Tuesday, May 12. 2009

GeoEye Q1 Revenues Up But Market Reacts to Possible Satellite Glitch

GeoEye (GEOY) held their Q1 analyst call today and indicated that with GeoEye-1 now up and running that its revenues increased 26% year over year. CEO Matt O'Connell indicated that they were not able reach their full run rate of imagery during the quarter because of the ramp up time after the satellite was certified by NGA. The market had been reacting favorably to GeoEye's stock leading up to today's call sending the company up 55% since it traded at $18/share in mid-March. But shares were down sharply at mid-day today on the news of a possible issue with imagery collection (GeoEye ended the trading day down 13%). According to Bill Schuster, the company's COO:

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GAO Questions Long Term Stability of GPS Constellation

A Government Accountability Office report (pdf) released on May 7 suggests that if delays in putting new satellites into orbit continue the existing constellation may have enough failures in the next few years to limit its use for military and civilian uses.

The report is causing bit of pushback on the Obama administration's plans to shut down Loran-C. The concern is that GPS is supposed to be the state of the art navigation solution.

- eWeek
- NextGov

Contrasting GIS-based Crime Mapping vs. Google Maps Crime Mapping

San Bernardino County now offers an online crime mapping site built by the Omega Group, an ESRI business partner. In covering it in the Press-Enterprise, the reporter needed to contrast the offering with widely-known Google Maps-based mapping solutions.

With a $100,000 federal grant, the department will offer a crime map through its Web site, www.SBPDonline.org, customized to its specific district and patrol beat program. Residents can also search for reported crimes in a one-mile radius of any city park, school or hospital.

The crime mapping, offered through the Omega Group's "Community CrimeView" software, will eventually gather data going back as far as two years. Currently, users can search back to Jan. 1.

Community CrimeView differs from other agencies' offerings through the same company's "CrimeMapping.com" in that it uses the same maps San Bernardino police officers utilize for internal purposes, with an increased ability to generate neighborhood-specific reports.

CrimeMapping.com projects its basic crime reports onto Google Maps.

"We're giving you a lot more personal functionality and openness," said Michael Eckley, the department's public safety information technology manager.

The Inland News Today reports on the Sheriff's Dept.'s CrimeMapping.com site and does not mention the other site.

Transport for London Trailing Vehicle Speed "Governor" this Summer

The GPS-based box has two modes: one will in fact limit speed such that it does not exceed the limit set for that roadway while the second gives a green smiley when the vehicle is within the acceptable range and a red sad face when it is not. The trial set for this summer includes installing the devices on cars and a bus and will operate within the M25 ring. The device is expected to improve safety, cut congestion, save fuel and help the environment. There are no plans to make the device mandatory at this time; the hope is that potential users will see the benefits. Some suggest if even a fraction of drivers use the device, all traffic will slow to their speeds, and enhancing the effect. The technology is called Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA).

- The Times

Aussie Local Gov Open Source-based Fire Mapping Site up for Award

Tablelands Regional Council in North Queensland was nominated for an Excellence in e-Government Award, which pits its wildfire management app against all sorts of apps from all levels of government. The winner will be announced Wednesday by the Australian Government

The app is a shared mapping and data exchange facility for wildlife management, called the North Queensland Wildfire Mitigation Project (NQWMP). The council was the only local government shortlisted for the awards.

“We are surprised to be shortlisted alongside such significant projects,” said GIS Coordinator Alistair Hart, “I think one of the attractions of this project was our integration of free and open source software to both minimise the capital cost of creating it, but also to take away that ongoing maintenance liability.”

The website is free to use by approved stakeholders, and offers access to over 60 detailed GIS mapping layers, over 140 downloadable fire-district maps prepared for 90 rural fire brigades, some of which had no prior access to current and accurate maps of their brigade areas.

“What we’re doing is breaking down the institutional barriers to data exchange, and we’re providing an ‘in’ for non-government stakeholders in fire mitigation to access that information aswell,” Hart said.

- Government News

MapInfo 10.0 to have Layered PDF Output

Pitney Bowes Business Insight has shared a bit more about the upcoming release of MapInfo Professional 10.0.

MapInfo Professional will include layered PDF output. The newest feature lets users turn specific layers in a map on and off when viewing a map. As a result, this greatly reduces the number of maps that people need to make. In the past, an individual may have been required to make several different maps for different departments in one organization. Now, with a layered PDF, one map can be created with multiple parties being able to view the layer that's most relevant to them or have more than one view of a map.