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IntelliWhere partners with leading industry providers in Support of OGC OpenLS Initiative

IntelliWhere, a division of Intergraph Mapping and GIS Solutions, has announced that it is partnering with Compaq Computer Corporation and Navigation Technologies to participate in the Open GIS Consortium Open Location Services (OpenLS) Testbed initiative. The defined specifications will encourage compatibility between industry-standard computing products and services such as software, handheld PCs, servers, and global information systems to fuel the growth of location-based services and mobile e-commerce in the broader marketplace. With location-based services (LBS) being rapidly adopted in areas such as telecommunications, public safety, and transportation fleet management, these leading industry providers are bringing a total solutions approach to the OpenLS testbed to demonstrate the advantages of LBS for both business and consumers. Powered by the open architecture of Intergraph's GeoMedia technology, IntelliWhere offers device-independent and data-format-independent solutions. IntelliWhere's location server software will be used in the testbed implementation and in interoperability demonstrations. Compaq will provide its iPAQ(tm) Pocket PC and industry-leading Compaq ProLiant(tm) industry-standard servers to power the software and demonstrations provided by IntelliWhere. Navigation Technologies will provide their Navtech(r) NAVSTREETS(tm) map and feature datasets for demonstration and non-commercial use in the testbed.

Visit:- www.intergraph.com/gis/ogc.

PlanGraphics obtains contract extension for New York City on-line spatial data Warehouse Project

PlanGraphics, Inc., a provider of professional spatial information technology services, has formalized a contract increase with the City of New York Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to continue implementation of its Citywide GIS Utility Project, a spatially enabled data warehouse of key geographic data sets. The multi-year contract, originally valued at over $2.7 million, has been increased by $1.35 million. The 50 percent increase is the maximum allowable under the contract terms. Under this contract, PlanGraphics is building an Oracle-based spatial data warehouse and additional Internet-based GIS applications that are aiding the City's e-government initiatives. More than a dozen City and several quasi-public agencies are already contributing to the GIS Utility and are designing compatible systems.

Visit:- www.plangraphics.com

Ericsson to integrate Webraska's Wireless Navigation Platform in its LBS offering

Webraska, the worldwide provider of wireless navigation services and technologies, has been selected by Ericsson as provider of geospatial and wireless navigation technology for the development of location-based services around the world. Ericsson will integrate and market Webraska's Wireless Navigation Platform™ and award-winning Personal Navigation applications as part of its LBS offering, and will be providing the commercial and technical support.

Visit:- www.webraska.com

Satellites Track Blue Whales To Secret Home

One of the greatest mysteries of the sea - the question of where blue whales, the largest animals that have ever lived, go to breed - may have been solved. Satellite tracking of dozens of the whales, drawn from the world's largest colony on the Pacific coast of North and Central America, has pinpointed a small patch of ocean off Costa Rica that appears to be their mating and calving ground. The discovery, if confirmed, will transform efforts to protect one of the world's most endangered species. Despite decades of research, almost nothing is known about their breeding grounds. The new information will allow scientists to concentrate conservation programmes on areas that are crucial to the survival of the species. The findings came from a study led by Dr Bruce Mate, professor of Oceanography at Oregon State University.About 30 blue whales were tagged with darts fitted with transmitters and tracked, as they migrated from the California coast to Mexico and Costa Rica. Males and females converged on a relatively narrow area of open ocean about 400 miles from the Costa Rican coast, offering the firmest indication yet of their primary breeding ground. Dr Mate had hoped to confirm the findings by tracking a mother and calf north at the end of the mating season, but has been unable to do so because the batteries in the tags mean they work for a maximum of six months. His research will be featured in The Blue Planet, a new BBC series on the natural history of the oceans, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. Read complete article at: http://www.thestatesman.net/arc.news.php3?id=39135&type=Editorial&theme=A&dat=2001-09-13

Asia News

GIS to monitor farm drought

KAKINADA, Sept. 13- Remote Sensing coupled with geographic information system (GIS) is playing a significant role in tackling drought conditions in 11 agriculturally-important States, including Andhra Pradesh. Based on the analysis of the database for the past decade, it should be possible for the States to manage and mitigate drought better, Dr K.S Ramasastri, Director of the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorke, has said.

He was addressing the three-day workshop on the application of remote sensing and GIS in water resource management which concluded here on Thursday at the Deltaic regional center of NIH. Dr Sastri said India was one of the few countries making use of space technology for real time monitoring of agricultural drought conditions and the monitoring was being done at the sub-district unit level. Since 1992, he said, the National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System (NADAMS) had been issuing bi-weekly drought bulletins and ``by the end of the Ninth Plan the programme would be fully operationalised at the level of user departments.''

Groundwater studies, too, had made great strides with this approach and, using geomorphological features as seen from the space as a guide, underground aquifers had been delineated in the drought-prone States, he said. The success rate, as a result, had increased to almost 90 per cent as against 40-50 per cent in the past while using the conventional ground measurements alone.

Dr Sastri said the same approach should be pursued in command area studies, crop identification, precipitation studies, reservoir sedimentation research and watershed management. According to a press release issued by the centre, 25 researchers from different departments and institutes participated in the workshop.

Source: Business Line, 14 September 2001

IBM eyes Asian e-commerce platform mart

The implosion of the high-tech boom in the U.S. and elsewhere has hurt almost all Internet and e-commerce companies. IBM, the world's largest e-commerce solution provider, has been also affected by the stormy technology slump but not as severely as others experienced. "IDC says that IBM's Websphere is the No. 1 Web application server in Asia and in Korea," said Sandi A Carter, vice president of WepSphere Marketing and Channel Execution Software Group at IBM, in an interview with The Korea Herald.

WebSphere is Internet infrastructure software - known as middleware - that enables companies to develop, deploy and integrate next-generation e-business applications, such as those for business-to-business e-commerce.

Carter said the B2B (business to business) e-commerce market in Asia is the fastest in terms of growth, offering fresh business opportunities to solutions providers, regardless of the pervasive sense of a slump.

Sell-side B2B e-commerce, the process of making a company's products and services available to other business customers via electronic channels, is projected to grow by more than 30 percent to $7 billion by 2005, according to IDC.

IDC also said that B2B e-commerce activities worldwide will increase from $516 billion to $4.3 trillion from 2001 to 2005, while it expects the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) e-commerce market to grow 112.7 percent, from $39 billion in 2001 to $82.6 billion in 2002, and then continue to grow to close $600 billion by 2005.

Source: http://www.koreaherald.com