DeLorme Professional Weblog

Santa Claus travels the world with the Earthmate PN-40

North Pole – The Earthmate PN-40 has proven its mettle in the most demanding physical environments—from the high peaks of the Himalayas to the searing heat of the Sonoran Desert. Yet these extremes pale in comparison to the latest assignment for this indomitable device.

This year, Santa Claus has chosen the PN-40 to help him guide his sleigh as he circumnavigates the globe bringing joy (and DeLorme mapping products) to all.

“Rudolph’s navigational prowess is well known,” said Mr. Claus in a recent interview. “But the red nose is yesterday’s technology. When I heard the Easter Bunny had picked up a PN-40 and had shaved twenty percent off his delivery time, I had to get one.”

Working with his team of IT elves, Mr. Claus used XMap to quickly geocode the location of every child on the planet. In the resulting GIS layer, he added a Naughty or Nice field, with Nice assigned as the default initial value, of course. He then appended the Requested Presents database and even attached a copy of each kid’s Santa letter as an embedded document. Finally, he overlaid this point layer on the new XMap World Base Map data before creating the necessary map packages for his PN-40.

“The forms feature on the PN-40 is what will really make my job easier,” said Mr. Claus while stuffing his sack full of DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteers. “Let’s say I park the sleigh on the roof little Jimmy’s house. I just look down at the screen of my PN and click the symbol and up pops a form with all of Jimmy’s details: Nice–check; Copy of XMap–check. I’m on to the next house before the guys up front have a chance to finish their carrots. I even added a check box to the form to let me know that I’d visited this house. How cool is that? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have a lot to do.”

So there you have it, the PN-40 does its part to help bring holiday cheer to kids all over the world.

The XMap Team at DeLorme would like to wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.