Mobile for the People
TerraGo announces the release of its mobile application. Please see the blurb from the TerraGo website and then click on the link to access the white paper.
TerraGo Mobile makes it easy to power-up your remote workers with geospatial information from anywhere.
As geospatial information becomes a part of mainstream business and government decision-making, giving your field workers, partners, and constituents the power to easily view, annotate and configure maps is becoming more and more important.
With TerraGo Mobile, which delivers configurable maps in PDF format to mobile devices, you can provide anyone instant access to detailed maps and images without lengthy, expensive training programs.
And you get the added benefit of having your people capture real-time information in the field that can then be easily imported into your GIS system of record, helping you automate the process of updating maps and systems.
Using common technologies, like Windows Mobile, Adobe Acrobat and Google Earth, TerraGo Mobile powers peer-to-peer collaboration as well as enterprise collaboration with the GIS experts.
Click Here for the white paper page.
posted by Adam Estrada at 6:55 AM
6 Comments:
I only recently found out about GeoPDF and the free downloads of USGS quads in this format from http://store.usgs.gov (under Map Locator). I've downloaded a few maps and the GeoPDF toolbar plugin, and I've played around a bit with my laptop and USB GPS. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work to show me my location on my local map (some stupid COM port problem), but I don't care about the PC platform since I'm never going to haul a laptop around in situations where I want to use topo maps anyway. I'm much more interested in smartphone platforms, so it was with great interest that I read today's blog posting. I don't think I'm ever going to get a Windows Mobile phone though. I'm much more inclined to get an Android phone (either the G1 or perhaps the next one). So my question is: Does anyone know of an effort to try to get a map viewer for the Android platform? Is it essential that a PDF viewer exist first, or with limited functionality, could the entire application be written as a stand alone app. I've also posted to Google Groups about this (http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/54cac7d3e883d3ec/eb2095c0d0174acc?lnk=gst&q=dara#eb2095c0d0174acc).
I imagine other users would be interested in the possibility of GeoPDF being ported to other smartphone platforms such as iPhone, Symbian, and Blackberry.
Dara Parsavand
6:55 PM EDT
Dara, I am sorry to hear that you could not get your GPS device hooked up to your laptop. I can assure you that USB support for popular devices will soon be available. As for alternative mobile platforms, I personally *love* everything Google and would love to see a TerraGo plugin for the Android OS but unfortunately that is not up to me. This company is fortunate to have a very sharp management team who is especially keen on deciding which of our requirements to implement first so even though it might not get developed this year...enough demand for a particular mobile OS might yield a platform-specific release next year! Until then, please be on the look out for patches and updates to all of our products! I will continue to post insightful articles that might allude to things to come...
Cheers,
Adam
9:25 PM EDT
Adam,
Thanks for your reply. I got a response from Mark Murphy on Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss/browse_thread/thread/13c88c7d70c420) that I found interesting and leads me to the following question: if the GeoPDF specification has been submitted to the OGC, is it available to the public as well? If so, where? and if not, why not? PDF itself is an open spec and I know there are other implementations of readers besides Adobe. Hopefully the same will be true with the GeoPDF extension. That way if TerraGo decides not to support Android (or any other phone platform), someone else can choose to.
Dara Parsavand
3:28 PM EDT
Dara,
I think the way it works is that the spec will be published only when the OGC officially accepts it. For now, its only been submitted for approval and I am not sure how long this process takes. Maybe someone else can comment on this?
Adam
3:55 PM EDT
Any more progress on an app for Android with Geopdf files. Maybe just a plugin for the browser?
6:42 PM EDT
KB,
We are not working on an Android app at this time. Our current focus is not on consumer level devices, although I personally think this is an exciting platform for geospatially aware applications.
G
8:11 AM EDT
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