TerraGo + Adobe = GeoPDF

TerraGo Technologies and Adobe announce their partnership today! The following is directly from the press release...

TerraGo Technologies Announces Geospatial Alliance Agreement with Adobe ATLANTA, GA – July 7, 2008 – TerraGo® Technologies, the visionary provider of tools, technology and know-how for building collaborative geospatial applications (GeoApps), announced today that it has signed an Alliance Agreement with Adobe Systems Incorporated. As part of the agreement, Adobe will provide support for TerraGo’s GeoPDF® in the new Adobe Acrobat® 9 software. In addition, TerraGo will fully support consumption of geo-enabled PDF files from Adobe and other vendors, allowing customers to easily build and deliver GeoApps for use by anyone, anywhere, regardless of data format or application source. “Our expanded relationship comes at an exciting time when the demand for geo-enabled PDFs and GeoApps is increasing significantly,” said Richard M. Cobb, president and CEO of TerraGo Technologies. “In working with a global leader such as Adobe, who provides the best platform for geospatial documents, we are confident customers will benefit greatly through the development of innovative new geospatial tools and technology. This alliance further demonstrates TerraGo’s commitment to providing collaborative solutions that meet the unique needs of geospatial data users who are often not GIS experts.”

“As long-time developers of solutions on the Acrobat platform, TerraGo has for several years delivered value to customers who need to consume geospatially-enabled documents in a widely available format,” said Rick Brown, director of Acrobat product management, Business Productivity Business Unit, Adobe. “With support for consuming GIS attributes in PDF now natively available in Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9, TerraGo’s solutions will be even more broadly accessed by existing and new customers alike.”

TerraGo, now a Gold Level Adobe Partner and Adobe LiveCycle™ reseller, expects to further expand its geospatially enabled offerings through close integration with the rich capabilities of the LiveCycle suite of server products.


Click here for full details...

Choosing a GIS that is right for you (Part 2)

This April I posted something entitled, "Choosing a GIS that is right for you". I would think that most advanced GIS users out there would agree that a GIS is all about finding a solution to a problem. Each vertical market has a similar problem they are trying to solve, which is basically, "how can I get my spatial information in to the hands of those who need it?" For example:

• DoD/Intel - The DOD/Intel community has a tremendous amount of spatial data that is needed to support the wartime effort, OR a Homeland Security initiative that effects millions of people. How do they get this data distributed to the field? A web application? A specific file format?
  
• Utilities - Utilities is a generalized category that includes Electric, Gas Distribution, Oil/Gas Pipeline, Telecom and Water Management. Utilities have tons of geospatial data especially the pipeline operators who have thousands of miles of pipe...how do they maintain all their data? The more data to work with, the more sophisticated the GIS requirement. If there is a gas leak in a residential area, how can the operator get the GIS data out in to the hands of those who need it?
  
• Public Sector (State and Local Government) - As your local road network changes and as population increases, so does the landscape. This leads to tons and tons of updated spatial information...A good example of this here in Atlanta is the 14th street Bridge in Midtown. It is completely torn down for the next year and someone now has to update the road network in the Fulton County GIS.
  

These are the types of GIS-related scenarios that we as geographers concern ourselves with every day. What is the best all-encompassing solution? Is there one? Even if you buy a great big COTS GIS application, chances are that you will still need to buy plug-ins and extentions or create some kind of custom code to make it do exactly what you want it to. Take your accounting system for example...SAP and a GIS marry together perfectly, but it is a royal pain in the a$$ to make it work correctly! There is nothing more valuable than a man/hour and it takes quite a few of those to get to this kind of solution.

The USGS did a great job recently with getting their Topographic maps out online in an EASY and understandable search mechanism, and it just so happens that they were all converted to GeoPDF files which means that ANYONE with Adobe Acrobat Reader can view them. As I mentioned earlier, you must download the GeoPDF Toolbar in order to view the geospatial information. I would really encourage everyone to browse to the USGS Store and download a couple GeoPDF files just to try it out! They are 100% free to download and free to view!

If you want instant access to all the spatial data as well as GPS support, markups, KML/SHP integration, etc...please download the GeoPDF Toolbar from the link below.


Thanks to all of you who provided feedback at SpatiallyAdjusted.com! I enjoy reading everyones comments and I completely understand that TerraGo feeback is due. All I can say is there are a lot of things to look forward to in the near future! Cheers...