Summer 2006

The latest version of MapInfo Professional, one of the leading geographic information systems, has been "Web services-enabled", which should mean it becomes much easier for users to link map-based applications directly to related information on the Internet.

The company gives several examples of how this might work. For instance, it says, a retailer can view customer profiles in a selected location in order to perform improved trade area analysis; and users can receive real-time traffic conditions from the Yahoo! traffic feeds Web service to help service personnel reach customers more efficiently.

Among other services available in this way is MapInfo's own MapInfo Envinsa location intelligence platform and its hosted Envinsa Online Services, which it says can be used to "location-enable" existing data. Latitude and longitude coordinates simply have to be attached to each piece of information.

Version 8.5 also has various other improvements such as advanced visualisation and analysis features, including the ability to align images automatically.