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19-02-2008

Seamlessly Covering Consumer Mapping Products and Geospatial Applications

Connecting Places with QUO

 

QUO is the new highly rated smart digital mapping software tool for those who enjoy outdoor sports, pursuits and exploration. It lets you buy maps, share your favourite places with your friends and is ideal for clubs and societies wanting to share experiences and pass on location based services and geo-located information via the Internet. Let’s take a quick look at its main capabilities.

 

By Dušan Peček

Picture represents two main forms, i.e. Explorer where Projects, Maps and Tools are managed and Drawing. Transparent windows virtually increase map area. Instead of transparently overlying raster maps Quo uses Cursor window which shows another map at cursor position.

 

Six Basic Requests

Although there is a variety of geospatial and mapping products around, QUO approach is somewhat different. It is based on many years of experiences in the world of mapping applications, either integrating professional geospatial application on proven platforms or building mapping applications for consumer market.

 

Six basic requests were carefully evaluated before QUO has been built:

 

  • reasonable protection of intellectual property rights and copyright protection of all data which might be delivered by QUO or generated by its tools,
  • plug-in approach,
  • object oriented architecture,
  • easy to resolve royalty,
  • easy to manage content,
  • efficient support.

 


Any detected object can be processed by other plug-in
which performs different function.
QUO is build as .NET application using Framework 2.0. Therefore it is “limited” to Windows OS only. .NET application environment was selected because of its unparalleled performance and stability to write, debug, manage and upgrade. Also a variety of mature third party tools and functionalities already exists, which might take many months to write and debug. .NET also gives excellent over-the-internet functionality. Though QUO is not browser based but stand alone PC application, it can easily access data from various sources spread over the Internet. Pretty much as Google Earth does.

 

Data Copyright Protection

QUO, which was launched to the market in UK in November 2006, is quite a new player in geospatial arena. Therefore maps of UK, provided by Ordnance Survey GB (OSGB) were integrated first. It was quite a difficult task to fulfil the requirements of OSGB, planned business models and customer’s expectations.

 

Following the experiences on implementing OSGB copyright protection the protection of user generated data is implemented as well. User, if he selects so, can declare copyright property to the data which was entered in the system. Data can be protected from being exported, saved as non-protected if already protected, data can be not-printable, etc. This feature clearly demonstrates the awareness’ of data protection and gives credibility when talking to different data-owners. Therefore it was not allowed to deliver raster images as geocoded TIFF or JPEG files as well. A huge raster set of images can be treated as a huge database which should have a provision to be protected per se. 


An example of four plug-ins for S3 Fast system is shown, where S3 Fast stands for Safety Support Software - Field Assessment Survey Tool. Communicator Plug-in communicates over GSM and VHF network sending commands and receiving measurements. Main is Core module of S3FAST system for monitoring the development of tactical situation, analysis and making decisions. Virtual Surveyor and Virtual driver Plug-ins serve the training purposes.

 

Puzzle Technology

Another quantum leap regarding similar products is its plug-in approach. For commercial purposes it is named as ‘Puzzle Technology’. It means that QUO is not a single executable file which is being rebuild and recompiled whenever something new is implemented (or old debugged) but will allow plug-ins (or Puzzles) to coexists under a common QUO ‘umbrella’. Every Plug-in must be activated, i.e. typically it must be paid for and then activation file is generated by the server and transferred to the user. Activation technique also applies for basic QUO product and for those plug-ins which are available for free.

 

It is hard to imagine writing QUO without object oriented approach where properties, events, and methods represent most of the burden, which would have to be implemented if classic procedural approach was used. It is not trivial though to find (sometimes even to guess) the right mixture of properties, events and methods for each mapping and GUI (Graphical User Interface) object.

 

Royalties are something which might be difficult to manage. In order to meet royalty requests each deliverable piece of map and plug-in must be activated before it can be used. For example, not very many customers do buy maps of 1:25.000 scale for the whole UK and install them locally on their computer. Therefore commercial tiles were produced and royalties are paid only for those commercial tiles which are activated.


Typical path printing with an inventive print out procedure.

 


Advanced print enable users to layout rote on printed sheets and design micro publishing editions.




QUO product screenshot showing Getmapping Aerial Photo 1m.


Content Management

One of the greatest challenges of any geospatial and mapping system is how to handle or manage the content, either maps, geocoded data, content generated by QUO tools, etc. In QUO everything is in Project. The idea of a Project might be similar to MapInfo Workspace. Because of QUO’s object oriented approach Project actually holds all of the data objects which are currently loaded and the user has access to. Data can be accessed either in the Project or on the map. Any action for particular data object is just a click away.

 

QUO is used in more demanding Geospatial applications as well. Basically it means that a new plug-in (or a set of plug-ins) is added the basic QUO platform. New functionalities which implement business logic are added and also get access to all of the existing QUO functionality.


Compass Route example shown in Quo Mobile, using Quo Mobile Extensions for MS Mobile platform devices.

 

ISL Light Remote Support

Support for consumer market is a great thing and a great commitment at the same time. In this respect QUO contains tiny remote client called ISLLightClient which does enable remote access to any windows based and internet connected PC in the world. It is zero installation and zero setup software. It employs 3-level encryption and offers maximum security. It is also firewall friendly. To understand the importance of remote support with zero installation and setup issues please visit www.isllight.com

QUO support for consumer market uses ISL Light to connect via the Internet with a remote computer anywhere in the world.

 
Free Download Available

Basic QUO is available for free and there is also a trial time version for most of the functionalities. You can download QUO free from www.mapyx.com.

 

Dušan Peček (dusan.pecek@globalvision.si) is managing director of Globalvision Company (www.globalvision.si) and a member of Mapyx team (www.mapyx.com). He has more than 15 years experience in planning, building and integration of geospatial and related technologies for a wide variety of customers. He is a holder of numerous awards and patents in the geospatial field.