Curious Software announce development of three new products

Curious Software, developer of the industry standard Curious World Maps software, is currently developing three new product offerings for release in the first half of 2005; Curious Traffic Producer, Curious News Producer, and Curious Map Presenter.
These new offerings expand map creation beyond the graphics department into the newsroom and studio, and directly within the control of the news and program producers and directors themselves. They are all designed to be used by non-graphics professionals – allowing editors, journalists, producers or presenters to create and present still and animated maps of the highest broadcast quality.
News Producer and Traffic Producer are the first in a range of products dedicated to fast and easy creation of maps illustrating particular types of story, initially news stories and traffic reports.
Templates and map animations can be created by a graphics department in a new authoring environment incorporated into World Maps. The products load these templates and allow the user to quickly focus on the area of interest, add storytelling details and create still or animated maps ready for air in a single click.
Traffic Producer allows creation of a full run down of maps illustrating different traffic incidents in a city or area: offering drag and drop addition to the map of symbols illustrating accidents or road blocks, and highlighting of roads to show traffic state. The comprehensive street database can be searched extremely quickly using street names and house numbers, street intersections or GPS co-ordinates.
News Producer allows addition of any number of labels, highlighting of countries, regions, roads or streets, illustrating news stories from international scale down to city street level.
Animation in both products is entirely automatic, created with simple wizards, and the final still or animated maps can be generated with a single click and be ready for air in seconds.
Curious Software will also be offering design services for the creation of templates and animations for customers without their own graphics or design facilities.
The final product in the range, Map Presenter, delivers the stories straight to air. Built on a standard PC or Macintosh with real-time video output, Map Presenter offers an interactive playback system for the control room or studio. A full rundown of stills or animations can be imported from the Producer products, or built within the Map Presenter. Video clips can also be incorporated from elsewhere. The order of the rundown can be changed with simple drag and drop operations right up to the moment of broadcast. Play through the rundown can be automatic, or can be programmed to wait for a cue from the presenter before continuing. The presenter can also add live or recorded telestration over the map to illustrate further particular items of interest.
Halid Hatic, Curious President, said: "Every one at Curious is hugely excited by these new product offerings. Extensive consultation with our customers has helped us to develop, refine and prioritise our product offerings. Our discussions have also given weight and validation to our vision of the Enterprise Mapping Workflow. We look forward to helping bring all our customers mapping needs into one integrated workflow."
All three new product offerings will be formally launched in April at NAB 2005, although Curious anticipate first shipping prior to the show.
(GB)