Provided name, logo, user interface graphics and much of the programming for the TerraSoar system, as well as portions of the documentation, illustrations for the user manual, and graphics for web site and promotional materials. Ah yes, and technical support on occasion as well.

TerraSoar was an early satellite mapping system, similar to but predating Microsoft’s like-named TerraServer or in some ways Google Maps (though much less sophisticated, being based on web technology a full decade prior).

The name was a play on “pterosaur”—ostensibly because the software processed images of the Earth (“Terra”) as captured by various orbiting (or “soaring”) satellites—but really it’s just that dinosaurs are funny. (Well yes, pterosaurs are technically a different thing, but this was neither the time nor place for pedantry.)

One of the more technically daunting aspects of the project was preparing software and data to display maps interactively. The USGS Vector Smart Map (VMap 0), a worldwide dataset spanning four CD-ROMs, had to be deciphered, distilled to its essence and compressed to a form more suitable to the processing, memory and distribution media constraints of the time (some software still shipped on 150 megabyte tapes).