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.

We’re pretty pumped. Why? Well, we always are — that’s how we make such great software. But in particular, our white paper on the MrSID Generation 4 (MG4™) technology has been republished by the good folks at GeoPlace.com, so that word about the format’s new features — support for multispectral imagery, alpha band transparency, support for LiDAR point cloud data and improved mosaics — can reach an even wider audience of users.

If you haven’t seen it yet we encourage you to read it and learn about the capabilities of LizardTech’s latest version of the format that first made it possible for geospatial professionals to use high resolution imagery in their applications and that continues to evolve with advancements in geospatial imaging.

Visit GeoPlace.com, look for the section “White Papers” in the main column on the home page, and click Download now.

LizardTech’s business is not only about compression ratios and lossless quality; it’s about making our customers’ jobs easier by providing the best GIS solutions around while still taking into account their current operations. While much of our team’s time during the last ten months has been spent building and launching LizardTech’s GeoExpress® and Express Server® software products, we’ve also worked (and continue to work) hard to ensure that these products remain compatible with other commonly used GIS software.

Based on your feedback, we know many of you manage workflows that include one or more pieces of Esri software and it is increasingly important for both LizardTech and Esri technologies to integrate seamlessly together. Supported file formats allow projects to run smoothly and make sharing data faster and more efficient. Everyone wins.

To that end, LizardTech has recently made available a free plug-in for interoperability between our Express Server and Esri’s server product, ArcIMS. Express Server 7 came on the scene in July offering exciting features such as added support for raster images encoded to MrSID Generation 4 (MG4™) format and the option to install as a 64-bit application. Now when used together, Express Server makes viewing images via ArcIMS up to 25 times faster!

We also offer free plug-ins that add support for MG4 raster data files in Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop version 9.3.1 and 10. Now Esri’s Arc users can harness the benefits of the new MG4 files that GeoExpress 8 produces, including support for compressing hyperspectral data allowing users to compress up to 255 bands of geospatial data.

You can download the plug-ins for ArcIMS, ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 and ArcGIS Desktop 10 here.

We greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future releases, so thank you, and keep it coming!