Curious Software used by BBC News 24

When terrorists attacked the London transport network on July 7 2005, it took the BBC News 24 team a matter of minutes to prepare and broadcast a street map of London showing exactly where the bombers had struck.
The BBC’s coverage of the July 7 and subsequent July 21 bombings featured on-air maps produced using Curious Software’s Curious World Maps.
Rob Shergold, BBC News 24’s Senior Graphic Designer, said: “Curious World Maps provided us with a fast and easy way of getting accurate street maps on air so that viewers could see exactly where the bombs were located.”
Launched in 2000, CWM has rapidly gained a reputation amongst broadcasters for its versatility and ease of use. The speed at which maps can be created and updated makes it ideal for news and traffic reporting. It also plays a vital role in the post-production of documentaries, sports and travel programmes where maps are needed to set the scene or identify an area of particular interest.
The software, which gives users total creative control, enables them to quickly and easily create broadcast quality still and animated maps of anywhere in the world. It includes built-in vector databases of the whole world comprising detailed outline data for countries, regions, states and counties. It also includes over 100,000 place names covering towns, mountains and other physical features such as rivers, lakes and roads. Imported local data or satellite images can also be incorporated, making it simple to create in minutes an animation than zooms in from a spinning globe right down to a single building. Many top broadcasters are now using CWM on a daily basis, including the BBC, Sky, NBC, ABC and CNN.
Shergold added: “When we bought CWM we also acquired street data for the UK and USA and Natural Earth (500m). Our intention is to add more street data covering different countries as and when we need it.”
(GB)