I saw this post from Gizmodo about a potential hard drive shortage and it got me thinking. Everyone talks about storage being cheap, but when you consider how much storage has to be purchased for imagery, not to mention the associated backup, power, and management cost, it adds up to more money than people think. Now combine that with a possible shortage of storage, and it’s a good reminder that compression is very much a part of today’s business strategy.

Just when you were saying to the person in the next cubicle “I don’t see how they could make GeoExpress any better”, along comes GeoExpress 8.5. We’ve been listening to our customers’ feedback again, and one of the things many of our customers asked for was the ability to compress image bands individually.

Done.

We’re still listening.

The latest version of GeoExpress not only enables you to select which bands from a multispectral input image you want to include — and in which order — in your output MG4 file, but allows you to compress individual bands or even groups of bands at specified ratios. So, for example, for MG4 output you can compress the R, G and B bands of your 8-banded source image at 20:1 if you want, while leaving the other five bands lossless. We call these features “band selection” and “per-band compression” and we’re sure that anyone using multispectral imagery will find them to be useful advancements.

There’s more. We streamlined our Coordinate Reference System selection tool so that specifying a CRS for source and output images is easier and takes less time. And for those of you administrating GeoExpress with a license server and floating licenses, version 8.5 gives you greater control over your licenses by allowing you to specify how many of your floating licenses can be checked out as commuters and taken off the network. We also fixed some stuff — you know, little under-the-hood things you probably don’t care about (they’re listed in the Readme file if you do).

All in all, we’re pretty pleased with GeoExpress 8.5, and we’re eager for you to take it out for a drive and tell us what you think. Get the trial download at http://www.lizardtech.com/downloads/trials.php or contact your LizardTech representative.

Okay, NOW we think its impossible for GeoExpress to get any better. Of course, we haven’t yet finished reading our latest batch of customer mail…

LizardTech was invited to participate a week or so ago in the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center’s speaker forum series. The Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC for short) is an interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Wyoming focused on development of geospatial information and technologies and their applications in science, education, government and business. Every Friday they host a guest speaker to come in and discuss technology, business roles in the industry, and career advice.

So bright and early on a beautiful day in September Jeff Young, our business developer, and I drove like “Mario Andretti through Cooter country” from Ft. Collins, Colorado to Laramie, Wyoming to present MrSID technology to graduate students and faculty at UW. Being a student once myself I knew what a big draw free food can be so we ordered in some pizzas for the event. And it’s a good thing because due to road construction enroute we were a wee bit late.

But despite our tardiness the event was a great success. Most of the audience had worked with MrSID files and were eager to learn about the advancements we’d made with the technology in the direction of multi- and hyperspectral support for raster MrSIDs and now MrSID compression for LiDAR data. There was also a big interest in Express Server for delivering MrSID and JPEG 2000 compressed imagery. Jeff and I made a great team. I was able to provide details on the raster aspect of MrSID compression and delivery while he provided elaborate details about MrSID LiDAR compression.

After the presentation, which was very interactive, we were able to talk one on one with some great people. One of the WyGISC researchers came up to introduce himself and let me know that he had pushed his old employer to use MrSID imagery and buy our software in South Dakota. We were invited to come back and participate in WyGEO (http://wygeo.org/) and Pennsylvanian Jeff was even able to pick out a native of his home state by her “accent”.

Our visit also answered a burning question that had come up on the ride up to Laramie. We had passed a herd of what looked to me — after taking my eyes off the road for a nano-second and seeing only a bunch of white, fluffy rear-ends — like antelope. But Jeff disagreed with my analysis and said those butts were too big for antelope and probably belonged to big horn sheep. One of the UW faculty confirmed that it was most likely big horn sheep that we had seen since this was the time of year that they usually migrated through the area.

Take a look at the pictures below and see for yourself – an easy mistake to make, no? Although, I’m sure an antelope wouldn’t appreciate its backside being compared to a big horn sheep’s.

Big horn sheep butts.

Antelope butts. Image by Mary Gordon, used by permission.