Searchme: Next Generation Web Search!

This search tool is REALLY cool and useful too! Now we can see the page before browsing to the actual website! From the Searchme.com "About Us" page:

Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through.

We’re just getting started on our first step towards creating an entirely new way to search the Web. The quality of our results will vary as we make Searchme better and better. If you have comments or suggestions we’d love to hear from you. We love feedback.

There also appears to be quite a few Searchme apps for download including an iPhone app...Find them by clicking here. I personally have never seen this type of technology before but WOW! I am really impressed...

Change Detection with GeoPDF

By definition, change detection in most remote sensing software applications is the calculated difference between two images of the same or similar spatial extent. The output from that calculation is another image that highlights the changes that might exceed a user-specified threshold. This is very useful in those instances where your decision makers need to see before and after images of a partcular area. A good example of this was with the large-scale devistation from a Category 3 Hurricane known as Katrina which swept through the city of New Orleans back in 2005. Below, you can see that we are able to mashup recent and archived imagery to perform an accurate analysis of the area in a single PDF file. I created this particular file from QuickBird data acquired on June 23rd 2005 and then on September 3rd 2005 which gives us a good before and after shot of this area in New Orleans.

With GeoPDF, we are able to stack several GIS layers (both raster and vector) on top of each other in a single PDF file. We are also able to view multispectral data by manipulating the image band combinations all in the same GeoPDF file. As you can see below, we switched from true color to color infrared (false color) on the fly to help identify vegetation that was damaged in the storm.  

Once the GeoPDF has been compiled and delivered down range, it can be marked up and then sent back to a GIS Analyst to help make better and more informed decisions about how to respond! Or, the opposite of that can be applied here as well and a non-GIS savvy respondant hired to do "GIS" work can mark up the PDF before sending it out to save time down range.

Set PDF Bookmarks to display specific areas of interest to your audience! Refer to this previous post for more of what can be done using Adobe Bookmarks...

Happy New Years Everyone!

Google Chrome out of Beta

The official Google Blog announced yesterday that their browser, Google Chrome, is now officially out of beta!  I downloaded this version and must say that it is quit fast although I can't really recall how much faster it is as compared to the beta program version.  At any rate, less is more and this browser is definitely the "no frills" speedster I use every day!  Happy browsing everyone...

Landsat Archive to GeoPDF?

Jesse mentioned again that the entire Landsat data archive is now available to download FOR FREE! This really opens a lot of doors to those of you who require this moderate resolution data type that has been so successful all over the world for the past 35+ years.  

But, what if you don't have a buly image processing application like IMAGINE, PCI, or ENVI and still need to work with these data on your desktop?  The PDF file format certainly bridges that gap!  

Adobe has published that there are something like 750,000,000+ desktops with the free Adobe Reader on them!  That is more desktops than there are Windows operating systems, right?  If not more, it's certainly close!  Anyway, I noted in previous posts that we now have the ability to create a single GeoPDF file that contains all or selected image bands from the source file.  Imagine having everything you need from the input data source stored in a single document.  With the inherent compression of the PDF format I have been able to get a 140meg file down to less than 10 megs!  Moreover, imagine a single file that contains Landsat imagery from several different dates!  What about a single PDF file that has a Landsat scene with all 7 bands as one layer, a Leica ADS80 image from the same spatial extent as another layer and then one of the free USGS topographic maps ALL IN THE SAME PDF!  Wow!  Several image sources stored in a single file that can be sent through fire walls and network filters as a single document is already of great benefit to folks all over the world!  Coupled with the free GeoPDF toolbar, the analysis that can be done on image data in a single document is tremendous... 

Landsat 7 courtesy of NASA

I hope those of you out there who are using Landsat data can see the true value of working with remotely sensed data in the GeoPDF format...