Along with the Sunsetting of Cartographica I am announcing the immediate sunset of CartoMobile. Effective immediately, CartoMobile will no longer be available for sale on the AppStore. CartoMobile will still be available for use by users who purchased it previously, and I have no intention of removing it for re-download. Although I realize this will come as a disappointment to those of you who are currently using CartoMobile, I can no longer justify the resources necessary to keep it operational based on revenue. The situation is similar to Cartographica, although perhaps even more about the business model. In the case …

After 18 years of working on Cartographica and CartoMobile, it's time for a change at ClueTrust. Today I'm announcing that I will be sunsetting Cartographica this year, with end of sales being July 31, 2023, and end of support being December 31, 2023. At the end of July, it will no longer be possible to purchase Cartographica support or new products. Any existing customers will be able to continue to use the software based on their existing license. A bit of background Cartographica has been alternatively an avocation or vocation for me since I started working on it in 2005 …

This week, Apple released 2 big efforts that have been occupying their corporate resources for quite some time: macOS 11 Big Sur, and Macs based on Apple Silicon. Big Sur As with most new software releases, ClueTrust has been running macOS 11 Big Sur in the lab here since long before this release, and we're happy to announce that Cartographica 1.5.2 is fully compatible with the macOS 11 Big Sur release. Big Sur contained some big changes, and as such, unfortunately, versions of Cartographica prior to 1.5.2 are not compatible. As noted in the 1.5 …

Scientific American posted an overview about tectonic plate movement, datums and geodesy. The article covers a fair amount of ground in some depth, but not so much so that it's confusing. Check it out and contemplate the amount of work that we'll all be doing when the USGS updates the datum in another few years. For those who are curious, Cartographica maintains a large list of datum and datum shift information so that it can accurately overlay coordinates from one system onto another. These calculations aren't trivial and we had quite a time squeezing these conversions into the first version …

At ClueTrust, we're proud and excited to deliver version 1.4 of Cartographica into the hands of our customers. This has been a long journey from the last major feature release to this one, and although we have added a lot of new functionality to the software and made many improvements, it became clear to us months ago that something was going to have to change for us to be more responsive to the needs of the market and our customers. To that end, we have been bolstering our automated testing capabilities, enhancing our hands-on testing regime, and changing how …

As reported in Ag Professional and forwarded along by one of our astute customers, the US Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency has put out a public call for comments on how data is collected for requests for Aerial Photography through the NAIP program, which is a great source of raster data for software such as Cartographica. The call for information is specifically expected to help the agency: Determine whether the continued collection of information is still necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the FSA, including whether the information will have practical utility; Assess the accuracy …

This week, we launched out new support site, using Zendesk. Besides a smoother ticketing system, we are also happy to announce that we have taken the feature request, help and tips areas and made them much more accessible. Please join us in inaugurating this new site by visiting, asking your questions, adding your feature requests, and voting on your favorite requests and topics.

Yesterday we learned of the death of a man who had a profound effect on the course of my life and the life of this company. I am sure that this sentiment has and will be reflected many times, but it makes it no less true in our case. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and all of those whose lives were touched by him. I never knew the man personally, although I stood in the same room with him many times. I have owned at least one Macintosh since 1984 (including a dark period where I …

Avenza Releases MAPublisher 8.4 With Support for Cartographica Illustrator Files The new release of MAPublisher 8.4 (www.avenza.com) for Adobe Illustrator, allows data-rich Adobe Illustrator files which have been exported from Cartographica to be opened in Adobe Illustrator with all attributes, layers and geo-referencing intact. This means that there is now a direct path from the Cartographica GIS environment on Mac OS to the powerful Adobe Illustrator design environment without the loss of any attributes and geo-referencing. Now the full suite of MAPublisher cartographic tools can be used on Cartographica generated maps.

ClueTrust is pleased to announce that Cartographica® Mobile (CartoMobile™) is now available on the App Store. CartoMobile is our GIS for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Use CartoMobile to view, edit, and create location-based information in the field without having to carry around specialized equipment. Store and access local data, or use CartoMobile with your existing Spatial Data Infrastructure. Dock with your computer and load the files directly into your desktop GIS.

I stumbled across an interesting article today about the expansion of GIS education into Middle and High Schools. The article in the Gainsville Times describes the process of training teachers and ways to discover new applications of GIS. Exposing kids to GIS seems to be the next step in the evolution of GIS as a commonly used technology. As of now it seems that GIS has remained useful only to professionals who gained training while in college. The early exposure will get more kids, and hopefully parents, interested in discovering the world through science and technology. As technology continues to …

The folks at Very Spatial Podcast have an interview this week with Gaige B Paulsen, President and Founder of ClueTrust, where he talks about Cartographica.

The 2010 U.S. census began this morning in a nearly $300 million dollar attempt to count the nation's population. The census bureau is sending out forms to nearly 120 million households in hopes that they will top the year 2000 response rate of 67%. The census is relevant to mappers because much of the information that is collected in done so through geographic units of analysis. We often hear about Block Groups and Census Tracts, well, the census is where we get these terms. The census divides the nation into incrementally smaller units and data are collected from each …

I read an interesting article this morning about the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new study on food production on the East Coast. According to the USDA website, the Agricultural Research Service is conducting a large scale evaluation that includes researchers from "Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Iowa State University, Cornell University, and Pennsylvania State University. Two other USDA agencies—the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the Agricultural Marketing Service—are also contributing to the study." The USDA website notes that people think of the East Coast as mostly urban, however, the East Coast has an agricultural economy over …

Yesterday (July 23) the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing about the future of federal geospatial data management. The purpose of the meeting was to cover various issues related to geospatial data, and to talk about the need to promote better geospatial data management and a national geospatial data infrastructure. The hearing was published on the House Committee on Natural Resources website for public viewing. The hearing included a panel of mapping professionals that were at the hearing to testify about the value of geospatial data and the importance of creating a national database of federal …

I have a couple of things to write about this morning regarding Apple products and news...There has been a lot of talk around the internet about what is going on with the new iPhone and its battery problems. I have a few updates on that and a few comments about another iPhone 3G problem that has occurred with the new 3.0 update. Additionally, there was an interesting article this morning that mentions Apples place in China's roll out of a new internet filtering software that is designed to limit access to pornography and to sensitive political websites. I …

There have been reports circling the internet that the new iPhone 3G S is experiencing problems with the battery overheating. Wired.com is reporting that in some white iPhones 3G S's there are reports that the overheating is causing discoloration. The same article also hinted at older iPhone 3Gs experiencing similar problems after upgrading to the new 3.0 OS. The article also pointed out that the overheating was occurring while the users were playing games or running other applications. At this point it is unclear if all iPhone are affected, if certain apps are causing problems, or if the …

The release of the newest iPhone 3G S begins on Wednesday and reports are that it has already sold-out of phones to be handed out on opening day. Apple Insider and Information Week are both reporting that sources are saying that customers who ordered after Saturday the 13th should not expect to receive their iPhone on the opening release day. Both Apple Insider and Information Week are indicating that customers wishing to upgrade or to purchase the new iPhone will now likely have to wait 7-14 days to receive their new phone. This is a problem (If you will call …

I had a recent experience involving the 8GB iPhone 3G that I thought really shows why Apple is such an amazing company. Let me explain. We all know this week that Apple announced the newest version of its iPhone would be hitting stores by June 17th, which will include the newest version of the Mac OS 3.0, and a number of other new features that will greatly improve the iPhone. Well, me being an Apple advocate to my friends and family, I continually support their purchasing of any Apple products from computers, to cell phones, to programs like Cartographica …

Today is the first day of the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, which should be very exciting for any Mac user. Each year a number of new products are presented at the conference, and this year should be no different. There has already been a lot of buzz about the new iPhone software that is due out very soon, and the conference should be a place to highlight the new software's capability. According to Mitch Wagner of Information Week Apple is expected to present the newest version of the iPhone, which is expected to have a …