December
- GDT Acquires Geography Assets of Compusearch
- Intergraph Announces GeoSpatial World 2001
- National Atlas Receives Hammer Award
- AUSLIG announced an internal restructure
- Intergraph announces Registered Solutions Provider Program

November
- 2000 US Presidential Election
- Kodak invests in CAD software firm
- Russia Loses Contact With Quikbird Satellite
- NearMe, a MapInfo Spin-Off secures funding

October
- GE Completes Acquisition of Smallworldwide plc
- SRI introduces .geo Proposal
- OGC Announces Wireless Location Services
- Autodesk Celebrates 50,000 Point A Members
- First Extension for AutoCAD 2000i-Based Products
- GITA Announces New Local Government Track

September
- GITA's GIS for Oil and Gas conference
- Preparations for GIS Day 2000 Under Way
- Kodak Announces Acquisition of Research Systems, Inc.
- Governor Owens proclaims GIS Week in Colorado
- GIS in the Rockies 2000
- Bentley Launches Viecon Public Works Network

August
- GE Announces Offer to Acquire Smallworldwide plc
- MapInfo miDirections.com Goes "Live"
- 2000 Autodesk Users' conference
- USAF launcheds 4th GPS satellite
- MapInfo Announces Three-For-Two Stock Split

July
- Autodesk Ranked Number 32 in software 500
- Caliper Releases ZIP Code Boundaries
- MapInfo to support Oracle® Internet Application Server 8i
- ESRI and Blue Join Forces
- Intergraph GeoSpatial Users Community

June
- Microsoft Comments on Ruling
- New GIS Discussion List "GISList" Comes to life
- ESRI’s Geography Network
- World's Smallest Hard Disk Drive
- A/E/C SYSTEMS 2000
- MS Windows CE 3.0 released
- Autodesk Launches e-Learning Community
- GeoMedia 4.0 Seminar Series
- Astronaut Photographs From Space
- Bentley and HMR Merge

May
- Selective Availability Turned Off
- NASA Plans for a unique high-tech school in Georgia
- Los Alamos Fires
- ASPRS 2000 Annual Conference
- Mount St. Helens 20th Anniversary
- Love Bug computer worm

April
- LizardTech Launches Chromafire
- GeoCommunity Reports Million Milestone in Traffic
- ArcView Image Analysis 1.1
- Tele Atlas Acquires ETAK
- Lizardtech Vindicated By Washington Court
- Autodesk Spins Off RedSpark
- TenLinks.com Acquires The CAD Depot
- USGS Hosts National Seminar on GIS and Public Health
- Intergraph and Bentley Align Strategies

March
- ESRI Plans Global Distribution of LizardTech's MrSID
- Intergraph Teams With RTSe -USA
- Autodesk to Repurchase Shares
- Lizardtech Acquires DJVU
- Tadpole Acquires Mobile E-Business Vendor
- ESRI Joins Wireless Applications Protocol Forum
- GTS Selects Intergraph Technology
- MapQuest.com Signs Ford
- Intergraph Opens Online Store for SmartSketch

February
- Space Shuttle Endeavour Returns from SRTM Mapping mission
- MapInfo Extends Reach into Wireless Internet Market
- GeoComm Acquires Wireless Developer Network
- DMTI Introduces CanMap Plus+
- Palm, Inc. Introduces Palm IIIxe
- Clinton uses a tiny map of the Western Hemisphere
- world's first detailed urban traffic maps on WAP phones
- GDT Celebrates 20 Years

January
- ESRI's ArcInfo 8 GIS Software Ships to Users
- Alaska Airlines tragedy
- Endeavour crew arrives in Florida for monster mapping mission
- Census 2000 Count Begins in Remote Alaska
- TenLinks.com Launches the Ultimate CAE Directory
- Geonetcom, the free GIS Seminar Series from Autodesk Corp. continued
- New AUSLIG website design launched

The GeoCommunity Editor has reviewed more than 4,000 news items featured at the GeoCommunity website over the past year. Here we take a look at the top 'NewsMakers' from 2000. For each month, we've selected the top story, highlighted new products, and listed the most popular news announcements. Happy New Year to everyone from The GeoCommunity!

Jan 2000

Y2K - For months everyone had been discussing Y2K. The millenium came and went without a hitch and the dotcom world spend billions preparing for the y2k rollover. All of the major vendors issued y2k compliance statements which we made available to our vistors.

ESRI's ArcInfo 8 GIS Software Ships to Users Worldwide - The most significant release of geographic information system (GIS) software to ever hit the computing market [according to ESRI] began shipping to users worldwide. ArcInfo 8.0.1, the result of the largest, most comprehensive research and development effort of its kind, is a new platform for creating, managing, disseminating, and applying geographic knowledge. The new user interface for ArcInfo 8 is a versatile workspace. It is the environment for working with, managing, and transforming map data all within the same easy-to-use program.

MapQuest continued it's dominance in the online dirving directions and mapping arena as Wal-Mart Joined MapQuest's Network of More Than 180 Retailers, 1,000
Clients.

New Products
- OBJECTFX Corporation Releases SPATIALFX Version 2.0
- PAMAP GIS™ 5.2b Released
- DeLorme released a new Mac version of Street Atlas USA
- RTS Networks USA announced the release of smms 3oh!
- Earth Resource Mapping announced Image Web Server version 1.01
- RSI Releases V-Track 2000 GPS Based Vehicle Tracking Product

Space Shuttle Endeavour Returns - The six astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour glided to a smooth landing at the Kennedy Space Center at sunset on Feruary 22th, wrapping up their 11-day radar mapping mission, the first human space flight of the 21st century.The data brought home by Endeavour's crew was collected during more than 222 hours of around-the-clock radar mapping operations and is enough to fill more than 20,000 CDs

We followed the shuttle right from the start! - Our Space correspondent, Philip Chien, brought us A Sneak Peek at the First Digital Three-D Map of the World. We complemented this piece by following the mission from start to finish, resulting in what was likely the most popular news feature of the year. We featured news, articles, images, and feedback. Out feature was picked up by Comuter Graphics Magazine and highlighted on NASA's website.

MapInfo Announces miSites and miDirections - MapInfo Corporation (Nasdaq:MAPS) today announced the availability of miSites and miDirections, new Web-based applications for e-CRM (Customer Relationship Management) designed to help companies serve their Web customers better. Also available with these new turnkey solutions is the Java-based MapInfo Routing J Server which enables large MapInfo customers to add routing with driving directions to their customized applications.

Also... Kodak continued to increase its importance as a resource to the GIS and location-based services industry with the release of Kodak's New PalmPix Camera -
This nifty product Adds Visual NotesTo Palm Organizers, making the Palm an ever more important tool for field workers.

New Products
- OBJECTFX Corporation Releases SPATIALFX Version 2.0
- SolidWorks Corporation Introduces SolidWorks 2000
- CARIS-Universal Systems Ltd. announces the release of CARIS HIPS

Microsoft announces MapPoint 2001 - Microsoft boasted that this release provides users with a complete set of geographic and demographic data, eliminating the need to purchase additional information to begin work right away. Highly accurate address-matching is accomplished through the use of street map information licensed from Geographic Data Technology Inc., Navigation Technologies Corp. and Compusearch Micromarketing Data and Systems -- leading providers of digital map data for the United States and Canada. We test drove it and offered up our own review.

GITA 2000 - We spent a week in Denver attending GITA's Annual Conference and Exhibition. This event is the premier educational event for professionals involved in geospatial information technologies, including automated mapping/facilities management (AM/FM), geographic information systems (GIS), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and related technologies. We delivered daily reports, news, and images from the event. This event is the Editor's personal favorite industry trade show because of the large turn out and diverse content available from a non-vendor spicific show.

New Products
- CARIS Unveils Revolutionary Web GIS Spatial Fusion 1.1 at GITA
- Miner & Miner Announces the Release of ArcFM Energy for Arc/Info 8
- Intergraph Announces New Dynamic Segmentation Analysis
- Microsoft announces MapPoint 2001
- Trimble Launches Third Generation ACE Module
- ERDAS IMAGINE 8.4 First Geographic Imaging Software for Win2000
- New XMap Business from DeLorme Designed for Businesses
- Autodesk Offers AutoCAD 2000 via Its e-Store

Autodesk Inc. Launches Point A - Autodesk made headlines in April by intrucing Point A, Potentially the World’s Largest Online Community for Designers and Engineers. Autodesk Point A serves the design community by supplying necessary resources including industry specific content, community, collaboration, and customer care.

Landsat 7 Marks One Year Anniversary - A year after its April 15, 1999 launch, Landsat 7 continues to serve a wide variety of "Earth customers" with its data. Since being declared operational last July, Landsat 7 has gathered more
than 90,000 images, covering most of the Earth's surface multiple times in stunning detail. Every 16 days, Landsat 7 flies over the same geographic area and is capable of documenting the ground cover conditions of the entire globe on a seasonal basis. Every day, Landsat 7 collects and downlinks 250 scenes of data to be archived at the EROS Data Center, and an additional 200 unique scenes are downlinked to nearly a dozen international ground-receiving stations located around the world.

New Products
- Autodesk announces downloadable GIS Data Transformer Extension (dtX) and SDTS and VML Drivers
- ESRI announced shipping of ArcInfo 8.0.2
- Kodak Introduces Innovative New Aerial Film Product
- ESRI ships ArcEurope Base Map and ArcEurope Demographics
- ESRI's ArcView Image Analysis 1.1 Upgrade was made available
- SPATIALinfo Inc. Releases SPATIALnet™ 1.7
- RTSe launches 'Route WAP'
- SAFE Software FME® Themes Extends ArcView's Data Access Capabilities
- FME 2000 Ships
- Lizardtech MrSID Photo Edition Breaks Bandwidth Barrier for Consumers
- DMTI Launches CanMap® RouteLogistics
- Byers Spatialage® Solutions Announces Spatialworx™

Selective Availability Goes Away - On May 2nd at 4:00 UTC the U.S. government shut off 'selective availability' on the Navstar GPS satellites. Selective Availability, or SA, purposely degrades the quality of the publicly available civilian GPS signal. "The decision to discontinue Selective Availability is the latest measure in an ongoing effort to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users worldwide. --This increase in accuracy will allow new GPS applications to emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the world." President Bill Clinton

IGUG 2000 from Huntsville, Alabama - From May 2-7, The Von Braun Center in Huntsville Alabama was the stage for Intergraph CEO, Jim Taylor to announce Intergraph’s new business model... Verticalization! Oh yeah, also taking center stage at IGUG 2000 was Intergraph's latest desktop mapping solution - GeoMedia 4.0. This would turn out to be the final year that Intergraph users from around the world would converge on Huntsville for this event. Future events will mirror the company's vertical profile in the form of events that cater to the Vertical user communities. Intergraph’s core vertical business units of the future were announced: Process and Building Solutions, Mapping and GIS, Public Safety, and Z/I Imaging.

Mapinfo Professional v6.0 Goes 3D & Web Active - Mapinfo, one of the leading provider of location-aware business intelligence solutions, announced the release of Maplnfo Professional 6.0. New features - including built-in 3D graphic capabilities to make hidden trends and patterns on the ground literally stand-out; HotLinks for immediate and live Internet connectivity from points on a
map; support for the newest release of Oracle8i Spatial and enhancements to spatial data creation and printed output.

ARC IMS 3.0 Released - ESRI announced the much anticipacted release of ARC IMS 3. This product was one of the most hyped released promoted at the 1999 ESRI user conference in San Diego. In the box, ArcIMS includes HTML and Java clients plus supports a full suite of other ESRI software such as ArcExplorer, ArcPad, and other devices. ArcExplorer 3 (Java edition) is included with ArcIMS and was made available later in the year for free download from ESRI's Website.

Autodesk Enters Mobile Market with Autodesk® OnSite - Autodesk OnSite utilizes the Palm OS® platform, Oracle8i™ Lite and the Microsoft mobile computing operating system. Solutions built with Autodesk OnSite deliver high-precision asset management information and applications to mobile devices using a multi-tier architecture. The information delivered to the field is live vector images that allow interaction with the data.

New Products
- ERDAS' Stereo Analyst ships
- Open Source software for satellite image processing and mapping
- Safe Software products now available on AIX
- ESRI Announces ArcIMS 3
- MapInfo Corporation Introduces MapXtreme Java Edition 3.0
- CARIS LOTS Version 2.0 Launched
- Intergraph Announces GeoMedia 4.0

The 2000 ESRI User Conference - From june 25-30, Approximately 10,000 GIS professionals from around the world gathered in beautiful San
Diego, California, for the Twentieth Annual ESRI International User Conference. Focal points of the event were; ArcGIS - a series of 3 thin clients, ArcView GIS 8.1, ArcInfo Editor and ArcInfo 8.1, all redeployed in a "single" environment; ArcPad, ArcIMS 3.0.1; and of course... the Geographynetwork.

First Woman to run British Ordnance Survey - Vanessa Lawrence, former Global Manager, Strategic Marketing and Communications at Autodesk Corporation became the first woman to lead Ordnance Survey in its 209-year history and, at 37, is the youngest person ever appointed to the job. She was appointed to the position of Director General in order to map out the future of the Ordance Survey.

Autodesk CEO Bartz Testifies Before Congress - Carol Bartz, Chairman and CEO of Autodesk, Inc., took center stage before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee to report on the opportunities and risks of the "new economy." The unprecedented growth fueled by the Internet has provided increased opportunities for expansion for companies like Autodesk. But Bartz also warned of the economic peril that confronts the nation if Internet software theft and other cyber-crimes continue.

New Products
- ArcPad Goes Wireless at 5.0.1
- ER Viewer 2.0 released for free download
- Mapinfo MapXtreme Java Edition 3.0
- RTSE USA Launches RouteWAP Mobile
- Java-based Version of ESRI’s ArcExplorer
- MapObjects LT 2 Now Shipping
- MapInfo Java-based Version of Coverage Locator

Autodesk Announces AutoCAD 2000i - On July 10, Autodesk Unveiled it's Internet-Integrated Solutions Optimized For the Communications, Utilities, Government, and Land Development Industries - AutoCAD 2000i. AutoCAD 2000i is an important part of Autodesk's initiative to revolutionize and improve the design process by leveraging the Internet in three ways: Web enabling its desktop products, developing browser-based applications, and creating portals. This was to be just another piece in the puzzle forming the company's Internet Business Initiative.

New Products
- ArcView GIS 3.2a
- DMTI Spatial™ Ships CanMap(R) Streetfiles Version 3.0
- New version of GRASS 5 beta
- GenaMap creates GIS for Red Hat Linux
- Geographic Calculator 5.0 Releases
- CARIS releases Java development tools
- alta4 releases HTML ImageMapper 2.1
- SMMS for Windows 2000
- ERDAS releases free ViewFinder

Autodesk MapGuide 5 released - On August 3, Autodesk Corp. officially announced the availability of the much anticipated MapGuide 5. This product delivers interactive designs, maps, and related data to a company's
intranet or the Internet, allowing anyone, anywhere with a supported Web browser to access and interact with real-time, dynamic information. New features included Mobile and Wireless Support; No Plug-in Required; Direct Data Support for new Autodesk MapGuide Data Extensions with support for native data formats including Oracle8i Spatial and Autodesk VISION*; Redlining option.

GIS News goes wireless!- We've all been inundated with information about the wireless web and wireless location-based services. The Geocommunity addressed the seriousness of this technological change by launching the first ever 'wireless' PDA available GIS focused news channel via the avantGo network - we call is "SpatialNews Anywhere". Industry professionals can now 'sync' SpatialNews' GIS and LBS headlines to their PDA.

New Products
- ArcExplorer 2 Is Now Available
- Census 2000 data products announced
- MapInfo Unveils MapinHand
- MapInfo Routing J Server Ships
- CMRC Announces Availability of CrimeStat 1.1
- SAFE software's FME enterprise and SpatialDirect for Linux
- Maplex 3.4 Now Shipping
- LEICA Turnkey GPS Sensor For GIS

GIS and the 2000 Sydney, Australia Olympic Games - Many of us were glued to our television sets for the last 2 weeks in September to watch the Olympics. We used this opportunity to feature a number of companies that were taking advantage of the world stage and using GIS technologies for "Olympic" related GIS projects. Some noteworthy products we featured included a one meter satellite image of Sydney produced by Space Imaging Corp., an interactive webmapping site by the City of Sydney, and an interactive 3D fly-through published by CNN. The Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) even got involved by using MapInfo technology to create hundreds of maps for the longest torch relay in the history of the modern games.

New Products
- MrSID supported by Intergraph's FRAMME Field View 3.1
- MapInfo Unveils CallingAreaInfo 6.0
- LizardTech launches LizardTech Online Viewer 1.2
- Landsat 7 Publishing Wizard for ER Mapper
- PCI Geomatics Releases Geomatica GeoGateway
- GlobeXplorer Unveils World's Largest Online Earth Imagery Archive
- Highlights and news exclusives from the 2000 Autodesk UC

GE Completes Acquisition of Smallworldwide plc - The acquisition of Smallworld increased GE’s presence as a provider of high-tech software solutions in the utility and public systems industries, while establishing a strategic position in the growing communications industry. Smallworld will operate as GE Smallworld and be a part of the GE Energy management Services, a GE Power Systems business unit. GE Smallworld is recognized for its spatial data software and applications for asset, outage, and work management systems with over 750 utility customers around the world. This announcement came several months after Smallworld Completed the Acquisition Of Navigant Consulting's Spatial IT Division and acquired Rad-Line Tools from Convergent Group.

SRI International Aims to "Map" the Internet with .geo - SRI International, a leading independent technology innovator, proposed .geo (pronounced "dot-gee-oh"), a revolutionary method for using the Internet, to the International Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers (ICANN). The idea for this new TLD was to provide a complete, virtually free, and open infrastructure for registering and discovering georeferenced information on the Internet. Unfortunately, the proposal was shot down by ICANN byt SRI plans to keep up with their bid. An update was released in December.

New Products
- Kodak Launches Kodak Earth Imaging
- PocketCAD Viewer Now Available from ArcSecond
- AltaMap and AltaMap Server v2.1 released
- Geomatics Canada announces Virtually Canada
- PC ARC/INFO 4 Now Shipping
- Wireless SourceDisks® Version 3.3 for ArcView
- Safe Software announces the release of FME® 2000 SR1

GIS Day 2000 - The second annual GISDay was held on November 15 during National Geography awareness week. This year more than 2,000 organizations hosted GIS Day events in more than 81 different countries. Through the combined efforts of GIS Day 2000 participants, over 1.5 million children and adults were educated on GIS technology through geography. The GeoCommunity encouraged people to post their GIS day views and news in our discussion area. One thread in particular solicited more than 40 replies!

Winner of 2000 presidential poll a mystery - In November the US Presidential election definitely stole the headlines (in December also!). We took advantage of this by developing what the first and only, freely available GIS dataset of the election results available on the web. This data theme enables users to produce thematic maps of not only the election results by county, but to also correlate the data with a large number of socio and economic attributes.

New Products
- MapImagery Professional Released
- HandyGPS Version 1.6 ships
- Safe adds GeoMedia reading support
- GEOPAK Releases GEOPAK 2000
- CARIS introduces Hydrographic Database
- SpatialFX™ 2.5 Developer Suite

MapInfo Acquires Compusearch - It may not sound like huge news to you at the moment, however, I'm sure that the industry may feel some impact from this transaction in 2001. MapInfo announced that it purchased from Equifax Inc. the principal assets of Compusearch Inc., the leading provider of micro-marketing segmentation and market analysis solutions in
Canada, and MapInfo's principal source of demographic data
for the U.S. market. By acquiring Compusearch's extensive
data assets and CRM applications expertise, MapInfo
significantly expanded its capability to deliver integrated
software and data solutions. The deal was worth $6.3 million. Of particular interst is the fact that his acquisition brings new expertise to MapInfo's initiatives for the mobile Internet market.

New Products
- Magellan Announces the Versatile MAP
- CARIS HIPS 5.1 Now Shipping
- DeLorme Introduces XMap