The Earth Is Square

Kind of funny how people are missing something very important with the CNet Article about "Google Ocean".. (Never mind the fact you could view 3D oceans way back in 2004 when WorldWind was released), the screen shots that CNet shows use GeoMapApp and GeoMapapp, to anyone that reads my blog would know, is built on WWJava and leverages the same data as WorldWind uses as well as multibeam and predicted topography compiled by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University.

About the only difference between a Google Ocean and what is already usable now, is KML placemarks.  Unless Google is going to spend millions to re-map the ocean bottoms.. the data will be the same for all virtual globes.

Came home from a Home Depot trip to see the first house fire in town in well over 50 years..

The house went up, literally, like it was made of match sticks.  House to the right only has some minor heat damage to the siding.. the house to the left, though, had a lot of the siding melted off even though it was farther away.

I took several video clips, they are on youtube.

But this makes for a lively time in a town where very little exciting goes on.

Came across an interesting article on CNN about researchers at Princeton University's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, using GPS tracking units attached to Zebra's in order to track their movements and learn what their behaviors are.

Using the GPS transmitters the researchers are trying to figure out how endangered zebras form social networks, avoid predators, and interact with the livestock and herders in the area.

This is just one of many research projects I have read about where the researchers are using GPS technology to track the target animals.

I have seen a lot of safety training films.. but this is one of the best I have seen yet. I think it could have been directed by Uwe Boll... it gets interesting near the end, enjoy.

So, just how many calls do I need to get in one day from Hillary Clinton telling me I should vote for her?  As of 30 minutes ago, six times in one day! That is six times too many.. with about 15 calls for the entire month.

I finally got tired the last time and told the person on the line that because they have greatly annoyed me, I am voting for Obama since he has not annoyed me once.

It's too bad these calls fall outside the Do-Not-Call list.. would prefer not to get any at all.

GeoMapApp is a data exploration and visualization tool that is continually being expanded as part of the Marine Geoscience Data System.  GeoMapApp is an integrated mapping application developed at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

GeoMapApp is a Java application that has a new version just released that uses the WorldWind.java api code to include a virtual glove view of the data.  GeoMapApp provides ocean bathymetry tiled at 5 levels of resolution. The viewport can be 2-D in Mercator projection (default) or 3-D using an adaptation of the NASA WorldWind classes.

GeoMapApp is an on-going project of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.  The elevation data is from the Shuttle Topography mission.

You can download the application either as a zip file or a tar file.  The help file is online for browsing.

Some initial screen shots of GeoMapApp.

From the initial start up you can select a virtual globe view or Mercator view or a South polar view.  The following screen shots will be of the virtual globe view.

Select virtual globe view.  From the menu choices you can view different data from tile servers or WMS servers and other sources as well.  Below you can save the current view and change the exaggeration of the elevation.  To the right you can see the position of the cursor, altitude of the camera and the elevation of that point.

3D elevation view of a deep ocean trench.  Scale in the upper left show the depth by color.

Different imagery data, this one shows the age of the crust.

Displaying data point in GeoMapApp.  Clicking a point, highlights the information in the screen shot below.  This data being shown shows all the drill locations used to gather scientific information.

Table view of related data to the screen shot above.  clicking on the point highlights the related row in this table.

This is just a small amount of the data that can be found in GeoMapApp.  But more than that, this is a very good example of how useful the WWJava API is, instead of having a full virtual globe and adding to it, you just add the globe view to your application.