Qbase Releases Next Version of MetaCarta Geographic Search and Referencing Platform Software

New Release Offers Expanded Geographic Data Module Reach, Natural Language Processing Improvements and More

Reston, VA –– June 22, 2011 –– MetaCarta, a Division of Qbase, LLC and a leading provider of information technology, business intelligence solutions, and geographic search solutions today announced the launch of their expanded Geographic Search and Referencing Platform (GSRP) Software Version 4.5.1.  This software release represents an important upgrade to the geo-enabling search platform that customers rely upon to expedite their location-based searches.

MetaCarta has extended its lead in the industry with the release of Version 4.5.1 as the fastest and most accurate geo-referencing platform available.  With this release, MetaCarta’s Base Geographic Data Module (GDM) has significantly increased the number of place names recognized by its core Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine, and made further improvements to the efficiency of the NLP engine itself. The MetaCarta GDM works with the GeoTagger to create geotags (location name, latitude/longitude, country/province, feature types, and confidence score) for each location identified within a document. These geotags deliver the structured data necessary to geo-enable unstructured documents.

MetaCarta’s Software Version 4.5.1 includes the following enhancements:

• GDM Enhancements – MetaCarta’s Base GDM has been upgraded with over 3.5 million new geonames for an industry-leading 27.5 million searchable place names.
• NLP Engine Accuracy – Updates and additions have been made to the modeling data which improves location identification within unstructured data, and works to more efficiently disambiguate both location names from non-location names, as well as between locations with the same name.
• Enhanced GeoSearch Metadata Queries – Users can now specify what metadata is returned from a search in the MetaCarta Search APIs.  This feature allows clients the ability to share and filter using the JSON interface upgrade and enables easier integration of a customer’s plug-in metadata for follow-up searches.
• GeoTagger Decimal-format Support – Decimal-format coordinates, as expressed by many modern social media websites, can now be recognized and tagged as locations.
• Location Finder Reverse Lookup – This new functionality provides look-up of locations by either a bounding box or by centroid and radius which allows customers to identify specific locations within an area of interest. Results of these searches provide both distance and direction from the centroid of the area.
• Map Server Enhancement – Customers are now able to add vector and raster maps to the MetaCarta Map Server by either loading them on the appliance or linking to them externally through the Web Service Client.
  

In addition to announcing Version 4.5.1, MetaCarta has committed to a development schedule of two software upgrades each year, in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters. The new releases will focus on both feature and functionality improvements, as well as expansion of the GDM breadth and scale to increase the ever-critical place name library.  In addition, MetaCarta will release quarterly IHS Global Oil & Gas GDM updates. As technology improves and business demands grow, this biannual schedule will assure customers that MetaCarta software is state-of-the-art. 

 “In today’s ever changing world of information, it’s critical that we are agile and able to adapt and grow as our customer’s needs evolve,” says Ken Tomaselli, VP of Sales. “At MetaCarta, we carefully listen to customer challenges and are committed to releasing two software upgrades annually as we strive to deliver on their requirements.  Information isn’t the problem in today’s world, getting to it is.  MetaCarta’s solutions help you find what or who you’re looking for, quickly.”

Adds Paul Kesaris, Senior VP of Product, “MetaCarta is fully committed to helping our public and private sector clients build and expand their enterprise and global search solutions.  Not only are we focused on providing key technological enhancements, like the expansion of our place names data and improvements to our NLP capabilities, but we are also looking at how we can package our solutions more efficiently.”

As customers have requested, MetaCarta is aggressively extending its Software-only configurations for those that desire the power of a MetaCarta solution, but with the flexibility of a non-hardware bound product. Throughout 2011, there are plans to release additional Software-only versions of MetaCarta applications.  Currently, MetaCarta GeoTagger, Location Finder and Solr Toolkit for GeoSearch are available; Query Parser and additional GDMs are planned for release as Software-only later in the year.

Geographic Search and Referencing Platform (GSRP) Software Version 4.5.1 is fully available. For more information, contact your MetaCarta sales organization.

About Qbase and MetaCarta, a Division of Qbase

Qbase is an innovative data solutions provider, delivering unique concepts and tools in the areas of business intelligence, data analytics, data fusion, modeling and visualization, and platforms for sensor data exploitation and geospatial information as well as high throughput computing. Qbase solutions facilitate improved access and delivery of actionable data content for commercial and military healthcare, federal, civilian, defense, homeland security and national information services agencies by applying innovative technology and demonstrated deployment methodologies. Together with MetaCarta, a division of Qbase, the growing organization also provides powerful technology for finding anything written about any place. MetaCarta’s unique technology combines geosearch and geotagging capabilities allowing users to find content about a location in internal and external data stores. MetaCarta’s products make data and unstructured content "location-aware" and geographically relevant for easier organization and quicker action.  With offices in Reston, Virginia and Springfield, Ohio, Qbase improves the effectiveness of our client’s data however, whenever and wherever it is needed. For more information, please visit us at www.4qbase.com, www.metacarta.com.