After one Year of development time the city portal has been rolled out in 2009 as an internet portal for marketing activities of municipalities and companies. The portal focused on substancial offers, which as this time are still limited to distribution to German speaking countries like Austria, Switzerland and Germany, now reached the first step of on the way to a global internet portal. An European wide online-application is under way which is already shown by the availability of an english Web version.
visitcity's special advantages are therein embedded Microsoft Bing data as well as the benefiting licencensing procedure. The systems partner Intergraph on whose data center "Terra Map Server" the systems is operating, has negotiated in close cooperation with Microsoft an extra pricing model, which makes the user independent from click rates. Instead of purchasing a single royalty for the Bing data from Microsoft the visitcity customer benefits from a flatrate royalty, which is covered by the user fees. Visitcity is powered by Intergraph.
Having won Bitmanagement Software GmbH, 3D software developer, as a new technology partner, visitcity now can offer its 3D content and can make features ready for interactive usage. Therewith the target of the online city portal to present as much as possible and reasonable visualized information, has been more refined. Scientific studies circumstantiate that human beeings memorize visualized informaton more easy and effective than just verbalized information. In this context geo referenced images play an extraordinary roll. Visitcity is approximately fully based on such images and thus increases the memorability of visitors of the portal when observing for instance highlights and points of interest in a geographical area.
The website demonstrates beside a number of examples of how interacive maps and city plans are shown and perform. The former examples imply images from points of interest like castles, historic monuments, sceneries or specific cityscapes up to public facilities like open air pools, which can be downloaded from a deeply detailled menu including respective acompanying text. Now some video demos from city models of e.g. Lindau at Bodensee lake, Honkong and Peking as well as on demand 3D applications showing Augmented Reality (AR) apps running on latest mobile devices too, deepen the clearness for visitors of the visitcity portal.
In respect of the overall supply of this internet application, visitcity is in the position to support cities and local authorities to optimize their regional marketing and advertising efforts. One special fact seems to be quite supportive that the POIs are offered on the one side as a standard menu and on the other side that a user also can create and enregister POIs also individually by using the administration portal. Moreover additional features like Geo RSS allow the integration of dynamic data like opening hours, prices or other changing information into the application. This offers an outstanding advantage, because visitcity can provide the user with permanent updated data and information.
About visitcity, Lindau at Bodensee Lake
The visitcity portal is a value added service for local authorities and electric utilities. Visitcity is both, an online software solution, which offers based on Bing from Software or Google mapping material and research under the brand label 'visit®Portal' a geo-portal for cities and companies. This enables to present its local Points of interests (POIs).
Visitcity offers under the brand label 'visitcity ® Publisher' also a geo referenced visualization technology for interactive public GIS applications in 2D/3D - from online use on a PC to mobile devices ( e.g. I-phone, i-pad).
The city portal visitcity can be integrated in own websites and adopts the look and feel of the website owner. Thus he completes his online offers with additional information which make ones life easier. Such information range from employment offices to additional important details. Presently visitcity is distributed to the German speaking countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).
About Intergraph
Intergraph® is the leading global provider of engineering and geospatial software that enables customers to visualize complex data. Businesses and governments in more than 60 countries rely on Intergraph's industry-specific software to organize vast amounts of data to make processes and infrastructure better, safer and smarter. The company's software and services empower customers to build and operate more efficient plants and ships, create intelligent maps, and protect critical infrastructure and millions of people around the world.
Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine (PP&M) and Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I). Intergraph PP&M provides enterprise engineering software for the design, construction, operation and data management of plants, ships and offshore facilities. Intergraph SG&I provides geospatially powered solutions to the public safety and security, defense and intelligence, government, transportation, photogrammetry, and utilities and communications industries.
Intergraph is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hexagon AB. Hexagon is a leading global provider of precision measurement technology systems. Hexagon was founded in 1992, is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and is publicly traded on the Nordic exchange (ticker "HEXA B") with a secondary listing on the Swiss Exchange (ticker "HEXN"). For more information, visit www.intergraph.com and www.hexagon.se.