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DeLorme Professional Newsletter

 December 2008
Affordable GIS Solutions for the Practical Professional


Season's Greetings from the DeLorme Professional Team

The XMap Group at DeLorme would like to wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

DeLorme Releases Earthmate PN-40 GPS for use with XMap

Special Limited Time Holiday Offer – Through December 23, 2008, receive a free belt clip and a DeLorme 2009 Calendar with any PN-40 purchase.

The Earthmate PN-40 GPS represents a new breed of handheld GPS receiver. Incorporating the latest DeLorme GPS technology and rugged enough to endure the harshest conditions imaginable, the PN-Series devices are ideally suited for serious work or play.

For over 30 years, the DeLorme name has been synonymous with both superior quality maps and innovative spatial technology. These paths have converged with the PN-40, resulting in a truly unique and feature-laden GPS receiver that is an ideal mobile complement to DeLorme’s XMap professional mapping and GIS software suite.

"There are a batch of handheld GPS units on the market, but I've never seen one that is as fast as this new DeLorme model, has a clearer screen or offers such flexibility in downloading everything from topo maps to aerial photographs of the areas you'll be traversing.”

Detroit Free Press, December 4, 2008

XMap Q & A

How can XMap save my company money?

This simple question was posed by a prospective XMap customer who called the DeLorme Professional Sales team a few months ago. With the current financial crisis deepening every day and its effects being felt by virtually every business and industry, this question has lately gained even more importance.

Many might suggest that the best way to save money is not to spend it; however, as any business owner will attest, investment is needed if the business is to survive and grow. The sensible approach is not to eliminate spending but to invest in technologies that will provide a tangible benefit to your business and that will help it run more efficiently.

Over the years, DeLorme has continually striven to establish a balance between offering spatial tools that meet the challenges of the ever-changing GIS landscape, while keeping the cost of this technology within the budget of even the smallest company or organization. However, even with a relatively small investment, there must be a measureable return if the expenditure is to be justified, so how can XMap save you money?

Tab Tip

Importing and Appending Attributes to a GIS Layer

Anyone who has attended an XMap GIS training program recently will likely have heard the instructor introduce the three critical steps necessary for the development of a GIS:

  • Step 1 - Recognize the source or sources of the relevant datasets
  • Step 2 - Process and manipulate the data so that it clearly conveys the appropriate information
  • Step 3 - Establish a mechanism for sharing the results with colleagues, clients, constituents, or customers
This article addresses an issue frequently encountered during step one of the development of a GIS: “How do I migrate my current data into a GIS format?”
An organization that has decided to implement a GIS solution to manage information will likely have done so because other methods of data management are not providing the required level of functionality. It is fairly common in these situations for the data to already be structured in way that will allow it to be easily integrated into a GIS, assuming the necessary tools are available.

We Want to Meet You!

Visit us at these upcoming events:

The Wind Energy Institute
Austin, TX
January 21-22, 2009

Petroleum User Group (PUG) Conference
Houston, TX
February 23-25, 2009

Stop by the DeLorme booth and enter to win a drawing for a DeLorme product.


Where on Eartha?

Considering the number of correct responses to November’s Where on Eartha Challenge, it might have been prudent to offer a more difficult test by asking you to come up with the capital and county without the help of the artificially superimposed country border. As it was, Bill Dailey, the Geographic Information and Mapping Services Manager for Huntsville Utilities in Alabama, was one of many who correctly identified the city of Maseru in the landlocked country of Lesotho in southern Africa. For being the first randomly selected respondent, Bill will shortly be receiving a copy of XMap Professional and a USB GPS receiver.

This month, in homage to the spirit of the season, we will once again provide a border layer overlaid on the Landsat imagery to help you ascertain the name of the country and capital city designated by the pushpin. We’ll even offer a clue: The city in question plays host to a renowned event that takes place each year during the holiday season. If you would like to hazard a guess as to the correct answer, write it in an email and send it to contest@delorme.com. Entries should arrive no later than New Year's Eve '08.

Last-Minute Gift Idea

What do you buy the XMap user who has everything? What about giving them the entire U.S.?



Just in time for the holidays, DeLorme offers the ultimate stocking stuffer. For only $29.95, you can purchase a subscription to the new Map Library, XMap’s online map data download service. Accessed through the NetLink tab in XMap, this service provides unlimited access to updated aerial and satellite imagery, USGS 1:24,000 quad maps, and NOAA navigational charts.

Unlike traditional Web-based map services, all of the data downloaded through NetLink is stored locally and is yours to keep, which means that you will be able to work with imagery and other datasets in the field or in locations where an Internet connection is unavailable.

The Map Library subscription is good for one year, so the amount of data that you download is limited only by your computer’s storage capacity. Consequently, for the XMap user on your list, you might also want to put an external hard drive under the tree this year.

Did You Know...

Did you know that DeLorme Phone Data is free with every copy of XMap 6? This remarkable resource contains searchable phone numbers and addresses for every listed phone customer in the U.S. and Canada.

Using the Phone Search function in XMap, you can quickly look up a specific number if you know both the name and address, or you can conduct a search for multiple records by typing a business category and a geographic area. You can even create a list of every number within a particular region by leaving the name field blank.



Perhaps one of the more intriguing functions of the Phone Search tool in XMap is the option to right-click any road or street in the map window and click Phone Listings for either the entire street or just the selected block. This will create a list of every residential and business phone number on that street, each of which can be represented by a symbol and label on the map.

Any list of Phone Search results can be exported in text format and subsequently imported as a GIS layer. In the GIS tab, the standard querying tools can be applied to this data, which will allow you to create a subset of the phone listings based on a wide variety of attribute or spatial criteria. For instance, you can create a list of numbers representing residents within a defined distance of a proposed new store location.

With the phone data now included with XMap, it’s like we’re shipping every phone book for the U.S. and Canada in the software box.