ACADEMIA

MetaCarta, a leading provider of geographic intelligence solutions, today announced the general availability of geOdrive v3.5, the newest version of MetaCarta's geographic intelligence application for the energy industry. geOdrive v3.5 features automated search and notification capabilities, expanded regional search and enhanced visualization for trends analysis. geOdrive 3.5 will be introduced and showcased during 2006 AAPG Annual Convention at MetaCarta's Booth #1660. MetaCarta Geographic Text Search (GTS) is a comprehensive geographic search solution that enables users to rapidly locate high-relevance documents by combining text search with geographic and temporal factors. Geographic Data Modules (GDM) are knowledge bases utilized to identify and disambiguate geographic references, assign latitude/longitude coordinates, and rank. geOdrive is a comprehensive geo-intelligence solution targeted at the energy industry comprised of MetaCarta GTS and an energy-specific GDM. Enhanced Search and Visualization Capabilities Notable enhancements in geOdrive include automated search and notification, region search, 2-D analysis and visualization, and ESRI features: * Automated Search and Notification Geographic text queries can be saved and executed automatically at scheduled times providing a continual stream of geographic intelligence about a particular location. This eliminates the need for programmatic manual search, increasing productivity and streamlining efficiency. Notification of new intelligence resulting from the queries can be proactively sent to a user or set of users using email, RSS, instant messaging or active browser notification giving users the information they need, when and where they need it. * Region Search geOdrive 3.5 has expanded its search capabilities beyond a specific location to now include regions. It provides the ability to filter results based on a specific geo-political region, such as country, state, province or city further reducing the amount of time needed to review information to make an actionable decision. * 2-D Analysis and Visualization This advanced analysis and visualization feature allows users to see the distribution of an entire geographic text search results set. Users can determine trends and see hotspots, which creates a more complete picture and thus facilitates better decisions. * ESRI Enhancements geOdrive 3.5 offers new ease-of-use and security features for ESRI users including support for Active Directory, improved Windows docking, collection selection and export to an ESRI Shapefile. "We have a major oil company using the new version of geOdrive," said Mike Odell, Vice President and General Manager, Energy Division. "The explorationists are saving a tremendous amount of time using the new automated search notification and regional search features alerting them to new information sources. Before using these new capabilities, they had to manually search for new information on a regular basis, across the enterprise, to keep up-to-date on breaking information that could help them develop plays." geOdrive 3.5 will be available May 1, 2006.