Safe and Blue Marble Geographics’ Partnership Introduces New Possibilities in Data Transformation

Vancouver B.C. -  May 1, 2012 - Safe Software and Blue Marble Geographics announced today that they have teamed up to bring the best of both of their products together in one authoring environment to increase the possibilities of what can be achieved in the use and distribution of spatial data. With the release of the GeoCalc Extension for FME, in addition to FME’s industry-leading format support and flexible transformation capabilities, users can have access to Blue Marble’s highly accurate coordinate transformations directly through FME Workbench.

The GeoCalc Extension for FME allows those relying on GeoCalc’s coordinate transformations to bring them into FME’s intuitive graphical user interface where they have access to FME’s unparalleled format support and data transformation capabilities.

“GeoCalc and FME are highly complementary products,” says Patrick Cunningham, President of Blue Marble Geographics. “By integrating the two, our users can take advantage of FME’s excellent data transformation authoring environment, while directly accessing the highly accurate coordinate transformations they rely on in GeoCalc.”

For FME users, access to the Blue Marble coordinate engine means more choice in coordinate transformations, and increased vertical height conversion accuracy and flexibility.

“We are very excited about how this integration will increase the possibilities of what users can achieve with FME,” says Dale Lutz, Vice President of Development at Safe Software. “For example, we are seeing an explosion in the use of 3D data, particularly LiDAR, and GeoCalc’s superior geoid selection means more accurate reprojection results.”

With the GeoCalc Extension, FME users with a valid Blue Marble Desktop GeoCalc license can select the GeoCalc datasource for use in coordinate transformations directly from FME Workbench. Through the Blue Marble Desktop administrative tools, they can also guide end users to preferred coordinate systems and transformations by specifying which GeoCalc systems and geodetic objects are available for import into FME.

The integration also provides access to fine datum shift control, including the option of processing shifts with late binding transformations or direct datum transformations, avoiding the potential loss introduced by using an interim WGS84 datum shift.

The GeoCalc Extension for FME is currently in beta and will soon be available from Blue Marble Geographics. Those interested in more information email Blue Marble at info@bluemarblegeo.com.

Safe Software Inc. is the maker of FME® and the global leader in spatial data transformation technology. FME makes it possible to transform spatial data to use and share. It solves more spatial data transformation challenges across more formats than any other solution, making it easier for professionals to solve data interoperability headaches and help their organizations meet their business goals and required standards.  Today, FME is the dominant technology for spatial data transformation. It powers our FME Desktop and Server software and the solutions of more leading spatial data application vendors than any other technology. It's used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide across a wide range of industries. Learn more about achieving total spatial data mastery at www.safe.com.

Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, ME is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for its coordinate conversion and GIS visualization software expertise including the Geographic Calculator and GeoCalc SDK, as well as Global Mapper. The company has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for almost 20 years and currently serves hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Learn more at www.bluemarblegeo.com.

Blue Marble Releases 13.1 Update to Global Mapper Software Developer Toolkit

Gardiner, Maine  - March 27, 2012 - Blue Marble Geographics (www.bluemarblegeo.com) is pleased to announce the release of Global Mapper Software Developer Toolkit version 13.1. This update features many new drawing and analysis tools along with enhanced geospatial PDF and LAS 1.4 support. Blue Marble’s geospatial data manipulation, visualization, and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software, oil and gas, mining, civil engineering, surveying, and technology companies, as well as governmental and university organizations.

Global Mapper SDK 13.1 syncs up the software developer toolkit with Global Mapper desktop software releases. This will enable a more consistent release cycle ensuring the software developers are able to work with the latest and greatest feature/functions introduced to the desktop version of the software. The 13.1 release introduces many new drawing tools such as drawing map layout items, including elevation legend, distance scale, map feature legend, and north arrow. The update also introduces powerful new analysis tools like the function for creating density/heat grids from loaded point features, thefunction for creating roughness length grids from a land cover layer and the methodfor easily calculating a watershed with stream paths and drainage basins from loaded terrain layers. The ability to add custom online data sources is introduced along with improved Geospatial PDF support, new LandXML, LASzip and LAS 1.4, I.H.S. Well Data point files, GeoJSON, and Digital Bathe Bathymetric Database Variable Resolution (DBDB-V)files and much more.

“Blue Marble has been directly supporting hundreds of geospatial software developers implement cutting edge technology for years,” stated Blue Marble President Patrick Cunningham. “The Global Mapper SDK is a great tool to add to a suite of libraries and we are excited to work directly with our developer community with this new display and translation api. Syncing up the SDK kits with the desktop releases will help us provide the latest features and functionality to our existing users as well as new customers for future releases”

Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, ME is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for its coordinate conversion and GIS visualization software expertise including the Geographic Calculator and GeoCalc SDK, as well as Global Mapper. The company has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for almost 20 years and currently serves hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Learn more at www.bluemarblegeo.com.

Blue Marble to Exhibit at the 2012 ASPRS Conference in Sacramento

Gardiner, Maine - March 20, 2012 - Blue Marble Geographics (www.bluemarblegeo.com) will be exhibiting at the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) conference in Sacramento, CA from March 21st through the 23rd 2012. Visit Booth 513 to learn about the latest updates to Blue Mable Software. Blue Marble’s GIS visualization, geospatial data manipulation and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software, oil and gas , mining, civil engineering, surveying, and technology companies, as well as governmental and university organizations.

Blue Marble Desktop version 2.4 released last week and Global Mapper 13.1, released earlier this month will be featured on display at the booth.  Blue Marble has become well known for their cutting edge Geospatial software.  Many companies not only rely on Blue Marble applications, but also embed Blue Marble’s popular APIs within their own proprietary software products in order to handle complex and challenging data processing tasks. With the recent acquisition of Global Mapper, Blue Marble remains focused on providing reliable data transformation and visualization products to the industry.

“We are thrilled to exhibit at ASPRS once again,” stated Blue Marble Account Manager Adam Hill. “This conference is a great way to meet with customers and update them on all that is new in processing geospatial data.”

About Blue Marble Geographics: Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, ME is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for their coordinate conversion and GIS visualization software expertise including the Geographic Calculator and GeoCalc SDK, as well as Global Mapper. The company has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for almost 20 years and currently serves hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Learn more at www.bluemarblegeo.com.

Blue Marble Releases Desktop 2.4 with Powerful New Seismic Survey Conversion Tool

Blue Marble Geographics (www.bluemarblegeo.com) is pleased to announce the release of the latest version of the Blue Marble Desktop v2.4. This release introduces the Seismic Survey Conversion Tool, a major enhancement to the Point Database Job designed to support native seismic data formats. Blue Marble’s geospatial data manipulation and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software, oil and gas , mining, civil engineering, surveying, and technology companies, as well as governmental and university organizations.

Many of the new enhancements found in Blue Marble Desktop 2.4 are focused around the Geographic Calculator (v7.7). The Seismic Survey Conversion Job allows users to work directly, and in a very flexible manner, with a variety of Oil and Gas industry formats including SEG P1, SPS, and UKOAA P1/90. The tool also enables users to format ASCII data faster and more efficiently. A new File Import Wizard guides the user through the assignment of header components and column formats consistent with each file specification. The tool can convert multiple record (e.g. shot, receiver) types and convert grid and geodetic coordinates within the same file, all in one pass.

Desktop 2.4 also introduces a Web Mapping Service (WMS) interface for remote data connections in all data viewer windows and Well Known Text and PRJ coordinate system matching now preserves base geodetic coordinate system references. Additionally, Desktop v2.4 features enhanced envelope logic and the Audit Trail now tracks the current Desktop user when any changes are made to the geodetic datasource.

Blue Marble President Patrick Cunningham stated, “Our users in Oil and Gas exploration have had a real need for better software tools for working with seismic data and we are pleased to continue to turn out improvements in this area, with the goal of making those users more efficient and the data they output more reliable.”

Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, ME is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for their coordinate conversion expertise and is the developer of The Geographic Calculator and GeoCalc SDK. In November 2011 Blue Marble acquired Global Mapper, LLC. and is pleased to introduce Global Mapper desktop and SDK software to its product line.

Spatial Energy and Blue Marble Announce New Alliance for Energy Market

Gardiner, Maine – March 8, 2012 – Spatial Energy and Blue Marble Geographics today announced a new alliance to distribute content and software to the Energy market worldwide. Spatial Energy’s foundation imagery content will now be a freely available within the Global Energy Mapper™ software application.   Blue Marble Geographics will speed development plans for Global Energy Mapper to integrate with cloud imagery services provided by Spatial Energy and increase features focused on serving the Energy sector.

In addition, Spatial Energy Beijing Technology will serve as the exclusive distributor for all Blue Marble Geographics products in China and will create a Chinese language version of Global Energy Mapper.

“The Global Energy Mapper desktop application is a user friendly tool that provides easy access to streaming raster data layers from our Spatial on Demand™ cloud service offering,” said Spatial Energy President Bud Pope. “Non-GIS users can quickly re-project energy specific data, layout seismic, and well pad locations and form mash-ups of vector, DEMs, and imagery to create 3D renderings”

Developed specifically for customers in the oil, gas and mining professions, Global Energy Mapper enables users to import and export all types of Geospatial data in hundreds of formats as they view, edit and apply GIS functionality to popular raster, elevation and vector data sets. Built-in functionality developed for energy applications includes distance and area calculations, raster blending, contrast adjustment, elevation querying, line of sight measurement, and cut-and-fill volume determination. Global Energy Mapper also contains specialized oil and gas symbols and terminology.

“Blue Marble is committed to continuing development of software functionality that addresses the unique needs of oil, gas and mining companies,” said Patrick Cunningham, Blue Marble President. "We will continue to consult with Spatial Energy and its customers for their specific expertise to meet the needs of global operators, leveraging imagery, elevation and analytics to the workflows of energy company requirements."

Spatial on Demand is an enterprise geospatial data management and delivery system available by subscription from Spatial Energy. It gives organizations worldwide access to their own geospatial data sets, as well as free and premium Spatial Energy data sets, delivered seamlessly and securely via Spatial Energy's global cloud-based services directly into Global Energy Mapper and other popular oil and gas mapping packages such as Esri, IHS Petra and IHS Kingdom, Geographix, Google Earth, Petrel and AutoCAD.

The Spatial on Demand image layers now available for free in Global Energy Mapper via its’ global cloud service include the following:

• Bing Maps – Imagery and Streets Hybrid Layer
• Global SRTM Hillshade Data – Color
• Landsat Natural Color
• Landsat 7,4,2 Band Combination
• Global Basemap Reference Layer
• One Meter USA Up-to-Date Basemap
• USA National Elevation Data Set
• USGS Topographic Maps

Global Energy Mapper customers will also have the option of purchasing Premium Spatial on Demand imagery products inside the desktop software for immediate streaming delivery to the application. Premium products include aerial and satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, SPOT (Astrium), Aster, Intermap, Landsat, East View Cartographic, and RapidEye.

About Blue Marble Geographics

Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, ME is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for their coordinate conversion expertise and is the developer of The Geographic Calculator and GeoCalc SDK.  In November 2011, Blue Marble acquired Global Mapper, LLC. and is pleased to introduce Global Mapper desktop and SDK software to its product line.

About Spatial Energy

Headquartered in Boulder, Colo., Spatial Energy is committed to providing the best value for energy-specific imagery, imagery solutions and online enterprise imagery and data management service for oil and gas companies operating globally.  Imagery is available on demand from our data archives, by tasking satellites and aerial providers, by speculative collection and by hosting corporate imagery.  OurEnterprise Remote Sensing Solutions(ES2)provides one source for a full range of remote sensing services developed by energy industry experts.  Simplified contracting and pricing is guaranteed for any of our services, along with global service delivered 24/7 and fast, online access and storage of solution results. Our data is tailored for use with energy-specific geological and geophysical desktop applications, as well as web applications and geoportals.  We offer subscription programs such as the Spatial Energy Partner Program (EPP), BasinWatch and Spatial on Demand (www.spatialondemand.com) to provide simplified, cost effective access to acquiring and managing imagery and related services as a corporate asset.  Visit www.spatialenergy.com.

Blue Marble Releases 13.1 Update to Global Mapper

Gardiner, Maine - March 5, 2012 - Blue Marble Geographics (www.bluemarblegeo.com) is pleased to announce the release of Global Mapper version 13.1.  This update features new network licensing, enhanced geospatial PDF support and much more.  Blue Marble’s geospatial data manipulation, visualization and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software, oil and gas, mining, civil engineering, surveying, and technology companies, as well as governmental and university organizations.
Global Mapper 13.1 introduces Flex LM licensing to the software which provides multi-seat users with a flexible network licensing function. This efficient checkout or borrowing process allows easier access to the software across entire organizations, paving the way for new enterprise features in coming releases. The 13.1 update also introduces new geospatial PDF functionality such as the ability to import and export to 64-bit versions, the ability to select which layer to load from a geospatial PDF and the ability to load multi-page PDFs with geo-positioning.   Additional enhancements include support for LAS version 1.4 and LASzip files, GeoJSON formatted data, Digital Bathymetric Database Variable Resolution (DBDB-V), LandXML files and over fifteen additional new formats.  Version 13.1 also includes significant speed increases to the depression filling step when generating watersheds/drainage areas, added built-in access to land cover datasets and generation of grids from layers, significant enhancements to the Digitizer tool as well as many other minor enhancements and updates throughout the software.
“For a minor version release, this update is quite comprehensive,” stated Blue Marble President Patrick Cunningham.  “We are just starting to bring the support of our development team to assisting lead product developer, Mike Childs and we’re already seeing some great gains.   Look for many more great enhancements over the next year.”
About Blue Marble Geographics

Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, ME is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for its coordinate conversion and GIS visualization software expertise including the Geographic Calculator and GeoCalc SDK, as well as Global Mapper. The company has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for almost 20 years and currently serves hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Learn more at www.bluemarblegeo.com.

Blue Marble Announces First Global Mapper Training to be held in Dallas the Week of April 8th

Gardiner, Maine - Blue Marble Geographics (www.bluemarblegeo.com) is pleased to announce its first Global Mapper public training classes during the week of April 8^th at the Hilton Dallas/Park Cities in Dallas, TX.  Registration is now open and interested users can sign up at www.bluemarblegeo.com/solutions/training_details.php?id=10  Space is limited for these two-day training courses so interested parties are encouraged to act quickly.
Blue Marble’s geospatial data manipulation, visualization and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software, oil and gas, mining, civil engineering, surveying, and technology companies, as well as governmental and university organizations. Blue Marble is known for its applied geodesy training courses using the Blue Marble Desktop and the Geographic Calculator.  These popular courses are well received across all industries but resonate particularly well with users who need a refresher on certain GIS concepts and a hands-on training experience that applies the concepts with software.  The Global Mapper training courses will leverage that course design reviewing appropriate concepts and applying them with the software.  David McKittrick , a GIS trainer with over eight years’ experience in the design and delivery of GIS courses, will conduct the Global Mapper classes.
Attendance at this class will provide both novice and experienced users an opportunity to learn about and utilize the principal features and functions of Global Mapper (v. 13). Employing a hands-on approach, each class will cover the key elements of the software including interface navigation; file, layer, and project management; data access and importing; feature creation and editing; cartographic rendering and visual customization; 3-D modeling and analysis; and data exporting and sharing.
Day one will offer a functional overview of the software covering the most frequently used components and common file formats and day two will provide an opportunity to learn about some of the more advanced mapping and GIS tools.
No previous experience is necessary to attend the class however a working knowledge of the principals of GIS, as well as the key associated file formats, is recommended. Participants should bring a windows-based laptop computer for the purpose of using the software during the class. Evaluation copies of Global Mapper (v. 13) as well as the necessary sample data files will be provided to all attendees.
“We are pleased to roll out our Global Mapper training program,” stated Blue Marble President Patrick Cunningham.  “We know these courses will be well received and we are excited to provide our users with assistance in leveraging the program to its fullest extents.”