From the Publisher
By Roland Mangold

The Razor and the Razor Blade

This industry has gotten to where it is by selling razors: The geographic information systems, image processing and mapping software. On their own, they are useless - it is not until you add the razor blade - the geographic, spatial, and mapping information and data - that you have a functioning tool.
      For the most part, we have been waiting for the market to buy their razors so that we can sell the blades. However, the blades can be used in other razors such as CAD systems, desktop mapping systems, paint or photoshop type systems, or even hardcopy image maps - not just in a GIS.
      Geographic information systems are actually causing a bottleneck in the growth of use of geographic, spatial, and mapping information. Since so much of the geographic information is produced for the traditional GISs, the providers of this information are missing the biggest markets for their products. Many of these markets would buy the geographic information if it was provided to them in a format that they wanted, such as a CAD system, other mapping systems, hardcopy, or products that incorporate the information with the software.
      There is great markets for geographic information that is combined with viewing or manipulation software that allows you to look at, analyze or work with the geographic information without making a major investment in time, people and money for a full-blown GIS. This the "bic" razor and blade concept of geographic information.
      Regularly, we are seeing more and more of these "plug and play," off the shelf products, coming onto the market. And their attractiveness is that they are very easy to use, the have very wide market appeal, and they are inexpensive.
      Following is sample of three products that I feel epitomizes the "bic" concept. There are others, of course, but space prohibits me from going into all of them, and I happen to have a more intimate perspective on these products.
      "Sure!MAPS RASTER" from Horizons Technology Inc. of San Diego, Calif., is a series of digitized, mosaicked, geo-referenced USGS raster maps that come in scales of 1:250,000 to 1:24,000 with viewing software that allows the user to view, zoom, and pan around to the areas of interest. These maps contain feature information such as lakes, parks, buildings, freeways, roads, golf courses, terrain contours, and more. However, the beauty of this product is that it can stand alone, or can be used to populate a traditional GIS or mapping system. You are able to export the data into many popular GIS, mapping or CAD systems.
     "MapExpert2.0 from DeLorme Mapping, of Freeport, Maine is a seamless map database of the entire United States combined with software that lets users customize, scale and print an unlimited variety of high quality maps for many mapping applications. The database contains up-to-date maps of virtually every location in the country with 12 million streets segments and 1.1 million geographic and manmade features. I personally use MapExpert all the time, and have found that it has pretty much every street in the country. I use it to find the smallest of state and county roads for my fishing and camping trips, as well as for business travel. My only problem with this product is that I cannot take it on the road with me because my notebook computer does not have a CD drive. DeLorme also has the capability to link MapExpert to GPS with their GPS MapKit software.
      "TRUVUE" from TRIFID Corporation, St. Louis, Mo. is an integrated spatial information product of the contiguous United States which contains color image maps, major roads, political boundaries, administrative names and terrain elevations. They use Landsat imagery, with DLGs from the government, and digital terrain elevations combined with a viewing software package which allows you to use the package by itself for your mapping or geographic applications, or it can be integrated into the popular GISs and mapping systems. The neat thing about this product is that you buy just what you need, from a couple hundred square miles to the entire United States.
      These are products that I am personally familiar with. This is not an endorsement. However, I guess you could consider it to be a "pat on the back." I am not a GIS expert like so many of you, but I was able to use them productively with little or no instruction, and I am about as technophobic as the average guy on the street. I see products such as these, and there are others which I am sure are equally as good, that have tremendous potential market appeal. And, I believe that it is products such as these that will drive the geographic information industry to becoming pervasive throughout society.
      We live in a very diverse world, with infinitely diverse needs, and no one system or form of geographic information will satisfy those diverse needs. I put a tremendous amount of hope on products such as these to drive the larger markets for geographic information, and helping professionals, as well as average business people, solve their geographic, spatial and mapping information problems. About the only thing I can't see these products do is give you a nice, clean shave.

Cheers!

Roland Mangold

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