Inside Briefs Where on Eartha? Congratulations to Stuart Ferguson whose correct response to February's Where on Eartha challenge was the first pulled from the hat. Stuart, along with most who sent a response, identified the "heart-shaped lake" as Lake St. Clair, which straddles the border between Michigan and Ontario and is sometimes considered the sixth Great Lake. For his trouble, Stuart will be receiving a copy of XMap 4.5 along with a world base map dataset. This month, we decided to continue the seasonal theme and pay homage to Saint Patrick's Day. Assuming that "Ireland-shaped island" would be a little too obvious, we instead located a geographic feature that shares its name with the revered saint. The feature in question is on the island in the center of the image shown below. If you know the country to which this island belongs, send your response to contest@delorme.com. You could be the next Where on Eartha winner! WANTED: Experienced XMap/GIS Users to Review New Product Features We want your feedback! If you are an experienced XMap/GIS user, DeLorme's Professional Sales Team wants to speak with you at GITA. This is your opportunity to give DeLorme developers feedback on new product features in support of GIS. Special product review sessions will be held Tuesday, April 25th and Wednesday, April 26th from 7:00am until 10:00am. The first five XMap/GIS users to respond will receive a free pass to the GITA exhibits! To participate, please send your contact information to keith.gray@delorme.com. We Want to Meet You! Visit Us At Upcoming Events GITA's Annual Conference Tampa Convention Center Booth 706 Tampa, FL April 23-26, 2006 Be sure to stop by and enter the drawing for an Earthmate Blue Logger GPS! Congratulations! Congratulations to Donna Sluder from Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative, Inc. who won an Earthmate Blue Logger GPS device after visiting us at Tech Advantage 2006 Conference & Expo! March, 2006 XMap Developments The Perfect Pair: XMap/GIS and Blue Logger GPS Earthmate Blue Logger GPS and XMap/GIS Editor are the perfect combination to achieve GPS accuracy in a GIS. Want to determine which roads slow your drivers down? How about log the location of pipelines or other public works in your city? It's all possible with Blue Logger GPS and XMap. With Blue Logger GPS, you decide how you want to log GPS points. The device gives you the ability to create a GPS log using customized speed and distance preferences, which can then be imported into XMap/GIS. You can even set the device to log "standard" or "raw" GPS points. Collecting "raw" points is especially helpful when you want to post process your results for sub-meter accuracy (DeLorme's GPS PostPro required). Because Blue Logger GPS is a Bluetooth-enabled device, it can be taken anywhere wirelessly...just set it on the dashboard of your vehicle if you want to track while driving, or set it in a back pack if you want to track an area while walking. In addition, Blue Logger GPS has on-board memory, making it possible to log GPS points without being connected to a laptop or PDA. When you get back to your computer, you'll find that there are multiple options for downloading the GPS points from your Blue Logger GPS. One of the options is OpenSpace Transfer File, XMap's proprietary file format. When this file type is imported into XMap/GIS Editor, you'll be able to view GPS points that were obtained at a certain speed, at a certain date/time, and/or within a given radius. It can even be classified, symbolized, and labeled to show trends in your data, property boundaries, and more. Here are just a few examples of how XMap and Blue Logger GPS are helping professionals perform their tasks accurately and efficiently: Fleet Management - Monitor your fleet to ensure that it is moving safely and consistently. Business Navigation - Track your progress as you travel and then view your route to determine areas that may have slowed you down due to traffic. Public Works - Log the location of man-hole covers throughout a city. Surveyors - Quickly layout property boundary guidelines. Introducing Earthmate Image Tagger DeLorme software engineers have developed Earthmate Image Tagger, a remarkable tool that automatically attaches your digital photographs to a map at the precise location at which they were taken. What's even better is that this product is available as a free download! Earthmate Image Tagger works by reading the time at which a digital photograph was captured (based on your camera's date and time settings) and matching it to a point within a GPS log file (.gpl) that was recorded while the photographs were being taken. Although a .gpl file can be created using any DeLorme software attached to virtually any GPS receiver, Earthmate Image Tagger is ideally suited as a functional accessory for the Blue Logger GPS receiver. Because Blue Logger is an independent data collector and doesn't require a laptop or PDA to store the collected GPS points, you can simply turn it on and throw it on the dashboard of your vehicle before setting off to take your photographs. At the end of the day when you return home or to your office, all you need to do is download the GPS data in .gpl format, save your photographs to a local folder, and join the two using Earthmate Image Tagger. As is customary from DeLorme software, Earthmate Image Tagger is very easy to use. After locating the appropriate .gpl file and selecting the folder containing your photographs, you click the Process Images button to create the output file. Options include the establishment of a time threshold for photo matching so that the camera's clock does not need to be precise to be assigned to a GPS point, and a time offset function which allows you to compensate for differences in time (for example, when you travel in different time zones). The file that you create can be formatted for use as a DeLorme Draw Layer or XData dataset and can be imported into any current version of XMap or Street Atlas USA 2006 Plus. If Draw Layer is the selected format, you can chose to have the photographs hyperlinked via a MapNote that will point to the location where the photograph was taken, or you can choose to have the photograph itself displayed on the map. Image Tagger, used in conjunction with DeLorme's mapping software and a GPS receiver, is a perfect tool for Real Estate Professionals, Utility Companies, Insurance Adjusters, or anyone who captures photographs on a routine basis. One-Meter Color Imagery of Florida...To Go! XMap users in Florida have yet another reason to unplug their laptop and take it for a drive in the car. DeLorme has just completed the processing of a one-meter resolution, color aerial imagery dataset for all of the Sunshine State. Now as you track your trip using XMap's GPS tools, you can literally watch yourself driving along a high-resolution image of the road right on your laptop screen. This XMap base map option is being made available in a series of seamless regional mosaics, each of which fills a DVD. For the real road warrior, DeLorme can even provide the entire state on a single USB hard drive offering uninterrupted coverage as you drive from Pensacola to Key West. This ortho-rectified imagery, which was derived from Florida's DOQQ files, was captured in 2004 and early 2005 and provides the most complete and up-to-date aerial coverage for the state. According to Geoffrey Ives, DeLorme's Director of Professional Sales, "The processing of this imagery into XMap format was undertaken in response to numerous requests from XMap users in Florida. Because a significant percentage of our customers work in a mobile office setting, with no access to online mapping and imagery sites, it was important for us to offer them a readily-available, mobile alternative. This imagery is a perfect compliment to the XMap/GIS toolset in use by field technicians across the USA." The advantage of having the imagery in XMap format is that it allows field workers to quickly pull up an image of a location without the need for an Internet connection and without having to manage dozens of individual image files. Used in conjunction with XMap's renowned in-the-field mapping tools, this dataset is perfect for utility workers, insurance adjusters, realtors, first responders, law enforcement officers, and anyone who appreciates the value of high-quality aerial imagery and an easy-to use yet powerful mapping application. For more information or to download a sample file for use in XMap, visit www.delorme.com/professional/floridaimagery.

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