What's New in ATLAS.ti v6

We’re especially excited about the new full native PDF support that will allow you to work with PDF files in their native layout. Other QDA packages make you strip PDFs down to primitive text files--hardly an adequate way of working. But with ATLAS.ti 6.0 you will be able to keep your original PDFs--layout, graphics, tables and all--so your primary data always remains uncorrupted and complete.

Consider the enormous new possibilities:

• Work on Web pages saved to PDF, thus securely maintaining their original layout, graphics, and--most important--all their actual content at the time of visiting.
• Directly access a plethora of publicly available resources such as research papers, business reports, conference proceedings, press releases, and so much more. Now it's all at your fingertips--without conversion or additional steps of any kind.
• And last but not least, use output from practically ANY computer application as your primary documents: By creating a PDF document (via a simple printer driver) you can now directly use material created in nearly any program, such as PowerPoint, Open Office, ATLAS.ti itself (!) as well as graphics, statistics, reporting, authoring, accounting and all sorts of business software as your primary documents.

The possibilities are truly endless and extremely exciting!

Another very exciting feature – and one that is likely to change the way you work – is ATLAS.ti's new geo-coding support.

ATLAS.ti now embeds Google Earth™ and makes its functionality available from inside the program. This has immense benefits and opens up phantastic new possibilities for your work.

Picture, if you will, the world as your ultimate primary document. Freely move around in it and mark any section that interests you. Then, treat that segment exactly the way you are used to in ATLAS.ti. Code it, comment it, and link it to other objects. Use direct hyperlinks from other primary documents for supporting your arguments and for purposes of evidence or illustration.

Our geo-coding facility even creates screenshots from any Google Earth™ view and assigns them as graphical primary documents. This "snapshot" helps you save system resources and makes sure that your reference is secured against changes.

All features of Google Earth™ are available (including camera angle and height over ground). But the interaction between the two programs is bi-directional, meaning that work done in ATLAS.ti can be directly introduced into Google Earth™. Comment on a marked location in ATLAS.ti, and your comment will be displayed in Google Earth™. Powerful stuff!

And that's still not all: Leverage the immense power of community as embodied by Google Earth™ layers, and by the possibility to exchange and directly import Google Earth™'s KMZ files (complex community-created "overlays"). If it weren't so tacky, we'd call it "QDA 2.0."

If your work is in or touches on fields such as tourism, geography, urban planning, ethnology, cultural studies, sociology, health, action research, advertising and marketing--or even if you simply like to take and document trips--you are bound to profit from ATLAS.ti's new geo-coding feature. Like us, you will soon wonder how you used to do without it.

Using "F4" software for transcription purposes? ATLAS.ti 6 now lets you import its transcripts directly.

But why not cut out the middleman altogether? You may find it more convenient to transcribe directly in ATLAS.ti.

ATLAS.ti 6 makes it a breeze to create exact transcriptions from audio and video files either frame-by-frame by typing along with the playback, or customizable by linking an existing transcript to the medium retroactively, i.e. by "striping" it with time code simply by pressing a key. Of course, it also supports the use of foot switches and similar controller devices.

For playback, just watch the cursor move smoothly through your text file in sync with the medium (and vice versa)--either document reacts directly to the other one. Your segments can be as long or short as you like.

Oh, and if that isn't enough: It also makes for a great karaoke system :)

Already previewed in version 5.5, we have further perfected the "magic background" of the ATLAS.ti GUI. Get a quick look at your codes in an original but highly intuitive way right on the main screen. Codes are displayed in a way that is derived from the popular "tag cloud" view typical of Web 2.0 applications.

Several unique options for customizing sorting and display make this an unusual but highly interesting new approach, albeit one that must be experienced to be fully appreciated.

New kids in the margin: Display code and memo families and network views now show up in the margin area.

Code colors can now be explicitly assigned by the user in addition to the dynamic generation of colors (“auto-coloring”) with respect to their analytic properties.