Blom Commercially Launches Its Online Geoserver Platform, BlomURBEX

BlomURBEX has been designed to meet the rapidly growing demand for online access to images and vector data across multiple sectors. The innovative platform enables fast development of consumer and professional services and applications based on Blom's oblique images and content.

Håkon Jacobsen, CEO of Blom, commented "There is no limit to the use of the geo- referenced images and data in BlomURBEX. That's why Blom has created the BlomURBEX SDK and allow software and service providers to develop solutions based on BlomURBEX images. Blom is excited that the creativity and innovation of these companies will generate a large number of different applications and solutions using BlomURBEX".

The application for iPhone, Demyko, enables users to locate themselves and their friends, and search for addresses, and see the position in real, oblique images. The oblique images available through the Demyko application are streamed directly from the BlomURBEX platform. BlomURBEX will contain oblique images from more than 1,000 of the largest cities in Europe.
BlomURBEX provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) to application and system developers. BlomURBEX SDK is a unique tool allowing developers to use BlomURBEX to create applications which are compatible with existing web and mobile platforms, including Windows, Symbian, iPhone, Java J2EE/JMEE and Linux. This enables flexible, scalable and quick and easy development of a wide variety of applications for a whole range of different markets, such as consumer applications for PNDs and mobile phones (such as the iPhone, Android, Nokia, Palm, Blackberry) allowing users to navigate in real, oblique images.
Blom sees a number of exciting uses for BlomURBEX, for example for location based services, navigation solutions, social communities, find-a-friend and security and safety solutions. BlomURBEX also provide zooming to detailed levels and accurate measurement functions for length/distance, height, angel, and area. This can for example be used in solutions for insurance and property development which allow users to obtain detailed information and measurements of a property without having to access the building. Other sectors that may create solutions making use of the data in BlomURBEX are the tourism sector, directory services and land registry, to mention some.

BlomURBEX is a hosted solution. The sheer scope and size of the images in BlomURBEX makes it impractical for the application and service providers to host their own server and data containers. In the case of mobile services, for example, supporting on-board data for large areas would require huge memory capacity, which would increase the device price considerably. BlomURBEX has been developed to address these issues through the delivery of the entire range of Blom content online, enabling countless applications to be created quickly and easily using Blom's real images.
BlomURBEX is a cluster of servers connected to the internet, which serve pre-processed data using very simple protocols - including HTTP to facilitate the integration with web solutions. An online service, it provides all the necessary technology to host and deliver different datasets with enough storage and process capacity to deliver data and services as required.