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Category: weogeo

GadgetTrak and WeoGeo make OEN Angel Oregon final round

Rick Turoczy on February 24, 2009

I’m happy to report that GadgetTrak and WeoGeo have been selected for the final round of OEN Angel Oregon 2009 competition, “the nation’s premier investor/entrepreneur matchmaking event.”

That puts the two companies in the running for a first place prize of $150,000 or a second prize of $75,000.

For those of you who haven’t yet encountered these two cool Portland companies, GadgetTrak is “the company that turns your stolen electronic devices into a sentient Neighborhood Watch for nabbing thieves.” While WeoGeo “supplies surveyors, engineers, cartographers, and scientists with the ability to conveniently store, search, and exchange global mapping and geo-content.”

So who is the competition? The Biotech/CleanTech track features DesignMedix and Tau Science Corporation and the Consumer track features Glide Cycle (I could not stop watching their demo video… something strangely mesmerizing about it) and Wicked Quick.

There are also 20 other companies who get to fly through a one minute elevator pitch—but unfortunately I don’t have their names, yet.

Now, I’m hoping the tech folks can do us proud. We’re still trying to recover from 2008, when Angel Oregon selected an apparel company as the winner.

The Angel Oregon 2009 event will be held March 12 at the Governor Hotel. For more information, see OEN Angel Oregon 2009 on Upcoming or Calagator.

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WeoGeo outlook cloudy… and that’s a good thing

Rick Turoczy on July 18, 2008

WeoGeoWell on its way to being Portland-based WeoGeo will be providing its cloud computing expertise to Vancouver-BC-based Safe Software as part of an effort to get more out of Safe’s spatial extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities.

And WeoGeo gets something out of it, as well:

WeoGeo will use [Safe] FME technology as the basis for its spatial ETL offerings in the marketplace, providing users with the ability to restructure their spatial data into the required format and data model. Specifically, organizations will be able to author spatial data flows that convert and integrate spatial data using FME Desktop and then push the resulting datasets to the cloud for distribution using FME Server.

Yeah, okay. But what the heck does that mean?

Well, I didn’t know either. Luckily, Directions Magazine explained it to me:

WeoGeo allows users to search, find and download geodata for use in various analytical and cartographic pursuits. The one thing missing: the ability to transform and deliver data in various formats. That’s just some of what Safe Software’s FME Server can do.

Directions goes on to opine:

I think these two companies are on to something. The cloud is becoming part of our daily lives – for e-mail, for Google Earth use, for calendars. It’s time to put its reliability, scalability and offsite hardware management to the test in geospatial. I feel pretty confident everyone involved in geospatial is already using applications that run in the cloud and the number they use will only increase in the coming months and years.

So with Safe, all of WeoGeo’s cool data becomes much more usable—and more accessible. And that, alone, makes the WeoGeo existing geospatial data more valuable.

Now, combine that with whatever other geospatial magic they have up their WeoGeo-sleeve and we’re sure to see some cool things coming out of one of our newest startup residents.

WeoGeo creates a one-stop marketplace for the mapping industry. It supplies surveyors, engineers, cartographers, and scientists with the ability to conveniently store, search, and exchange global mapping and geo-content. Geo-content providers can easily list their data for sale, and users can quickly find the data they need.

For more information, see the press release, WeoGeo’s insight on the partnership, and Directions Magazine.