Key Features

Functionality Is Built Into MapStudio

Find a place

Jump to your area of interest using the geocoder, place finder, or zoom. Add points of interest, turn on and off layers, set design preferences, and output a map at the size you want in the format you want. You'll get all this functionality in a program that runs on any platform as long as you have a browser and Internet connection.

Location—Find It, Geocode It, Zoom In

MapStudio's place finder recognizes millions of place names. And the built-in geocoder means MapStudio for Media can locate addresses or intersections anywhere in the United States. In testing, it located the address in the correct block approximately 90 percent of the time. The distinctive, Java-based tool allows users to dynamically select an area of interest and zoom to just that spot.

Add your points of interest.

Personalize MapStudio With Your Points of Interest

Whether you want to track crimes in your community or maintain a list of your favorite restaurants around the world, you can add those points to MapStudio and store them so that other users in your organization can access them as well.

Choosing From Rich, Dynamic Layers

Choose layers: Demographics

Things that were difficult for infographics professionals just got easier!

No longer will artists spend hours trying to fill in census polygons on a map from a spreadsheet. Instead, a finished map and legend can be accessed and output directly from MapStudio for Media.

Artists can add terrain with roads and rivers to a map as easily as they would any other layer. The output for Illustrator users is a 200 dot-per-inch (dpi) image of terrain with roads and rivers that match the hills precisely.

Or artists can add imagery to show not only the intersection where, for example, a shooting took place, but what the buildings look like in that location or where the attacker was hiding when it happened. Again, the user can get a 200-dpi image with road names in the correct location. All of this text can be edited and moved just in case it wasn't just right.

Choose layers: Terrain

MapStudio for Media offers live weather data updated every 10 minutes, population data down to the block; street data for the entire United States; high-resolution terrain for the country; color terrain and ocean floors for the world; detailed hot spot maps. All of the layers included in MapStudio for Media can then be edited for design and color in Freehand or Illustrator. The artist doesn't need to load any new software but can simply use the tools of the trade.

Cropping, Projecting, and Design Options

Choose layers: Satellite imagery

Hundreds of projection options are available in MapStudio for Media from which you may choose. You also can let MapStudio for Media choose a projection for you. The map then can be cropped to a specific size.

Life just got easier for the art director, too! Training others to use your publication's style and learn about the area can be a challenge. By the time the trainees get it right, they might be on their way to the next job. But using MapStudio, everyone in the organization will be creating accurate maps using the right color palette from day one.

Refine layers: Project maps and change colors.

The art director can set up a color palette or a couple of different palettes for the graphics department to use. Then, everyone on the staff starts out making professional looking maps right away. If news breaks after the artists have gone home for the day, a layout editor could create a map that includes the right style elements.

File Formats Work With Existing Technologies

When the user outputs the map, it need not require modification in ArcGIS Desktop. It could simply be a clean image file that can be placed in a presentation or on a Web site.

Publish maps in Illustrator or Freehand.

If an artist wants to add a pointer box, change some colors, or modify the type styles, the map could be opened in Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand to make those changes. All of the layers chosen in MapStudio for Media become layers in the illustration software. The color palette is downloaded and the type styles are read on the desktop application.

If an ArcGIS Desktop user wants to marry the data with locally obtained statistics, then the data can be downloaded in shapefile format from MapStudio for Media and added to the project.

Data of Many Types Available to You

MapStudio's premium service provides beautiful, high-resolution, color imagery.

Map layers not only include basic political boundaries, roads, and waterways but also topographic relief, satellite images, and vegetation maps. MapStudio for Media contains an abundance of information about the people inhabiting the planet and their habits. Population, income, election data, and other types of data are all available through MapStudio for Media. See a list of data providers.

A Geographic Wire Service

Spending time finding, updating, and maintaining data comes at a high cost in many organizations, especially when covering the news. Deadlines can be missed; stories lack context; accuracy suffers. Other data sets might be impossible to host locally such as; the weather or live election results, which change constantly; or imagery, which is too large for most organizations to host themselves.

Context in a Small Space

MapStudio makes adding terrain, fault lines, and historic earthquake epicenters easy.

Many maps would benefit from the rich data stores offered in MapStudio for Media. For instance, when an earthquake strikes, users will see the location of that earthquake appear within MapStudio for Media. MapStudio for Media gets its data live from the U.S. Geological Survey. The user could then add a layer for historic earthquakes, fault lines, terrain, or population to add context to what used to be a simple news locator. Or, in the case of the Washington sniper case, using imagery offered through MapStudio for Media, a user could show the details of a park or a parking lot in the imagery offered.