Newsletters

LizardTales Newsletter – October 2006

From the General Manager

Jim White

Dear Customers and Partners,

We at LizardTech are following a number of workflow trends, feature requests and new technologies that will impact the arena of geospatial image transmission and storage in the future. Among them are a move towards open standards, a move towards Web services, an increased reliance on wavelet encoded imagery, increasingly distributed network environments, and increased use of databases for storing imagery. Taking a closer look at these trends provides insight that helps us map our product development efforts to the emerging requirements of geospatial imaging:

  • Imagery Availability and Usage - Geospatial imagery is becoming widely available at higher resolutions and lower prices than ever, thanks to the adoption of digital airborne cameras, initiatives like USDA NAIP (National Agriculture Imagery Program), which makes imagery of US counties at high resolution available for just $50 per county, and the investments of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) into commercial satellite companies. In conjunction with these public-sector activities, new consumer offerings like Google Maps/Earth and MSN Virtual Earth are raising the awareness of the usefulness of geospatial imagery to convey information.
  • Open Standards - GIS product offerings are supporting more and more standards-based formats and service APIs, such as the wavelet-based technologies and Web services being defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
  • Wavelet Image Compression - Wavelet encoding technologies continue to be the dominant image compression formats for geospatial imagery. Commercial tools are able to rely on widely-available, robust libraries for complete encode and decode support for wavelet encoded image formats, and related emerging standards such as GMLJP2 are providing needed geospatial metadata support. The result will be that more and more data compressed using wavelet technology will be available and used.
  • OGC Web Services - Major commercial GIS packages have recently added, or are now adding, support for OGC web services such as Web Mapping Services (WMS). Companies on the leading edge are starting to talk about advanced uses for the Web Coverage Service (WCS) for imagery and the Web Feature Service (WFS) for other geospatial data.
  • Open Source - GIS tools increasingly make use of open source components within their architectures. This is especially noticeable with open source projects such as MapServer and PostGIS, and also within the leading ranks of the developer community and their wide acceptance of GDAL.
  • Image Databases - Large collections of image data (multiple terabytes) may require multiple servers, complex metadata indexing, and efficient I/O strategies. Furthermore, these datasets will start to move from single repositories to loosely federated datasets distributed across the Internet.

In response to these trends and in anticipation of ways we can better serve our customers, LizardTech is developing offerings that will take advantage of these trends and the technologies behind them. One of the things I’m most excited about is the prospect of an image server built to satisfy the open standards of OGC Web Services – a server that uses wavelet encoding technologies such as JPEG 2000 and JPIP as its internal storage and exchange formats and is designed for distributed and even peer-to-peer environments.

This image server will offer several compelling advantages for the geospatial community over what they find in the market today. Most obviously, wavelet encoded imagery enables significant reductions in storage and bandwidth requirements. But its benefits go even further; the use of wavelet encoded image formats for native storage within a database means more efficient management of data archives and associated metadata. It can also reduce expensive transcoding requirements. Open standards and public Web services enable this imaging infrastructure to work within both existing and emerging geospatial ecosystems.

For LizardTech and our customers there are significant advantages to be gained by embracing these trends. Preparing for changes in the geospatial community’s expectations and workflows enables our customers to better serve their own end users and positions us well to retain our leading role in the world of wavelet image technology.

All of us at LizardTech are pleased to continue providing the highest quality imaging products and services to the geospatial community, and I personally look forward to interacting with many of you in the months ahead.

Best Regards,
Jim White

 


Geospatial

GeoExpressThe biggest news for LizardTech’s geospatial products was the release of GeoExpress 6.1 in August. We’ve had great success with version 6.0, and we think you’ll be even more excited about the additional features we’ve added. With GeoExpress 6.1, you can now use GML (Geography Markup Language) to represent geospatial metadata in JPEG 2000 imagery. GMLJP2 was approved by the Open Geospatial Consortium earlier this year as the standard way to represent geospatial metadata in a JPEG 2000 image, and will help further interoperability in the future. GeoExpress makes creating GMLJP2 images easy; just choose “JPEG 2000″ as an output format, and GML metadata will be added automatically.

With the launch of GeoExpress 6.0 in January, we introduced some color balancing tools to make it easier for our customers to create eye-pleasing mosaics. However, there were some limitations to this, as GeoExpress 6.0 could only apply uniform corrections within each image. While this works well for many workflows, some of our customers told us that they needed more advanced functionality, and we listened. Now with GeoExpress 6.1, you can perform more advanced color balancing workflows such as vignette, seamline, and tilt correction, all within the GeoExpress workflow you’re already familiar with! Tools like this make it easier than ever before to quickly manipulate and compress imagery for your projects or for delivery to customers.

Finally, GeoExpress 6.1 integrates with LizardTech’s optional Spatial Express plug-in for Oracle Spatial. LizardTech Spatial Express enables you to store your MrSID or JPEG 2000 imagery natively in Oracle Spatial, allowing you to save up to 95% of your disk space by compressing your images as “visually lossless.” Additionally, because the images are stored as efficient wavelets rather than pixels, there is no need to pyramid imagery, meaning you can reduce the time needed to load imagery dramatically. With GeoExpress 6.1 you can now choose to output your imagery directly to an Oracle Spatial database, simply by graphically browsing to the database and table you want to use. Now you can take advantage of the scalability and robustness of Oracle Spatial and the ease of use of GeoExpress to store large raster datasets in a database. Learn more about LizardTech Spatial Express and the advantages of using a database to store raster images.

Document ExpressIn July, we released version 6.1 of the DjVu Browser Plug-in. There were several important fixes and enhancements in this release but the real news was “Secure DjVu.”

Secure DjVu (“SDjVu”) is available now. The SDjVuAdmin tool converts existing DjVu files to their secure counterparts. The current Windows DjVu Browser Plug-in reads both types of files. Internally, SDjVu uses 32-bit Blowfish encryption to password-protect each document and provide role-based and/or time-based access. Externally, a Secure DjVu file is as light and nimble as a regular DjVu file. Used by companies like Condé Nast Publications, BAE Systems, Nikon and most recently the National Archives of Singapore, SDjVu is an appealing option for large organizations which must make high-value or time-sensitive content very accessible. Inquiries should be directed to sales@lizardtech.com.


Where is LizardTech?

South Florida GIS Expo
October 5-6, 2006 - Palm Beach County Convention Center, West Palm Beach, FL

New York State GIS Conference
October 23-24, 2006 - Crowne Plaza Resort and Golf Club, Lake Placid, NY

MAPPS/ASPRS 2006 Specialty Conference
November 6-10, 2006 - San Antonio, TX

GEOINT Symposium
November 13-16, 2006 - Orlando, FL

Complete schedule of LizardTech Events.


Customer Wins and Case Studies

This quarter we added two more customer success stories showcasing the benefits our geospatial products bring to our valued customers.

The first success story comes from the State of Maine’s Department of Transportation and it showcases how the department saves storage space and speeds up image distribution using GeoExpress. The second one comes from Pinnacle Mapping Technologies, Inc. where they used GeoExpress to create mosaics in multiple resolutions and projections. View both of these success stories in their entirety on our website.

In addition, starting this month through December 31st we are running a Spatial Express promotion offering two free days of onsite installation and training to anyone who purchases Spatial Express. To take advantage of this limited offer, simply contact your sales representative at 1-866-725-5211 or 206-652-5211 or e-mail spatial@lizardtech.com.

Lastly, please be sure to visit our media page where you can read the latest articles about our products.


Employment Opportunities

LizardTech is seeking great talent. To learn more about current opportunities, please visit: Jobs at LizardTech.