-----Original Message----- From: Bill Dakai [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2000 4:27 PM To: Neil Havermale; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: MI Hmmm.... Looks like uncertain times over at ESRI? Neil, Before I start let me state that I'm not an "ESRI-ite"..... Haven't you ever thought how nice it would be if MapInfo was written in MapX?..... Everyone at MapInfo is always taunting their connection with the Oracle 8i spatial cartridge. FYI, other GISs support it also.... When ArcView 8 comes out I'm thinking of switching...and you know what I'm sure I'm not the only one. Bill Dakai Manager of Market Research CVS/Pharmacy ********************* Well Bill now that you have flown into the spiders web..... Yes we too would like to see a MapX-ized professional system. We too have tried to hook-up Oracle's 8i Spatial Cartridge. Do you know how to build in JAVA? Our group has been developing on MapX GIS engine for nearly three years. We have slowly stepped away from MapBasic investment as we determined that in the long run it wasn't the best place to invest for our future. Since then we have gone on to create all of our engines as ActiveX/COM objects. This has worked out fairly well as clients that used to be MapInfo based but who moved to ESRI could still use our investments. And they do, Whew! Over the years since my first Apple IIe I have worked with a number of software firms as a "partner". MapInfo, with a couple of exceptions, has been the best experience - both fair and helpful, and their products sufficiently stable to allow our blood, sweat, and $s investment. They are making their way as a "public" company; a hundred million gross has to mean they have done something right. Then add up all of the indirect MapInfo value of its users, developers, and now WEB value-added and "we" must be at least a billion $ in the BIG GIS macro-value equation. A billion, that's a lot? Of recent we have been concentrating building and refining our Red Hen library of MapInfo-centric ActiveXs. We are most proud of roughly 36 spatial analysis ActiveX/COM objects including a small but growing set of spatial statistical routines. We feel this collection of spatial operators will offer the MapInfo/MapX community some ability to compete with the ESRI Spatial Analyst/ArcInfo 8.0 solution technically. We also have two COMs that are very proprietary to our legacy in agriculture, STIx and HDTx. These are scaled such that they now reside on desktops or as integrated processes via emerging Aggie-WEB Servers. Additionally, due to our decade of skill in heads-up, feet-down GIS/GPSing we have a very powerful extension for certain GPS engines that allows differential accuracy via post-processing. EzDIFF can post process the capable GPS's pusedo-range RINEX data via the National CORS (Continuously Operating Recording Stations) via automatic Internet correction downloads. And to create our skill in spatial multimedia and digital imagery, VMS200 and MediaMapper, we have had to build our own video and image slice-and-dice COM system. All of these tools could be made available to our friends in the MapX domain. I am certain there are others out there as well. Can we or Red Hen ever hope to achieve what ESRI has? Or Mapitude, or ....? We believe in our nearly ten year partnership with MapInfo, that we are part of their "virtual corporation" vision. We eventually want all the MapX and MapXtream developers to consider these as add-ins to their efforts. We have attempted to follow the ZEN that MapInfo suggests, very powerful but without the complexity or expense of something like ESRI's Spatial Analyst or the emerging ArcInfo 8.0. Some will see our Red Hen efforts as a competitor to Northwood's Vertical Mapper. We think if you can not get the visual 3D effects offered via MapInfo Pro you can pass our results through to their tool or Surfer's. We will soon see if the MapInfo community hungers for this sort of stuff. When? We will provide to the market in the next several weeks MapCALC, a spatial and statistical analysis complement to MapInfo Professional. Its a stand-alone that relies on TAB, SHP, MIG, and a couple of other GIS formats. As far as surface generation we have our interpolators as well as access to surfaces via MapInfo or Golden Software's Surfer product. While MapCALC is stand-alone it is our proof of integration, a test harness if you will, in the ActiveX/COM domain. If you are interested we have a Beta-build available to qualified testers. Contact Dr. Carol Snyder at 800-237-4182. Red Hen Systems Neil aka MidNight Mapper PS... We also have some really neat technology that absorbs TIFws', breaks them into RGB layers, and registers them, a la MapX. Via our MediaMapper exposure we now do a lot of ground truthing for satellite remote sensing. Tie our VMS200 to a three band multi-spectral camera that creates spectral TIFws (one band for each "sensor band") and you have a pretty complete, but simple and low cost image analysis system. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Neil Havermale" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 6:11 PM Subject: MI Hmmm.... Looks like uncertain times over at ESRI? > Saw this go over the list for ArcView. Sounds like a problem is brewing for Jack's followers. And you thought you had problems with the cost of a 6.0 upgrade? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
