City of San Jose Planning Department Sees Immediate Return on Investment with MapText's SmartLabel for MapInfo Product

Plainsboro, New Jersey - May 24, 2006

The City of San Jose (CA) Planning Department, by implementing MapText's SmartLabel for MapInfo product, has now ensured its land use maps contain up-to-date and well-positioned street name labels. These maps are an essential tool used by staff and customers at public information counters to perform property searches in response to customer inquiries. The use of SmartLabel has resulted in greater staff efficiency and, thus, improved customer service.

The Planning Department is a long-time user of MapInfo, and has created an extensive database of layers that are accessed via a free GIS viewer, MapInfo ProViewer. Until recently, this database used a legacy street name text layer originally developed by the City's Public Works Department in MicroStation (CAD). Given San Jose's size (10th largest City in the Nation) and continuing growth, staff knew that manual maintenance of this legacy layer would be a time-consuming prospect. And since it was generated for a particular scale, the layer did not repeat street name labels at intervals allowing staff to easily verify a search location without frequent panning/zooming of the map. Finally, as the CAD layer was specifically designed to avoid interference with the display of infrastructure data, street names were placed outside rights-of-way, whereas the Planning Department’s maps were best suited to label placement within the street itself.

This all changed with the purchase of MapText's SmartLabel for MapInfo. Michael Bills, Senior Planner for the City says, "The product's easy-to-use label placement options helped us create new street name labels derived from 40,000 street centerline segments within minutes. SmartLabel has yielded the quickest and highest return on a GIS-related investment that we've ever seen."

Because the street name layer is now automatically updated, the maps are more accurate, easily readable, and easier to use which has greatly benefited both customers and staff. To view San Jose's Zoning and General Plan maps on the web, visit http://www.sanjoseca.gov/planning/data/ .

"MapText is proud to be a part of the City of San Jose's plan to provide citizens with up-to-date, accurate, and high-quality zoning and other types of maps," Rishi Mehra, MapText's Director of Sales and Business Development, commented.

About MapText, Inc.

MapText is the leading label-placement solutions provider for local, state, and national government mapping agencies worldwide.  Its software places text automatically for virtually any kind of map or chart - to high cartographic standards and at incredible speed. The software is in use worldwide for making city street maps, highway maps, cadastral maps, soil maps, utility maps, as well as nautical and aeronautical charts. For more information, visit MapText's website at www.maptext.com.

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