Mapping Nevada

There are many ways to look at Nevada and maps are the best way to do it. You can show earthquake hazards, recreation areas, roads and streets, road conditions, and any number of other things important to Nevada.

http://www.mapofnevada.net/ - This site has an interactive map of Nevada showing things to do and places to go.

http://energy.state.nv.us/renewable/wind.htm
This site has a wind map showing places that would be good sites for a wind farm for generating power.

virtual worlds

ArcGIS Explorer looks like it would be a very powerfull program for those in the GIS industry but there is no free version and from reading the website, it is currently only availabe to current customers of ESRI products.
Celestia is different in that it allows you to explore worlds other that our own. Like Jupiter for example:



It also shows how things are in real time so you see the current day/night terminator line. You can also track satillites such as the ISS:



You can't zoom very far in before you lose any kind of usable image though. This service is a fun way to learn about the solar system interactively but that seems to be about the only practicle use.

Spatial Games

Lets face it, games are fun. Everyone likes to play games of some sort be it sports or board games or card games or what ever kind of games you're into. Some games are solely meant for amusement, others can be educational, others can be physical or some combination of all three. What is another thing most people like to play with? Technology of course! People like to fidle with things, take things apart just to put them back together and see if it will still work. One type of game that encompasses all of these things is Geo poker. Old fashion card game gone tech! You dwonload a list of GPS points to find containers, sometimes physical, sometimes virtual, to get a code. You enter the code on the website and get a card, once you get a full hand, it's just old fashion poker. This game is just fun because poker is a fun card game, educational because it get people hands on experience with GPS and finding points, it can be physical because you have to get outside to find the physical containers and it's using GPS technology.

mapping technology

Mapping technology. What does it mean? Does it mean the technology used to create maps or is it making maps of technology? I'll cover all the bases and and discuss both topics.
The technology that is used to make maps has made map making much easier. Early maps had to be hand drawn making them hard to reproduce so the only people with maps were those with the money to pay people to draw them or the need for maps to navigate by. The invention of the printing press made the reproduction of maps possible so they became more available to the general public. Maps may have been reproducable but they're accuracy still depended on the people making the observations and measurements. With space technologies taking off, sattilites were able to take detailed photographs of large area of the planet that could be used for map making but a reference system was still needed. The launch of a constilation of satilites enabled a grid to be placed over the Earth that satilites could use to return a set of possition coordinates in a number of refrence systems like UTM to a user on Earth via a GPS unit.

Making a map of technology could be just about anything since most things in life today show some level of technology. This is a map showing wireless network coverages for example

3D cartography

Computer technology has had a profound impact on the types of maps that can be created
and the methods used to create them. One example is the use of three dimensional technology to create a vitual landscape. In the past elevation had to be represented on a two dimensional plane by representing elevations with lines, or contours. Now with the use of GPS and GIS, Digital Elevation Models (DEM) can be created to represent the world in three dimensions. Google Earth, Windows Live, and World Wind all use three dimensional mapping to create maps that are fun to look at and play around with.

Old maps vs. New maps

Maps and the technology used to make them has changed drastically over the years. Old maps were hand drawn from data acquired by field notes and/or observations. These maps would be very simple in design yet take hours or days to create. Because they were hand drawn and took a lot of skill and talent to create, many old maps can be considered works of art. Gone are the days of maps taking a long time to create by a select few people. With satellite data, GPS, GIS, and any number of other computer based technologies, maps can now be created by just about anyone with a computer and internet access. Some would argue that because of the ability to mass produce maps, they are no longer and art form. I disagree. All that has changed is the medium of the artist and the skill he or she must posses in order to create maps that stand out from the everyday map.

interactive maps

The internet and computers in general are revolutionizing the way we use maps. Maps can be put together in a string and run together in an animation. Maps can be adjusted to show certain details or compare data on seperate maps on one map. web sites like mapquest and google maps allow you to create a map with only the information you want and the level of detail you need.