The Maps PortalA map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may represent any space, real or fictional, without regard to context or scale, such as in brain mapping, DNA mapping, or computer network topology mapping. The space being mapped may be two dimensional, such as the surface of the earth, three dimensional, such as the interior of the earth, or even more abstract spaces of any dimension, such as arise in modeling phenomena having many independent variables. Although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word "map" comes from the medieval Latin Mappa mundi, wherein mappa meant napkin or cloth and mundi the world. Thus, "map" became the shortened term referring to a two-dimensional representation of the surface of the world. More about Maps...
Featured mapSelected articleWeb mapping is the process of designing, implementing, generating and delivering maps on the World Wide Web. The use of the web as a dissemination medium for maps can be regarded as a major advancement in cartography and opens many new opportunities, such as realtime maps, cheaper dissemination, more frequent and cheaper updates of data and software, personalized map content, distributed data sources and sharing of geographic information. It also implicates many challenges due to technical restrictions (low display resolution and limited bandwidth, in particular with mobile computing devices, many of which are physically small, and use slow wireless Internet connections), copyright and security issues, reliability issues and technical complexity. While the first web maps were primarily static, due to technical restrictions, today's web maps can be fully interactive and integrate multiple media. This means that both web mapping and web cartography also have to deal with interactivity, usability and multimedia issues. Related portalsSelected biographyJohannes Ruysch was an explorer, cartographer, astronomer, manuscript illustrator and painter from the Low Countries who produced a famous map of the world: the second oldest known printed representation of the New World. This Ruysch map was published and widely distributed in 1507. In old documents Ruysch was sometimes called a Fleming or German, but he was likely born in Utrecht in the current Netherlands. It is thought that he accompanied John Cabot on his expedition to North America in 1497 and 1498. Ruysch's 1507 map of the world was included in the 1507 and 1508 southern editions of Ptolemy's Geographia, an atlas published in Rome. Related WikiProjectsSelected quote
TopicsAtlas - Geography - Topography Cartography: Cartographers - History of cartography - Ancient world maps - World maps - Compass rose - Generalization - Geographic coordinate system - Relief depiction - Scale - Terra incognita - Planetary cartography Map projection: Azimuthal equidistant - "Butterfly" - Dymaxion - Gall–Peters - General Perspective - Goode homolosine - Mercator - Mollweide - Orthographic - Peirce quincuncial - Robinson - Sinusoidal - Stereographic Maps: Cartogram - Estate map - Geologic map - Linguistic map - Nautical chart - Pictorial map - Reversed map - Road atlas - Thematic map - Topographic map - Weather map - Web mapping - World map Things you can do
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