VPRO, a Dutch public broadcasting organization, has produced a TV documentary called “The Netherlands from Above.” Location-based information was used to map and portray many phenomena, from pop culture to nature to environmental disaster management. Jan Willem van Eck shares details and thoughts about the potential impact of the series.

Pitney Bowes announced its new data as a service offering, Geosk, last fall. Adena Schutzberg interviewed Pitney Bowes Software’s Scott Robinson, director of Global Data Products, to learn more.

Mobile field data collection starts with a reliable hand-held device and software that can be as functional as any desktop GIS. The city of Las Vegas, Nevada found that its existing mobile solution was incompatible with its GIS, which resulted in some redundancies. That problem was mitigated with an ArcPAD solution that was more than up to the task for the city’s Parks and Open Spaces Division.

Powerful. Flexible. These are words ascribed by one utility manager to be essential attributes to his planned enterprise GIS solution. “The value of the system lies in the fact that the GIS and engineering data are not kept in separate databases or in functional silos … and to have a single source of data available to anyone who manages or supports the utility network.” Cyndi Smith and Richard Zambuni of Bentley Systems provide examples from Turin, Italy and Huntsville, Alabama as these cities undertook this challenge.

Editor in Chief Joe Francica provides an encapsulated review of publicly traded geospatial information and location technology companies. The global economic turmoil has had a dramatic impact on this technology sector, with few companies delivering positive gains for shareholders. The roller-coaster ride of the last two years is unlikely to change but opportunities exist for investors who believe that location-based information is still an essential driver of business.

Dino Ravnić is the co-founder and CEO of GIS Cloud, Ltd, and he is passionate about the present and future of GIS in the cloud. When asked to send us a picture of something he enjoys doing (fishing? hunting? ballroom dancing?), he gave us one of him working on GIS cloud capabilities for GPS.

In December, Infotech Enterprises and DTS GIS participated in a Directions Magazine webinar to present a cost-effective solution to the NERC-mandated transmission line monitoring. This webinar sparked more good questions than could be answered during the allotted time. Here those answers are presented in detail.

Socium, a subsidiary of 1Spatial, is launching an online data validation service in the United States on February1st. Directions Magazine interviewed Abbie Beckford, customer relations and marketing manager at Socium, to learn the details of the offering.

James Cutler, CEO of emapsite, a geospatial data provider in the UK, discusses how selling data online has evolved over the last 10 years to accommodate new licensing agreements and data delivery platforms. He forthrightly expresses the opinion that “open data” is a promise yet to be fulfilled.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection reports that the Marcellus Shale underlying much of Pennsylvania and portions of New York and West Virginia is believed to hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. This formation has long been considered prohibitively expensive to access but recent advances in drilling technology and rising natural gas prices have attracted new interest in this previously untapped formation. Updated lease maps of the area are critical to tapping this vast energy resource. Editor in Chief Joe Francica spoke to Brock McCarty of Apollo Mapping to get some specifics on the maps Apollo Mapping is providing to companies prospecting in the area.