Avenza Systems Inc., developer of cartographic software — including MAPublisher® for Adobe® Illustrator® and Geographic Imager® geospatial tools for Adobe Photoshop® — is pleased to announce the release of PDF Maps 1.6, the latest version of the popular map and navigation app on the Apple iOS platform. The PDF Maps app allows users to explore and navigate maps offline without having to worry about cellular data connectivity or incur data roaming charges compared to other streaming map apps.
"The focus of this release is about enhancing existing features and tools to allow our users to experience, navigate, and view maps on Apple iOS devices even better" said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. "Many of the optimizations and improvements have stemmed from user feedback. We're listening to our users and creating tools that suit their needs. In the end, we're making a much better product than even we anticipated," he added.
This release of PDF Maps offers many features including:
The PDF Maps app takes advantage of geospatial technology that allows travelers to view and measure real world locations and attributes. Paired together with mobile devices that utilize GPS, such as an iPhone or iPad, the PDF Maps app provides constant access to geographic locations and even points of interest without the risk of losing reception due to cell tower proximity – making it the ultimate traveling accessory for those that are enthusiastic about travel or anywhere internet bandwidth is not available or is cost-prohibitive when roaming internationally. In combination with the embedded map store PDF Maps takes map use commerce into the iTunes-like digital age previously reserved for music, books and videos.
PDF Maps is available now on the iTunes App Store free of charge for personal use. For more information about the app and Avenza Map Store , visit the PDF Maps website at www.pdf-maps.com. Pricing of each map is set by the publisher and free maps remain free to users through the PDF Maps in-app map store.
The City of Frisco, Texas, was honored with the Esri President's Award for outstanding geographic information system (GIS) work, particularly in providing improved public safety for its schools. The award was presented Monday, July 12, at the 2010 Esri International User Conference, held in San Diego, California.
The city developed an application called Situational Awareness For Emergency Response (SAFER), which provides fire, police, and emergency responders with access to maps and live data feeds while en route to a school incident. SAFER takes advantage of Esri business partner GeoComm's GeoLynx solution, which is built using Esri technology. The system became fully operational in 2009.
"The project makes the schools, students, and first responders safer," says Susan Olson, GIS manager, City of Frisco, Texas. "It enables city public safety departments to better serve the school district and will eventually help all commercial business owners. Implementing this system has allowed the departments to reduce operations costs by having all the relevant information in one place. It lowers risk and better prepares responders on the way to an emergency."
"The city's GIS, and the SAFER project in particular, is an example of how smaller local government agencies can do important work cost-effectively," says Russ Johnson, public safety manager, Esri. "The GIS team leveraged the city's local government ELA [enterprise license agreement] to open up more GIS capabilities for other departments. One of the results is that the city is better prepared to take action in an emergency."
The city uses GeoLynx Mobile software, deployed on mobile data computers in its emergency vehicles, to access GIS information remotely. It has GeoLynx 9-1-1 at its dispatch stations, and the emergency operations center uses a custom ArcGIS Server Web application. SAFER integrates multiple databases and gives people information such as aerial maps (obliques and orthophotography), footage from hundreds of school surveillance cameras, dispatch data, campus photos, floor plans, and automated vehicle locations.
One of the major weaknesses in using GIS for historical research are the limitations in showing change over time. GIS was designed with geography in mind and until recently historians needed to adapt the technology to meet our needs.
Generally this meant creating a series of maps to show change overtime or as Dan MacFarlane did last week, include labels identifying how different layers represent different time periods (see MacFarlane Map2). More recently, ArcGIS and Quantum GIS introduced features to recognize a time field in data and make it possible to include a time-line slider bar or animate the time series data in a video. continued…
Korean engineers say they've made a major breakthrough in high-precision indoor positioning that will make it faster and more accurate.
GPS doesn't work well in indoor spaces or urban canyons, as it requires a clear view to communicate with satellites. It's also only one-third as accurate in the vertical direction as it is in the horizontal, making it impossible to locate a person or object within tall buildings.
For indoor positioning, therefore, location-based service providers have mostly used a combination of GPS and wireless network systems such as WiFi, cellular connectivity, Ultra Wide Band (UWB), or Radio-frequency Identification (RFID).
For example, the WiFi Positioning System (WPS) collects both GPS and WiFi signals, and is used by many companies including Google and Apple to give clients location information services.
"WPS is helpful to a certain extent, but it is not sufficient because the technology needs GPS signals to tag the location of WiFi fingerprints collected from mobile devices," says Professor Dong-Soo Han from KAIST.
"Therefore, even if you are surrounded by rich WiFi signals, they can be useless unless accompanied with GPS signals. Our research team tried to solve this problem and finally came up with a radio map that is created based on WiFi fingerprints only."
WiFi fingerprints are a set of WiFi signals captured by a mobile device, along with the measurements of received WiFi signal strengths (RSSs) from access points surrounding the device. A WiFi radio map shows the RSSs of WiFi access points (APs) at different locations in a given environment. This means that each WiFi fingerprint on the radio map is connected to location information. continued…
As you prepare for the yearly drive home for the holidays, you might want to consider taking Geography Drive USA, a fun kid-oriented app now available for iPAD. It’s like digital LIFE with upgradable automobiles and a twist of USA geography trivia. It’s perfect for families because the app can support up to three wee players per car.
The app is intended for children who are reading on their own – so they can go to the “Visitor Center” and learn about state trivia using digital flashcards before proceeding onto some of the games. Rewards come in game cash that can help players upgrade to fancier cars, but be careful, because it also has to pay for gas!
Here’s what you’ll learn: continued…
Astrium Services and the Istanbul Technical University (ITU) signed two agreements in Istanbul on October 19, 2012 to develop high-resolution and large-area coverage services in Turkey, notably for agriculture. The agreements cover a SPOT New Generation receiving station and reception of data from SPOT 6 and SPOT 7, as well as an extension for SPOT 5 data.