ClueTrust, based in Reston, Va., specialises in developing geospatial tools for the Macintosh and iOS devices. With the integration of LizardTech’s MG4 DSDK, CartoMobile customers will have the ability to easily view their MrSID formatted imagery on their iOS devices such as the iPhone® and the new iPad® without the need for any external conversion prior to loading. Optimized for the retina display of the new iPad, CartoMobile enables users unparalleled access to their high resolution imagery for the most detailed data collection expeditions.

Gaige B. Paulsen, CEO at ClueTrust, anticipates this integration will be very well received by users of CartoMobile. He notes, “As the first mobile GIS vendor to support viewing of MrSID Generation 4 files, we’re thrilled at the opportunity to work with LizardTech to provide broader access to high resolution imagery for iOS users.”

“We’re pleased with this integration as it confirms LizardTech’s commitment to our customers in enabling them to use our product in as many other applications as possible,” said Jon Skiffington, director of product management. “Now CartoMobile users will be able to use MrSID compression to carry imagery of larger areas and at higher resolution in the same space.”

About ClueTrust

ClueTrust relaunched commercial GIS on the Macintosh in 2009 by releasing Cartographica®, an OS X-native GIS which is available at macgis.com. Cartographica provides extensive import and export, integrated projection management, intuitive exploration, and powerful analysis. In January 2011, ClueTrust brought interactive GIS and geospatial field data entry to the iPhone and iPad with CartoMobile® which is available on the App Store® and is available in English, French, and Spanish. More information about Cartographica and CartoMobile are available at macgis.com.

LizardTech representatives are available in booth 227 of the ASPRS Annual Conference, held this week in Sacramento, USA, to answer any questions pertaining to the updated SDK. They will also be conducting demonstrations of GeoExpress software, which enables geospatial professionals to compress and manipulate satellite and aerial imagery, Express Server software for high-performance delivery and publication, and Lidar Compressor software, which turns giant point cloud datasets into efficient MrSID files.

TerraGo Publisher and Composer v.6 software creates GeoPDF maps that are automatically enabled for dynamic updates and sharing by anyone, anywhere using the TerraGo Toolbar and Adobe Reader.

Click toDOWNLOAD TRIAL to download free Composer trial software. Composer customers who hold licenses that are currently on maintenance will receive a separate email with information about upgrading and installing the new v.6 software.

Composer customers who hold licenses that are currently on maintenance will receive information about upgrading and installing the new v.6 software.

The new v.6 TerraGo Toolbar brings essential TerraGo functionality that can be used with any conventional geospatial PDF making Toolbar the new application of choice for viewing and interacting with georeferenced PDF maps and imagery from a wide range of sources.

The new TerraGo Toolbar (as well as Composer) also provides users with advanced field data collection and collaboration capabilities through easy-to-create, simple geoforms.

Click TO DOWNLOAD the free Toolbar v.6.

Full details of the competition can be found on the TSB website (http://www.innovateuk.org/content/competition/water-security.ashx) but in brief the key points are:

Challenge

To save 100 Mega litres of water per day from the “blue” water cycle within a defined global market (NB this is allot of water!)

Funding

£4m (+£0.5 for space) available for :

Feasibility studies: SME led 3-6 month duration 100K funding at 75% total project cost

Collaborative R&D projects: 12-36 month duration £500k funding at 50% total project cost

Dates

Opens 19th March, deadline for applications 2 May

Briefing day 28th March (London)

Who is the fastest? Who is the strongest? Who is the best?

These three questions dominated every sport we talked about.

And whilst I assumed that the last question would be a summary of the first two, we quickly discovered that this was not always the case.

The fastest and strongest are measured in seconds, kilograms or Atlas stones (World’s Strongest Man). This data gives you the winner. Here to there in the fastest time? Congratulations, you’ve come first. Easy.

Except that it wasn’t. My six year old is a motor sport fanatic. Need to know last year’s world championship final standings? Who won which Grand Prix? Just ask.

So surely world champion Sebastian Vettel is the best? Nope, that would be Lewis Hamilton, who finished in fifth. Not even a discussion.

It was the same with bikes. 2011 MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner must the best. Once the laughter had died down, it was explained slowly to me that that of course was Valentino Rossi. He came seventh.

Why were these two the best when they hadn’t won?

‘They just are’ was the less than illuminating response.

Of course they have been the best; Hamilton won the championship in 2008. Rossi has won seven times, only Agostini has ever achieved one more.

But even though these wins were some time ago (in Hamilton’s case, half his biggest fan’s lifetime ago!) they continue to be the best.

I am sure someone with the time and the inclination would provide a list of perfectly valid reasons for this perception but I think ‘they just are’ is just as important as anything they would come up with.

Gut feel reactions rule our lives. Why is that the car I want? Why do I drink Coke over Pepsi? Why do I want all my computer equipment to be bright white?

Because someone spent a long time thinking about how to influence my gut. And how it thinks.

Founded in 1992, LizardTech pioneered the MrSID® file format, which became the de facto standard among the geospatial community.

Before MrSID came along, dealing with geospatial imagery required specialized workstations, since datasets that were hundreds of megabytes in size were completely unwieldy, and imagery resolution was in the tens of meters. Imagery was practically unusable. The introduction of the MrSID format in 1992, which compressed georeferenced image data at high ratios without sacrificing the visual quality of the image, opened up the field of geospatial image use.

“I think the key to our success is that we listen to our customers and provide quality software that’s in demand, said Jon Skiffington, director of product management. “At the end of the day it’s all about what our customers want and need, and developing a file format that’s been accepted by the majority of the geospatial community is the greatest achievement of all.”

At the Esri Federal GIS Conference Jon will be on hand to answer any questions pertaining to the history of the company. He will also be conducting demonstrations of GeoExpress® software, which enables geospatial professionals to compress and manipulate satellite and aerial imagery, Express Server® software for high-performance delivery and publication, and LiDAR Compressor™ software, which turns giant point cloud datasets into efficient MrSID files.

The free GeoViewer application enables users to view data stored on the iPad. GeoViewer supports MrSID® and JPEG 2000 formats and includes measurement functionality as well as geolocation support. The user friendly interface includes intuitive tools for band selection and coordinate display.

“The free GeoViewer application for iPad is going to make a lot of our customers happy, as it’s been something that has been frequently requested in the recent months,” said Jon Skiffington, director of product management. “Now our customers will be able to view a variety of formats like MrSID and JPEG 2000, as well as vector files. It’s easy to use, fast and efficient.”

To download GeoViewer for iPad visit the LizardTech website: www.lizardtech.com/products/gv

To be fair, I wasnt too surprised since I had punched it recently. It’s a way of dealing with difficulties.

“Oh, well guess you’ll have to put in a new one, I’ll leave it with you”

“Sorry sir, I can’t do that now, you’ll have to order one and once it arrives, I will come back out and fit it”

“You didn’t bring one with you?”

“No”

“But you knew you were coming out to fix a hand dryer”

“Yes”

“And in the past have you been able to fix them all?”

“No”

“So it could have been that you couldn’t fix ours and it would need replacing”

“Yes”

“But you didn’t bring a new one?”

“No. We have processes that we have to follow sir. If we cant fix your hand dryer, you have to order a new one, it gets sent out to you, then we come back out to replace it”

So one day without a hand dryer becomes more than a week without a hand dryer.

Not because of anything we did (if you ignore punching the thing in the first place) but because of our suppplier’s processes.

I thought about this as I swiped my own shopping in the supermarket.

In the boom years, supplier efficiency (or in English, making suppliers as much money as possible) trumped customer service because another customer would be along in a minute.

Enough customers didn’t mind working for themselves.

As times get tougher, the balance shifts.

Customers will start to demand more. Because they can.

Marketing is not just writing press releases. Every time you connect with a client, you are marketing your company.

If you connect through a process that is designed to make your life simpler or more profitable, you may not be communicating with that client for much longer.

King customer is back.

Time to change.

Follow @QuarryAli

BARSC is an industry association dedicated to the promotion of the interests of all commercial companies involved with remote sensing technology throughout the United Kingdom.

“I am delighted to welcome LizardTech as members of BARSC and am confident that they will find membership of great value for the access it will give to information, people and organisations engaged in relevant activities in the UK,” said Chetan Pradhan BARSC chairman. “BARSC’s members will in turn gain access to the innovative technologies developed and marketed by LizardTech. I am very pleased to see BARSC’s membership continue to grow, adding new dimensions to its portfolio of member capabilities in this way.”

“We’re excited to be joining BARSC, an association known for their support of organisations who work with remote sensing technology and data,” said Kelly Downs, director of sales. “As leaders in creating software for compressing, manipulating and distributing data, we look forward to sharing our knowledge and expertise with other BARSC members as well as gaining access to the information available exclusively to member firms.”

As members LizardTech will now benefit from invitations to regular events that, in the past have included presentations from senior staff of ESA, the UK Space Agency, NCEO, and the like. Regular information emails detailing relevant industry events and, most importantly, eligibility to attend the renowned BARSC Annual Lunch.

Membership in BARSC is open to all remote sensing organisations, no matter their size, with offices in the United Kingdom. LizardTech’s London EMEA office is run and managed by geo-sales and marketing agency Quarry One Eleven.

For more information about LizardTech’s geospatial software products, visit www.lizardtech.com

It is a simple example of supply (24 available hours in one day) and demand (everyone wants something from you). Why do they make economics so complicated on the news?

Don’t think I am whining though; being in demand is no bad thing.

Demand is what everyone wants to be in.

Oscar Wilde’s quip that ‘the only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about’ should be translated into Latin and used as the motto of social media marketing campaigns.

But there is being talked about and being talked about.

Today’s Times carried Murad Ahmed’s thoughts on how Twitter will convert its ubiquity into revenue. It’s a good article (which I cant link to so you’ll have to trust me on that).

Advertising companies are using Twitter for real time analysis of marketing campaigns.

Companies, celebrities, people (I think celebrities and people have some common ground), all want to be talked about on Twitter.

When Twitter has over 100 million users, why wouldn’t you?

Well if I had Cilla Black’s telephone number, I would phone and ask her.

She is trending as I write – for non-Twitter users who don’t understand this, it means you really should start using that laptop / iPad for something else; balancing a table possibly.

But no one seems to know why she is trending and so people have started to guess.

The most popular of these guesses is typified by @stevegw; “Saw her trending, so just assumed Cilla Black had died…”

As more people guess and more people guess that she has died, the higher Cilla Black is climbing in the trending league.

And the deader she becomes.

Being talked about is great. Being talked about being dead is not great for future bookings.

When someone runs into your office and says you need to be on Twitter, understand that they are right.

You do need to have a Twitter account.

Then stop and work out why you need a Twitter account.