Dbx Geomatics released CartoVista last week and I got a quick demo of the software yesterday. What impressed me was that this was desktop mapping for a new generation of business geographics users. The colors were richer, the map creating and editing controls were cleaner and easier, and the ability to manipulate geostatistical information seemed more functional. All of this of course was more a function of using Adobe Flash and XML. It's just a different way of thinking about map rendering which many companies like The Map Network (now owned by NAVTEQ) have been using for several years.