| ERDAS Donates Software to Global Forest Watch
ERDAS Inc. is donating ERDAS IMAGINEª geographic imaging software to support the Global Forest Watch program, an initiative launched last month by the World Resources Institute to map and publicly document forest development activities around the world.
"Global Forest Watch is undoubtedly the most important forest resources monitoring program underway in the world today because it puts accurate, up-to-date information on the conditions of forests worldwide into the public domain," said ERDAS Vice President Bruce Rado. "The program tracks how well forest development projects are abiding by established national laws."
ERDAS IMAGINE software will be used by Global Forest Watch personnel and partners this year in Russia, Canada, Venezuela, Chile and the United States. They will use the ERDAS products as their primary software used in the project to analyze satellite imagery to map the precise extent and condition of forests and to identify threats such as logging, mining, road building and other forest development.
"ERDAS was on our wish list for the program, and we are grateful they are participating," said Dirk Bryant, Director of Global Forest Watch. "A big part of this program is to bridge the digital divide and put tools like ERDAS IMAGINE into the hands of our partners in areas where technology is lacking."
ERDAS has agreed to contribute software as well as training and technical support. The packages included in the contribution are IMAGINE Professionalª, IMAGINE Vector Moduleª, IMAGINE OrthoBASEª, IMAGINE VirtualGISª and Stereo Analyst.
For more information about Global Forest Watch, contact Peter Leimgruber: tel.: +1 202-729-7704 or E-mail: [email protected]. For more information about ERDAS' geographic imaging products and services, contact ERDAS: tel.: +1 404-248-9000, toll free: +1 877 GO ERDAS (463-7327), or visit www.erdas.com .
MapInfo Telecommunications Data Now Available in Oracle Format
MapInfo Corporation announced that three of its best-selling telecommunications data products, MapInfo¨ ExchangInfo PLUSª, MapInfo¨ RateCenterInfoª, and MapInfo¨ StreetProª, are now available in Oracle format. MapInfo also announced the release of the 2000 MapInfo Telecommunications Products and Solutions Catalog. The 20-page, full color catalog includes more than 25 new wireless, customer service and network planning products and solutions designed specifically for the telecommunications industry. MapInfo's new Oracle-format data products will also be showcased in the catalog.
"As part of our ongoing relationship with Oracle, we are now able to offer MapInfo telecom data products in Oracle format. This year, MapInfo's telecommunications catalog includes these products along with dozens of other new products and solutions, ranging from wireless network planning tools to comprehensive customer service solutions," said Debra Magee, telecommunications marketing manager at MapInfo.
MapInfo's location-based solutions enable telecommunications companies to differentiate themselves in today's highly competitive market by providing superior customer service and optimal service offerings based on where their customers reside.
For more Information go to: www.mapinfo.com.
MapInfo Invests in 1Call4All, An Online Hub for Consumers and Home Service Providers
MapInfo Corporation announced an investment in 1Call4All.com, an e-commerce Internet service that provides a single, convenient source for consumers across the United States. The service enables Web consumers to research and obtain home services, and is a medium for service providers to efficiently reach consumers. MapInfo's investment is in the form of software and data which will run on Oracle8i to power the Web site.
The 1Call4All.com service, developed by 1DataWay, Inc. and founder Alethea Snyder, brings consumers and providers across the nation together on one Web site. While benefiting individual consumers, 1Call4All also provides a business-to-business program that uses the accessibility and convenience of the Web to assist service providers in establishing and maintaining better, more profitable relationships with partners in the energy, telecom, information, television and other home services sectors.
"1Call4All is yet another example of MapInfo's e-CRM initiative, helping new e-businesses create and maintain better relationships with consumer and business customers by offering location-based services," said John Cavalier, president and CEO, MapInfo Corporation. "Our investment in 1Call4All reinforces MapInfo's commitment to license our technology to a broad range of e-commerce companies on Oracle8 in order to help them provide the best services possible."
For more Information go to: www.mapinfo.com.
NORTHWOOD NAME CHANGE SIGNALS NEW FOCUS
Northwood Geoscience Ltd. has changed its name to Northwood Technologies Inc. The company can now be found on the Internet at www.northwoodtec.com.
According to president Johannes R. Hill, the renaming of the company is a natural evolution, and reflects the company's strength as a leading developer of innovative spatial information management (SIM) software products. "Recognizing the pace at which our software products are being adopted outside the traditional geoscience fields, we are repositioning the company to address new market opportunities in the spatial technology marketplace. Today, we are helping customers in business sectors such as the fast-growing wireless telecommunications industry to not only manage information that has a geographic component but also to share that information across the enterprise and over the Internet. Moreover, our software development tools are playing a key role in extending the reach of spatial technology and facilitating the integration of spatial information into new custom applications."
As the developer of deciBel Planner¨, Vertical Mapperª and Virtual Frontierª, Northwood serves a wide range of market sectors including wireless telecommunications, crime prevention, health care, mineral exploration, agriculture, business marketing, environmental monitoring, and municipal planning. The company's grid-based technology offers almost unlimited opportunities to develop industry-specific SIM applications, especially for the MapInfo platform.
For more information, contact: Jane Frarey Wark, [email protected]
Announcing ArcLogistics Route 2
ESRI announced ArcLogistics Route 2, a major new release of its desktop routing and scheduling solution.
ArcLogistics Route 2 includes expanded solver functionality, multiple street data extractions, improved geocoding tools, and higher-quality street data. According to Don Weigel, ArcLogistics Route product manager, "We had a successful first year, and the software has filled a real need in the market. We listened to our users and implemented many of their suggestions in this release to make ArcLogistics Route an even more integral part of their day-to-day operation."
In version 2, ArcLogistics Route accommodates more routing routines by allowing users to specify route renewal points for reloading or unloading. Vehicles that need to make a stop during a route benefit greatly from this new feature because it lets them account for that stop on their original route. ArcLogistics Route 2 also allows users to decide exactly how long a route lasts, determine lunchtime within a time window, give orders and vehicles as many specialties as they want, and many more features not available in earlier versions of the software.
ArcLogistics Route 2 includes Dynamap/Transportation, the latest street data from GDT. Shipped in NAD 83 format, Dynamap/Transportation includes node elevations and features one-way streets, physical turn restrictions, improved ramp structures, calculated speed information, and a geocodable database. ESRI has also introduced a new street data purchasing model to accommodate users' needs for more street data. In ArcLogistics Route 2, users can license 50 percent more street data or extract multiple street data to operate on a single installation.
For more information, please visit ESRI on the Web at www.esri.com/arclogistics, contact your ESRI regional office, or call ESRI at 1-800-447-9778. Outside of the United States contact your local ESRI distributor-visit www.esri.com/international for a current distributor list.
Taiwan Data Available From RITI
Reading Information Technology Inc. (RITI), Reading, Massachusetts, announced the release of current updated Taiwan data that includes demographic, geo-coded street and political boundary data etc. for marketing and service industries to identify changes and trends. Data is available in English and derived from the latest Taiwan census bureau and independent sources.
For more information: Contact: Hung Pham, Tel/ 781-942-1655, Ext. 17, Fax/ 781-942-2161, Internet/ www.riti.com, E-mail: [email protected]
R2V NEW VERSION RELEASED
ABLE SOFTWARE announced a new release of R2V (Version 5.0.3), its automated raster to vector conversion software for mapping and GIS data capture applications used in more than 60 countries.
R2V supports both color and black/white images in TIFF, GeoTIFF or BMP formats and converts the image to vector format automatically. It exports vector file formats to ArcView Shapefile, Arc/Info Generate file, MapInfo MIF/MID, AutoCAD DXF and MapGuide SDL file. Labeled contour lines can be used to create 3D DEM or grid file for 3D visualization and analysis.
This new release includes performance improvements to the fully automatic raster to vector conversion function to vectorize different map types including topographic and parcel maps. Closed polygons are automatically created from line segments after being vectorized.
A new proprietary image fusion function is implemented to colorize a high resolution greyscale image using color information from low resolution multi-spectral images. Non-standard raw binary images can now be imported using the new image import function. The image registration function has been improved to use either bi-linear or triangulation method for image geometric transformation.
The new image mosaic function provides a simple layout interface for creating a seamless mosaic image from multiple sub images. Most image types, including 1-bit monochrome, 8-bit greyscale and 8 or 24-bit color images are supported. Users with small format scanners can now scan smaller sections and merge them together for vectorization and other processing.
This new release is free of charge to all current R2V users and can be downloaded from Able Software's website at (http://www.ablesw.com/r2v).
The list price for R2V is US$1495 per license. Educational price is US$960. A fully functioning demo version is available from Able Software's website.
For more information, contact: Y. Ted Wu, Able Software Corp. Tel: 781-862-2804, Fax: 781-862-2640, Email: [email protected]
PECO Selects Intergraph For Fully Integrated Outage Management System
Intergraph Corporation, announced that Philadelphia-based PECO Energy Company has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Intergraph for the deployment of its InServiceª Suite for an integrated outage management system (OMS). PECO, one of the largest distribution companies in the United States, began its competitive evaluation for an outage management system shortly after the second worst storm in the company's history, Hurricane Floyd, hit their service territory in September, 1999.This intense storm resulted in outage to over 440,000 of PECO's 1.58 million customers.
Tony Bazzani, manager of operations planning and analysis at PECO, says,"Customers are demanding and deserve a higher level of safe, reliable service. In a Customer Choice environment PECO remains focused on reliability and customer needs especially when our system is impacted by weather events. The OMS will help manage all phases of our outages.
The outage prediction capabilities, crew dispatch and management tools, automatic report generator via the web will be great new tools as we strive toward continuous improvement." Bazzani adds, "The completeness of the products attracted us to Intergraph's solution."
PECO will use Intergraph's FRAMME to create a GIS facilities model that will provide electrical connectivity to the InService OMS. Intergraph will also manage the data migration effort from Analytical Surveys Inc.
InService will receive incoming calls from PECO's Customer Information System regarding power outages and automatically associate these calls with the landbase and electric facilities network model. An inference engine within InService groups these calls together and predicts the electrical device that is the probable cause of failure. The system provides dispatchers with a geographical view of the electric network and customer call locations, as well as comprehensive data views to manage calls and dispatch crews and resources for quick and safe restoration of power.
For more information, contact: Stephanie Ferree (US), (256) 730-8900 , [email protected]
FME¨ Themes Extends ArcView's Data Access Capabilities
New ArcView Extension Adds Ability to View and Read for over 50 data formats - Safe Software announced the release of FME Themes for ArcView, an ArcView Extension that allows ArcView users to directly view and read over 50 leading GIS, CAD and database formats.
"We use FME Themes with Teranet's GeoServerª - our turn-key spatial appliance that uses Oracle 8 Spatial as its data engine," said Antoni Wisniowski, Program Manager, Ontario Land Information Services at Teranet Enterprises Inc. "FME Themes ensures that we can meet the interoperability needs of our clients using ArcView. The fact that FME Themes was developed by Safe Software gives us the confidence to recommend it to our clients as a robust and high quality access solution," he added. More about FME Themes
FME Themes for ArcView is an FME Suite member. Five versions of FME Suite are available with increasing levels of data format support. The FME Suite that is purchased determines the data formats that FME Themes can view and read. FME Themes is invoked from the extensions menu in ArcView. Once invoked, ArcView users have direct read access to data in any supported format through the FME Themes dialogue box.
Over 50 GIS, CAD and database formats are supported including: DGN, DTED, DXF, DWG, GenaMap, MIF/MID, MGE, NTF, NTX, SDTS, TAB, TIGER, OGDI, Oracle 8i Spatial, Spatialware, and S-57.
Single license pricing starts at $499. Substantial volume discounts are available. FME Themes for ArcView is available now through ESRI USA, other authorized FME resellers and direct from Safe Software, Inc.
For more information, visit www.safe.com or call Safe Software, Inc., Tel: 604-501-9985
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