Palanterra X3

James Fee has a nice rant on mapping interfaces today, but the part the piqued my interest was embedded in the screen shot of the National Map. It said “The National Map Viewer BETA: Powered by Palanterra X3”

Interesting! Who or what is this Palanterra X3 who have managed to get a top-of-the-fold “Powered by” on a major USGS site? Oddly, the Google is unusually terse about this topic. Looks like it’s an NGA project, and yet it’s “Palanterra (TM)”. Intra-governmental entrepreneurship at its finest, a carefully imagined brand name that appears only in meeting agendas and powerpoints.