGIS Desktop Extensions
Server GIS Overview

Server GIS products allow GIS functionality and data to be deployed from a central environment.
ArcIMS ArcGIS Server ArcSDE GIS Portal Toolkit
Embedded GIS Overview

ArcGIS Engine allows you to develop custom desktop GIS applications or embed GIS functionality in existing applications. These focused solutions can then be easily deployed throughout an organization.
ArcGIS Engine
Mobile GIS Overview

ArcGIS technology can be deployed on a range of mobile systems from lightweight devices to PDAs, laptops, and Tablet PCs.
ArcPad Mobile ArcGIS Desktop Systems
PCI Geomatics User Group Meeting

Register for this Free Workshop and User Group Meeting:
Integrating High Resolution Imagery into Geospatial Projects


This workshop will examine all aspects of integrating high resolution imagery into geospatial projects. The discussion will include an overview of new high resolution sensors, where to get data, and how to use it cost-effectively. Data processing concerns (accuracy, classification methods, data quality, and data management) will also be discussed.
PCI Geomatics User Group Meeting

This meeting will provide opportunities for users of high resolution imagery and/or airphotos to meet and discuss your thoughts and experiences with peers.
Who should attend? Users of high resolution imagery
and/or airphotos
When? June 7, 2004
Where? Space Imaging - Reston, VA, USA


Increase Your Productivity, Register for a Training Course:
Introduction to OrthoEngine


The new Introduction to OrthoEngine course covers the core orthorectification technology contained in the Geomatica OrthoEngine module. Using various types of satellite and airphoto data, we will explore geometric correction, orthorectification, DEM extraction, 3D stereo operations, and mosaicking.
Who should attend? Users of satellite and airphoto data
When? June 8-9, 2004
Where? Space Imaging - Reston, VA, USA


Introduction to eCognition

The Introduction to eCognition course covers all basic and some advanced functionality of eCognition. Trainees should have a good understanding of remote sensing prior to this training. Experience in image analysis is helpful. After training the trainees will be able to apply eCognition's main strategies to their own data.
Who should attend? Users of eCognition, object-oriented image
classification software
When? June 10-11, 2004
Where? Space Imaging - Reston, VA, USA




To Register For These Events Contact:
Sandra Gabrielson
E-mail: training@pcigeomatics.com
Phone: 1 905 764-0614 ext. 250
Fax: 1 905 764-9604


Press Release


Now Available: ERDAS IMAGINE® V8.7 from Leica Geosystems

17 December 2003

Atlanta, Georgia, USA— Leica Geosystems is pleased to announce that ERDAS IMAGINE® V8.7, the industry’s premier geographic imaging suite, is now shipping worldwide. The latest version of ERDAS IMAGINE features JPEG2000 support (including GeoJP2), improvements to its mosaic tool and a faster, smoother multi-threaded IMAGINE Geospatial Light Table™ (GLT) viewer. ERDAS IMAGINE 8.7 is fully compatible with Leica Geosystems’ new process-driven photogrammetric software suite, the Leica Photogrammetry Suite, also available worldwide.

ERDAS IMAGINE 8.7 supports the JPEG2000 and GeoJP2 data format developed by Mapping Science, Inc. It adds the capacities to display and create JPEG2000 images in the JPEG2000 format. This improves upon the ability to quickly and easily read geospatially-registered image data in the JPEG2000 format previously offered in ERDAS IMAGINE 8.6.

ERDAS IMAGINE 8.7 also features an improved mosaic tool. These improvements include the ability to import/export cut lines, the ability to conduct image smoothing along cut lines, color balance imagery using dodging and support for rotated output sheets.

The new features added to the IMAGINE GLT™ interface expand the efficiency of image exploitation. The expanded use of DirectX 8.1 or higher allows users to roam smoothly through extremely large sets of imagery. The IMAGINE GLT uses multithreaded processors, one for rendering and one for reading data from a disk. This improvement also visually improves zooming and rotation of data.


Other improvements in ERDAS IMAGINE 8.7 include:
• Fuzzy Recode for deconflicting land cover classifications
• Dozens of new raster dlls, importers and exporters for seamless data access
• Expanded list of projections, spheroids and datums, including new vertical datum transformations
• Improvements to IMAGINE VirtualGIS® for rendering large amounts of data

The best geographic imaging software in the industry, ERDAS IMAGINE helps drive Leica Geosystems as the industry leader in providing products that power the Geospatial Imaging Chain™ of capturing, referencing, measuring, analyzing, and presenting data in a format that is useful to its customers.

For more information about Leica Geosystems GIS & Mapping or its products and services, call: +1 404 248 9000, toll free: +1 877 463 7327, or visit: gis.leica-geosystems.com.


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Press Contact - Not For Publication:
Andrea Yegros
Phone: +1 404 248 9000 ext. 2337
E-mail: andrea.yegros@gis.leica-geosystems.com.

For Publication:
Phone: +1 404 248 9000 or +1 877 463 7327
General Information: info@gis.leica-geosystems.com.
Web: gis.leica-geosystems.com.


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DigitalGlobe and GlobeXplorer Partner to Offer QuickBird Imagery Online



Partnership Facilitates Rapid Integration of QuickBird Imagery Into Real Estate, Asset Tracking and GIS Applications



LONGMONT, Colo. and WALNUT CREEK, Calif., April 12, 2004 - DigitalGlobe® and GlobeXplorer® LLC, a subsidiary of Stewart Information Services Corp. (NYSE-STC), have joined forces to make QuickBird high-resolution satellite imagery available to customers through GlobeXplorer’s Internet server technology. The addition of QuickBird imagery to GlobeXplorer’s existing database of aerial and satellite products gives customers instant, online access to the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite imagery, and takes advantage of standards-based Web Mapping Services technology.

DigitalGlobe and GlobeXplorer are offering cloud-free QuickBird satellite imagery of U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), and most international cities. To populate the database, DigitalGlobe is harvesting its extensive image library for the best imagery collected over the past two years.

Before delivering imagery products to GlobeXplorer for integration into the Web distribution infrastructure, DigitalGlobe georeferences and color balances the products, then compresses them into high quality JPEG2000 format. By creating and hosting a product library with user-ready products and applications, GlobeXplorer offers customers the ability to retrieve imagery on an “as-needed” basis, and to quickly integrate it into Internet applications, mapping and geographic information systems (GIS), or internal business processes.

“By accessing our products over the Web, customers benefit from immediate delivery without having to wait for customized product processing time,” said Steve Jennings, vice president of marketing for DigitalGlobe. “We anticipate that this will also open up the market for high-resolution imaging products in markets that, until now, have been largely underserved. Real estate agents, insurance professionals, and Web portal application users that already rely on GIS and mapping software packages can more easily browse imagery in user-friendly file formats and sizes, prior to purchasing products,” he added.

“Whether it’s through a standard Web browser, our Internet extensions for GIS software, or custom web-based business applications, users of earth imagery will now have instant access to DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird imagery library,” said Paul Smith, chief operating officer for GlobeXplorer. “We are enthusiastic about leveraging our market-proven technologies to support the growth of the satellite image industry,” Smith said.

About GlobeXplorer
GlobeXplorer LLC is a leading geographic data integration and publishing company providing online access to the world's largest commercial library of georeferenced digital aerial imagery. The company's image library is distributed over the Internet using a proprietary platform that dynamically searches, retrieves, compacts, and delivers high-quality images from an online database within seconds. Using this technology, GlobeXplorer provides fast and affordable access to aerial images and associated database content to thousands of businesses and consumers on a daily basis. Through dynamic Web applications, Web services, Internet portals, and Internet-aware devices, GlobeXplorer distributes interactive maps and aerial imagery via flexible subscription services. The company is headquartered in Walnut Creek, Calif., and its products are available worldwide. For further information, contact GlobeXplorer at info@globexplorer.com or visit www.globexplorer.com.

About Stewart Information Services Corp.
Stewart Information Services Corp. (NYSE-STC) is a technology driven, strategically competitive, global real estate information company. Stewart provides title insurance and related information services through more than 7,300 issuing locations in the United States and several international markets. Stewart meets the needs of the real estate and mortgage industries through the delivery of information services required for settlement using e-commerce. These services include title reports, flood determinations, document preparation, property reports and background checks. Stewart also supplies post-closing services to lenders, automated county clerk land records, property ownership mapping and GIS for governmental entities. Stewart provides expertise in tax-deferred exchanges. More information about Stewart can be found at www.stewart.com.

About DigitalGlobe
DigitalGlobe is an Earth imagery and information company in Longmont, Colo., USA. With the 2001 launch of its QuickBird satellite, DigitalGlobe has established a market leadership position. The company offers the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite imagery, the largest image size and the greatest on-board storage capacity of any satellite imagery provider. DigitalGlobe’s ImageLibrary houses the most comprehensive, up-to-date images available. Since January 2002, QuickBird has collected and stored in its ImageLibrary more than 300,000 scenes of imagery covering more than 90 million square kilometers of the Earth, and collects an additional one million square kilometers each week. The competition has no plans to launch a comparable commercial satellite until at least 2007. The superior technical capabilities of DigitalGlobe’s WorldView system, scheduled for launch no later than 2006, will lead the industry into the next generation of commercial imaging. DigitalGlobe distinguishes itself through its commitment to excellent customer service, relationships with business partners and open-systems philosophy. More information can be found at www.digitalglobe.com.

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DigitalGlobe is a registered trademark of DigitalGlobe, Inc. GlobeXplorer is a registered trademark of GlobeXplorer LLC.


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Media Contacts for DigitalGlobe:


Chuck Herring
DigitalGlobe
(303) 682-3820
cherring@digitalglobe.com


Linda Lidov (for DigitalGlobe)
Accent Relations
(303) 417-6303
linda@accentrelations.com

ClearMaps Institute of GIS

ClearMaps Institue of GIS is offering an online GIS Certificate and GIS Courses for professionals and interested members of the public to take at their own pace. Courses are taught by qualified professionals working in the GIS field.

Qualified individuals may apply for course exemptions based on education and experience. Courses include an Intro to GIS, Mobile GIS, Municipal Applications, Independent Study, Data Mining, and Career Building.