Barron’s on ADSK, SGI

I was catching up on my reading of Barron’s and came across some interesting financial news pertinent to the geospatial sector. First, I came across the April 13^th editorial by Alan Abelson. If you are not familiar with Abelson, he is, IMHO, the best financial news editor/writer in the business, bar none, because his whit and prose are simply unmatched. Abelson chronicles the whimsical comments by Autodesk (ADSK)CEO Carl Bass where he jokingly referred to Antarctica and Greenland as the only geographies possibly unaffected by the economic downturn. (You can find the exact quotes in my review of that analyst call.)

Abelson goes on to say that, "Besides the pleasure of finding a CEO with a sense of humor and, equally important, one who doesn’t suffer foolish questions gladly, the exchange struck us as symptomatic of the insatiable yearning of Wall Street, in general, and sell-side analysts, in particular, to uncover some sliver of bullishness beneath the dismal surface of the unvarnished truth."

If there is an upside to this story, it’s that ADSK has recovered to around $18.39 per share up from just under $12 per share during the deepest, darkest downturn last month. In an earlier Barron’s there was mention of a recommendation to buy the stock at that low level. Looks like more than a few took their advice (full disclosure, I am a stock holder).

Also in the April 13^th Barron’s issue was a small note about the bankruptcy filing of Silicon Graphics. Once the high flyer of high powered workstations for GIS, SGI filed for Chapter 11 on April ^1st. It sold its assets to Rackable Systems (RACK) for $25 million.

CA GIO Goes on YouTube to Explain GIS and his New Job

Michael Byrne, California’s newly appointed GIO, offers a video (on the California GIO’s YouTube Channel) describing GIS technology in plain English and his priorities for his new job.

- Government Technology via NSGIC Blog (note to James Fee: please add to Planet GS!)

Update: Google Maps (Finally) Tops Mapquest

Update: Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land notes that Hitwise looks further at the data and notes that while Google Maps has the edge in traffic, MapQuest still has the edge in engagement. That is, folks stay longer at MapQuest (almost 11 minutes to 7.5 at Google Maps). Could it be folks find their answers more directly at Google Maps? Or are more familiar with it and thus more efficient? I for one am slower using MapQuest since I use it far less.

—-  original post 4/14/09—————
Blumenthals has the stats and graph from Hitwise. Over the weekend Google Maps hit 39.38% of the travel maps category and MapQuest took just 39.14%. Whew, now that that’s settled, back to work…

via @NAVTEQ via Twitter

USGS Selects Vivisimo as Search Engine for NBII

USGS picked the Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform to replace the National Biological Information Infrastructure’s (NBII) current search solution. “NBII is a broad, collaborative program to provide increased access to data and information on the nation’s biological resources.”

What’s the current search solution? So far as I can tell “Custom Google Search.”

The Velocity implementation will initially search at least 30 diverse data sources - and here’s the interesting geo part - “Velocity will also enable geospatial display of search results - allowing users to search for certain plants or animals in a specific region or location.” I wonder if USGS will use the tool on its other websites?

- press release