Our director of product management, Jon Skiffington, was ready to meet the press at the recent Esri International User Conference in San Diego. Which was a good thing, because the press showed up in the form of Sanjay Gangal of GISCafé and Alexis Brumm of Point of Beginning (POB) Magazine.
First, here’s a video of Jon’s chat with Sanjay, in which he wastes no time dishing up a very accessible one-minute primer on our product line, and even talks a little about the upcoming release of a new version of our Express Server product.
Sanjay Gangal of GIS Café interviews Jon on the show floor.
And because it’s always good to get a second opinion, here’s Jon responding to questions posed by Alexis. She pitches them right over the plate (what makes the MrSID software so popular, which of our products have drawn the most interest and why, and how are software developments affecting the market?) and Jon smacks them all into the outfield. We thought he came pretty well prepared, and in fact listening to his answers made us realize afresh why it’s so cool to be able to say we’ve been a part of LizardTech’s 20-year (so far) history.
Jon talking with Alexis Brumm of Point of Beginning Magazine.
If you’re using the MrSID format you’re a part of that history, too. If you’re not, well…it’s not too late. LizardTech plans to be making a lot more history in the years to come, and you might find that our geospatial software products could make your workflow easier or save you time and money right now, today! Contact your local LizardTech representative to become a part of the epic saga.
John Warden, senior geospatial engineer at Thermopylae Sciences and Technology, won the iPad in our contest at the Esri User Conference in San Diego two and a half weeks ago. As part of our celebration this year of twenty years of MrSID as a technology and of LizardTech as a company, we had asked folks to write in telling us how they had benefited from or been supported by the MrSID format. Names were then randomly selected from among the entries.
Mr. Warden wrote:
“A few months after starting my job as the geospatial engineer for our company, the earthquake hit Haiti. We were involved in supporting relief efforts by creating a data sharing platform. Imagery was downloaded around the clock, some satellite imagery and some aerial imagery. One of the sets of aerial imagery had significant overlap and was in TIFF format, we had hundreds of gigabytes contained in thousands of files… until I ran it through my LizardTech software [GeoExpress], reducing the overall size to a few gigabytes of data in less than a dozen files.”
He says he plans to take his new iPad everywhere he goes, which will probably provoke jealousy in his plastic LizardTech lizard, which has to stay behind on top of his computer monitor.
Our two other winners, who each took away a $50 Amazon gift card, are Wayne Scribbins, geospatial coordinator for the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and Paul Huppé, applications developer at the Data Management Division of Natural Resources Canada. You can read their testimony and that of others who wrote in to wish MrSID and LizardTech a happy twentieth anniversary here: http://www.lizardtech.com/anniversary/
Thanks to all who participated in our contest, and to all who have supported LizardTech over the past two decades.
The 2012 Esri International User Conference is coming up later this month and LizardTech will be there. We’re an Imagery sponsor of the conference, and you can find us at Booth #1317 in the Imagery Island. We’ll be busy, too:
This year MrSID turns 20 years old, and we’re holding a contest where customers (like you!) give us a sentence or two (or a paragraph or two, or a page or two) about what MrSID has meant to you or your organization, how MrSID has come to your aid — saved your job or your marriage, that sort of thing – or just how MrSID has made doing your work easier. Details of this contest are here: http://www.lizardtech.com/anniversary/
Jon Skiffington, our director of product management, will be giving a presentation about managing large imagery and LiDAR datasets in the Imagery Island Theatre on Tuesday, July 24 at 3 p.m.
Our long-time friend and customer John Peterson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Geospatial Unit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will give a Lightning Talk about using LizardTech’s geospatial products as part of his organizations’ Enterpriese GIS Viewer workflow in SDCC, Room 28D on Tuesday, July 24 at 8:30 a.m. More information about that here: http://www.esri.com/industries/map-chart-dataproduction/imagery/imagery-uc.html
You know Lizards are gregarious creatures, and we’ll have a booth at the Imagery Social on Wednesday, July 25 from 6 – 8 p.m in the Upper Level City Side Corridor. More information about that here: http://www.esri.com/imageryUC
We hope we’ll see you for some or all of these events. As always we’ll be showcasing our line of geospatial software products — GeoExpress for compressing and minipulating satellite and aerial imagery, Express Server for high-performance delivery and publication, and LiDAR Compressor for turning giant point cloud datasets into efficient MrSID files.
If you’ve ever wondered about our Express Server product — what it is, what it does, how it works — relief has finally arrived. Not that you couldn’t always just call or email us and bat the subject around with a sales representative (you still can), but for those shy persons among you and those of you who like to do research before committing yourselves to conversation, you can now read all about Express Server image serving software in the quiet of your own browser.
GeoPlace.com has published a new LizardTech white paper titled “How Express Server Software Improves Geospatial Image Delivery”. It provides an overview of what Express Server does, describes how it fits into geospatial workflows, and then dives into some of Express Server’s more amazing features and how they work. We can feel your curiosity brimming over even from where we’re sitting.
Do we describe the different caching strategies that enable Express Server to put pixels in front of users fast, whether or not the imagery is being used to satisfy WMS requests, or being reprojected upon delivery? We sure do.
Do we explain how Express Server knows how to overlap one tile over another in a mosaic when an image’s transparency values get changed in compression? You bet!
Do we show how JPIP-enabled clients can request image data to be streamed across low-bandwidth and even intermittent connections? Of course.
Has MrSID saved your bacon? We’d like to hear about that. The industry standard MrSID file format turns 20 years old this year, and one of the ways we’re celebrating is with a contest.
MrSID debuts in the ’90s, lookin’ sharp.
We’re asking you to send us your story about how MrSID has enabled you to get stuff done (or kept you out of trouble), or about your involvement with any MrSID workflow. In return, you’ll get your name entered for a chance to win an iPad.
Another old MrSID avatar.
Send your anecdote, story, homage, five-act play or other MrSID tribute to “celebrate@lizardtech.com” by July 10th, 2012. Three winners will be selected at random, the first receiving an iPad and the two runner ups each receiving a $50 Amazon.com gift card.
MG4 stands for “MrSID Generation 4″, the latest version.
We’ll announce the winners via Twitter at the Esri Conference in San Diego on July 24th. Our thanks to the geospatial industry for two decades of support!
Zoom is LizardTech's community blog. In Zoom we hope to engage the geospatial community and LizardTech customers in some informal chatter about their workflows, our software, and the whole darn globe.
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