Newsletters
LizardTales Newsletter – June 2006
From The CEO
Dear Customers and Partners,
In January we introduced GeoExpress 6 as a response to customer demand for easier image manipulation and editing of MrSID and JPEG 2000 files. Mission critical tasks like reprojecting and color balancing can now be accomplished without the time-consuming process of moving the files through multiple applications or decompressing and compressing large geospatial images back and forth. GeoExpress 6 also includes seamless integration with Oracle Spatial databases.
In March of last year we told you about our partnership with Oracle and developments that would enable customers to store MrSID and JPEG 2000 files natively in Oracle Geospatial 10gR2. This quarter, we introduced you to LizardTech’s Spatial Express and new functionality making it easier than ever to manage large geospatial images within Oracle Spatial without creating expensive pyramids and to dramatically reduce image storage space requirements. You will see more exciting developments from LizardTech through our partnership with Oracle in the coming quarters as we integrate LizardTech’s Express Server with Oracle Spatial, so stay tuned.
On the document imaging front, at the end of 2005 we announced a partnership with North American Publishing Corporation to bring digital replicas of their magazines online using LizardTech’s DjVu document compression technology. This partnership continues to make DjVu stand out as the most efficient and cost effective solution for delivering exact digital replicas of print publications such as newspapers and magazines to subscribers and readers.
Please visit us at Booth #511 at ESRI in August to learn about all the new developments for the geospatial industry, and bookmark our Web site (www.lizardtech.com) for the latest on our document imaging and DjVu technology.
Finally, I would like to announce that I am transitioning my day-to-day responsibilities at LizardTech to Jim White, who is becoming the general manager of the LizardTech Division of Celartem Inc., as I am returning to my home town in Barcelona and moving from CEO to chairman of the board of directors of Celartem Inc. Jim has been with the company for eight years and came to LizardTech from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he led the group that originally developed the MrSID technology. He has been a tremendous asset to the company all these years and having him take on this role gives me the great comfort of knowing that the company is in the best hands possible.
In the past three years since LizardTech was acquired we have experienced a great transformation, we had a record revenue year for our geospatial product line in 2004 and we are on the way to breaking that record again this year. In March 2005 we accomplished another milestone with the integration with our sister company Extensis in Portland. These last three years, I have been extremely fortunate in having had the opportunity to work with such a talented and enthusiastic group of professionals and with such great products and technologies. I look forward to continuing to serve the company in my new role.
Best regards,
Carlos
From Jim White, General Manager
I would like to take this opportunity to say just how excited I am to be taking on the new role of general manager. As we near the end of fiscal year 2006, it is apparent that the demand for our products has strengthened; our fourth-quarter performance reflects strong execution against our strategy of delivering premium software solutions. We remain focused on our core values of nurturing long-term customer relationships and fostering employee professional growth. I want to extend my appreciation to all of our customers and resellers for their continued support and commitment. I would also like to recognize Carlos publicly for his unwavering commitment to LizardTech over the last three years and express my gratitude that he will remain on as Chairman of the Board. I look forward to working with all of you to continue building on the company’s strengths and ensure further success and growth in fiscal year 2007.
Geospatial
Version 6.0 of GeoExpress, LizardTech’s flagship product, was released earlier this year. New features introduced in this version include color balancing for new or existing images, advanced area of interest encoding, and the ability to integrate with Oracle Spatial. Here are some tips and tricks you may not know about GeoExpress.
- Want to quickly manipulate your SID imagery? Try optimizing it! GeoExpress includes an image optimizer that helps you quickly recompress or crop existing SID imagery for a project. Optimizing your imagery is much faster than recompressing it.
- If you need to retain the fidelity of your original image, but also would like to save on file size, try encoding your imagery losslessly. The compression ratio for lossless images varies depending on the characteristics of the original image, but typically you can reduce the size of the image by 20% to 50% without “throwing any information away.”
- Reprojection capabilities have been in GeoExpress for quite some time, but did you know that you can assign custom coordinate systems in GeoExpress? You can even use existing coordinate system files from other applications that use Well Known Text strings, or WKTs. The next time you need to reproject an image, try selecting “Use Custom WKT” and then choose “Add a new WKT.” You can either paste a string in the dialog box, or browse to an existing file. For users in counties or regions that use coordinate systems that are not supported in major coordinate databases, you can now easily work with your imagery in GeoExpress!
- Did you know that you can composite grayscale imagery together in GeoExpress to make an RGB image? From the main GeoExpress screen, try selecting “Project > Add color composite image to encode…”.
- LizardTech always uses internal codenames for products during development. Want to see what we used for GeoExpress 6.0? Try holding down CTRL+SHIFT when selecting “Help > About GeoExpress…”
Learn more about the powerful image editing and manipulation tools in
GeoExpress 6.
At the beginning of May we introduced support for both JPEG 2000 and MrSID imagery in LizardTech’s Spatial Express, a plug-in for Oracle Spatial 10gR2 that adds native support for the efficient storage, management, and retrieval of large raster datasets. Click here to learn more about Spatial Express.
LizardTech has deployed a new demonstration server to showcase Express Server’s WMS capabilities at http://wms.lizardtech.com. Along with sample datasets that can be used in any WMS client, this site also provides a user forum where Express Server users can exchange tips and tricks. Finally, wms.lizardtech.com provides cutting edge demonstrations of what LizardTech is working on, including fast Web viewers and “mashups,” combinations of different datasets in a single view.
Earlier in June, LizardTech released updates to the PDFtoDjVu and Virtual Print Driver applications. These updates include bug fixes to some conversion and page printing issues and updated documentation.
Where is LizardTech?
Upcoming Events:
Kentucky GIS Conference
July 17-19, 2006
GeoWeb
July 24-28, 2006
ESRI International User Conference
August 8-10, 2006, LizardTech Booth #511
NW GIS User Conference
September 13-15, 2006
GIS in the Rockies
September 13-15, 2006
GITA Oil & Gas Conference
September 18-20, 2006
Ohio GIS Conference
September 20-22, 2006
URISA
September 26-29, 2006
Complete schedule of LizardTech Events.
Case Studies
Recently the City of Rockville upgraded to GeoExpress 6 to take advantage of the floating license offered in version 6. The floating license enables Rockville to install GeoExpress on the local machine (client) of any team member who may need to perform image processing or compression, no matter how infrequently. The License Manager, installed optionally on any networked computer as part of the GeoExpress installation, acts as a server, distributing temporary licenses to other clients at the time of use, allowing multiple simultaneous users up to the number of purchased licenses. When a user is finished using the software, the license associated with that client is “returned” to the License Manager and becomes available for the next client. Read the complete case study here.
Employment Opportunities
LizardTech is always seeking great talent. To learn more about current opportunities to join a dedicated, talented and close-knit team, please visit: Jobs at LizardTech.
