Got WMS?

I discovered a great resource last night as I was looking for a catalog of Web Mapping Services (WMS) to consume while standing up an Open Source GeoServer Stack.  Back in 1994 the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) established a number of standards for geospatial data formats and services.  The Web Map Service has become essential for the exchange of geospatial data through the web.  Worldwide there exist thousands of WMS services offering data with hematic content.

Mapmatters.org is a service that catalogs and tests WMS feeds.

Mapmatters has cataloged more than 1000 WMS services.  Through text or geographical extent searches users can find layers of interest.  Each layer can be previewed on a map or with pre-compiled thumbnails.
In addition to the catalogue mapmatters  also assesses performance and reliability of  WMS services.  For many layers information is available, for instance, how long it takes to download maps from the service and how many times a request failed.

Mapmatters is both a tool for the end-user to find a WMS service that fits the needs of a specific application with respect to the thematic contents and the required technical quality and a tool that tracks how well the service performs and to quickly be notified in case of failure.

Mapmatters is currently in a beta stage and will be extended continously.  Mapmatters.org is a project by GeOps

We Love Science

Answers in Genesis' Ken Ham in his Around the World with Ken Ham Blog today.  I totally agree with him.  Many times those who subscribe to the "Science of Evolution" do so without even thinking through the process. 

We Love Science

from Around the World with AiG's Ken Ham by Ken Ham

One of the tactics used by those people who vehemently disagree with AiG’s position on God’s Word in Genesis is to try to undermine our integrity by doing things like the following:

• Talking about creationists and terrorists in the same sentence or paragraph
• Using the term “child abusers” to describe biblical creationists (and theologically conservative Christians in general)

There are many other such associations these enemies of God’s Word will use to try to brainwash people in an attempt to get others to reject what biblical creationists believe—without even carefully considering what they teach seriously.


Another way they try to indoctrinate people against the creation position is to label biblical creationists as “anti-science” or that we believe the Bible against “established science.” Thus many people think that creationists are anti-science, which is simply not true.


A couple of days ago, I was interviewed by a secular journalist who happened to use the phrase “religion versus science” a couple of times in his questions to me. So the first thing I did was ask him, “what do you mean by the word science when you use it?” The writer fumbled around and really couldn’t answer me. You see it is just one of those accusations our opponents use against biblical creationists, but I find most of those who use it don’t even know what they are actually asking. I then went on to explain to this journalist that I was not against science. I was a science teacher. And we have a number of PhD scientists at AiG, and we work with many PhD scientists who are employed in the secular world. We love science.
You see, the problem is that most people tend to think of our technology—based on empirical science—when they use the word ”science.” But evolutionists also use the word “science” for their belief of evolution and millions of years.  And there are those leading secularists who know when they use “science” in this way and then say AiG is anti-science that the average person thinks of the word “science” as meaning that which has given us the great technology we use today. But those same people have been indoctrinated to believe that evolution and millions of years are also “science”; therefore if we don’t believe in evolution and millions of years, we are said to be anti-science. What a mess of misunderstanding and misrepresentation because the terms aren’t defined correctly.
  
That’s why we teach people that the definition of the word “science”  is basically knowledge. Now, knowledge gained by direction observation that builds our technology is called observational or operational science. Creationists and evolutionists both accept this same operational science.  But “knowledge” about the past (beliefs concerning history not based on direct observation) is called “historical science.” Creationists and evolutionists disagree over historical science but not operational science.
  
This past week, an agenda-driven journalist wrote an article about our Ark Encounter project. Now, this article is full of misinformation, false statements, misrepresentations, etc. Even the subtitle is totally misleading (and I’m sure it was meant to be). But without going into all the details of all these problems with the piece, we read, “Espousing an unabashedly conservative reading of the Bible that pits religious thought against reason and established science is regarded by its detractors as a beacon for the return to the Dark Ages” (http://www.jewsonfirst.org/11a/Ark1.aspx).
  
There it is again: to believe in creation as opposed to evolution is to accept the idea that the Bible is against “established” science. This poorly researched, emotional, and anti-creationist article is trying to imply those who believe as AiG does are against science.  


I thought it would be a good time here to remind everyone of the list of highly qualified scientists who are creationists (this is by no means an exhaustive list)—see http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/.

Yes, creationists love science! 

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying, 

Ken

Seamless Topographic USGS Maps on Google Earth

On November 30 the Google Earth Blog released the following post:

Seamless Topographic USGS maps

A few months ago we showed you Matt Fox's excellent topographic maps of New Zealand, which were quite impressive. Over the years he's had many requests to create similar maps with seamless USGS topographic data, and now he's starting to roll them out on his site.

As you can see from the image above, the maps are remarkably sharp. The are distributed through a rather unique system; rather than just downloading a KMZ file, you download an installation program that adds the maps to your PC as Super Overlays. To try it for yourself, Matt is offering a free download of the San Francisco area, available here.

For comparison, you can check out our "best topo map interface" post from 2006 (a free service of USGS topo maps for the US). While they were impressive five years ago, the new maps are significantly higher quality.

For more, be sure to visit Google Earth Library and read Matt's full blog entry.

Looks like a very interesting addition to the Google Earth Library, and one that will be very useful going forward.

Use ArcGIS Online to Manage Your Own Custom Map Gallery

Here is a link to a super post by ESRI's Keith Mann in the Fall 2011 edition of ArcUser magazine that provides a tutorial on how to customize your Map Gallery on ArcGIS Online.  This should help organizations bring their own look and feel to what is an otherwise bland map gallery provided by ESRI at ArcGIS Online.  The ability to customize should help us who use ArcGIS Online eavery day to bring our own flavor to our ESRI hosted maps.  Kudos to ESRI for providing the capability to customize our ArcGIS Online galleries.