LizardTales Newsletter - Q4 2006

In This Issue

1. From the CEO
2. Geospatial
3. Document Express
4. Where is LizardTech?
5. Case Studies
6. Employment Opportunities

From the CEO Carlos Domingo discusses the recent launches of GeoExpress 6 and Spatial Express, introduces the new general manager and talks about the new structure of the company moving forward.

Geospatial

Version 6.0 of GeoExpress, LizardTech's flagship product, was released earlier this year. New features introduced in this version include color balancing for new or existing images, advanced area of interest encoding, and the ability to integrate with Oracle Spatial. Here are some tips and tricks you may not know about GeoExpress.

• Want to quickly manipulate your SID imagery? Try optimizing it! GeoExpress includes an image optimizer that helps you quickly recompress or crop existing SID imagery for a project. Optimizing your imagery is much faster than recompressing it.
  
  
• If you need to retain the fidelity of your original image, but also would like to save on file size, try encoding your imagery losslessly. The compression ratio for lossless images varies depending on the characteristics of the original image, but typically you can reduce the size of the image by 20% to 50% without "throwing any information away."
  
  
• Reprojection capabilities have been in GeoExpress for quite some time, but did you know that you can assign custom coordinate systems in GeoExpress? You can even use existing coordinate system files from other applications that use Well Known Text strings, or WKTs. The next time you need to reproject an image, try selecting "Use Custom WKT" and then choose "Add a new WKT." You can either paste a string in the dialog box, or browse to an existing file. For users in counties or regions that use coordinate systems that are not supported in major coordinate databases, you can now easily work with your imagery in GeoExpress!
  
  
• Did you know that you can composite grayscale imagery together in GeoExpress to make an RGB image? From the main GeoExpress screen, try selecting "Project > Add color composite image to encode...".
  
  
• LizardTech always uses internal codenames for products during development. Want to see what we used for GeoExpress 6.0? Try holding down CTRL+SHIFT when selecting "Help > About GeoExpress..."

Learn more about the powerful image editing and manipulation tools in
GeoExpress 6.

Spatial Express

At the beginning of May we introduced support for both JPEG 2000 and MrSID imagery in LizardTech's Spatial Express, a plug-in for Oracle Spatial 10gR2 that adds native support for the efficient storage, management, and retrieval of large raster datasets. Click here to learn more about Spatial Express.

LizardTech has deployed a new demonstration server to showcase Express Server's WMS capabilities at http://wms.lizardtech.com. Along with sample datasets that can be used in any WMS client, this site also provides a user forum where Express Server users can exchange tips and tricks. Finally, wms.lizardtech.com provides cutting edge demonstrations of what LizardTech is working on, including fast Web viewers and "mashups," combinations of different datasets in a single view.

Earlier in June, LizardTech released updates to the PDFtoDjVu and Virtual Print Driver applications. These updates include bug fixes to some conversion and page printing issues and updated documentation.

Where Is LizardTech?

Upcoming Events:

Kentucky GIS Conference
July 17-19, 2006

GeoWeb
July 24-28, 2006

ESRI International User Conference
August 8-10, 2006, LizardTech Booth #511

NW GIS User Conference
September 13-15, 2006

GIS in the Rockies
September 13-15, 2006

GITA Oil & Gas Conference
September 18-20, 2006

Ohio GIS Conference
September 20-22, 2006

URISA
September 26-29, 2006

Complete schedule of LizardTech Events.

Case Studies

Recently the City of Rockville upgraded to GeoExpress 6 to take advantage of the floating license offered in version 6. The floating license enables Rockville to install GeoExpress on the local machine (client) of any team member who may need to perform image processing or compression, no matter how infrequently. The License Manager, installed optionally on any networked computer as part of the GeoExpress installation, acts as a server, distributing temporary licenses to other clients at the time of use, allowing multiple simultaneous users up to the number of purchased licenses. When a user is finished using the software, the license associated with that client is "returned" to the License Manager and becomes available for the next client. Read the complete case study here.

Employment Opportunities

LizardTech is always seeking great talent. To learn more about current opportunities to join a dedicated, talented and close-knit team, please visit: Jobs at LizardTech.