ATLAS

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the Solar System. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics.They also have information about the map and places in it.

 

"Atlas" mythology

 

The origin of the term atlas is a common source of misconception, perhaps because two different mythical figures named 'Atlas' are associated with map making.

• King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania, also known as Aparajit in Hinduism, was according to legend a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who supposedly made the first celestial globe. It was this Atlas to whom Gerardus Mercator was referring when he first used the name "atlas", and he included a depiction of the King on the title-page.
• However, the more widely known Atlas is a figure from Greek mythology. He is the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene (or Asia), and brother of Prometheus. Atlas was punished by Zeus and made to bear the weight of the heavens (the idea of Atlas carrying the Earth is not correct according to the original myth) on his back. One of Heracles's labours was to collect the apples of the Hesperides, guarded by Ladon. Heracles went to Atlas and reasoned with him. Eventually, Atlas agreed to collect the apples, and Heracles was left to carry the weight. Atlas tried to leave Heracles there, but Heracles tricked him and Atlas was left to carry the heavens forever. In his epic Odyssey, Homer refers to this Atlas as "one who knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps the tall pillars who hold heaven and earth asunder".

In works of art, this Atlas is represented as carrying the heavens or the Celestial Sphere, on his shoulders. The earliest such depiction is the Farnese Atlas, now housed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli in Naples, Italy. This figure is frequently found on the cover or title-pages of atlases. This is particularly true of atlases published by Dutch publishers during the second half of the seventeenth century. The image became associated with Dutch merchants, and a statue of this figure adorns the front of the World Trade Center in Amsterdam.

The first publisher to associate the Titan Atlas with a group of maps was Lafreri, on the title-page to "Tavole Moderne Di Geografia De La Maggior Parte Del Mondo Di Diversi Autori ...". However, he did not use the word "atlas" in the title of his work.

 

Modern atlas

With the coming of the global market, publishers in different countries can reprint maps from plates made elsewhere. This means that the place names on the maps often use the designations or abbreviations of the language of the country in which the feature is located, to serve the widest market. For example, islands near Russia have the abbreviation "O." for "ostrov", not "I." for "island". This practice differs from what is standard for any given language, and it reaches its extremity concerning transliterations from other languages. Particularly, German mapmakers use the transliterations from Cyrillic developed by the Czechs which are hardly used in English-speaking countries.

 

Selected general atlases

 

Some cartographically or commercially important atlases include the following:

17th century and earlier

• Atlas Novus (Blaeu, Netherlands, 1635–1658)
• Atlas Maior (Blaeu, Netherlands, 1662–1667)
• Cartes générales de toutes les parties du monde (France, 1658–1676)
• Dell'Arcano del Mare (England/Italy, 1645–1661)
• Piri Reis map (Ottoman Empire, 1570–1612)
• Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Ortelius, Netherlands, 1570–1612)
• Klencke Atlas (1660; world's largest book)
• The Brittania (John Ogilby, 1670–1676)

18th century

• Atlas Nouveau (Amsterdam, 1742)
• Britannia Depicta (London, 1720)
• Cary's New and Correct English Atlas (London, 1787)

19th century

• Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas (Germany, 1881–1939; in the UK as Times Atlas of the World, 1895)
• Rand McNally Atlas (United States, 1881–present)
• Stielers Handatlas (Germany, 1817–1944)

20th century

• Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (Italy, 1927–1978)
• Atlas Mira (Russia, 1937–present)
• Gran Atlas Aguilar (Spain, 1969/1970)
• The Historical Atlas of China (China)
• National Geographic Atlas of the World (United States, 1963–present)
• Pergamon World Atlas (1962/1968)
• Times Atlas of the World (United Kingdom, 1895–present)

21st century

• North American Environmental Atlas

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Topography

Topography (from Greek τόπος topos, "place", and γράφω graphō, "write") is a field of planetary science comprising the study of surface shape and features of the Earth and other observable astronomical objects including planets, moons, and asteroids. It is also the description of such surface shapes and features (especially their depiction in maps).

The topography of an area can also mean the surface shape and features themselves.

In a broader sense, topography is concerned with local detail in general, including not only relief but also vegetative and artificial features, and even local history and culture. This meaning is less common in America, where topographic maps with elevation contours have made "topography" synonymous with relief. The older sense of topography as the study of place still has currency in Europe.

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Manage your playlist with the Apple iPad

Change or Delete a current Playlist

 
If you change your mind about a playlist's tune order, drag the song titles up or down inside the playlist window. Just make sure to sort the playlist by song order first.

You can always drag more songs into a playlist, and you can delete titles if you your playlist needs pruning. Click the song in the playlist window and then hit Delete or Backspace. When iTunes asks you to confirm your decision, click Yes. Remember, deleting an audio lesson from a playlist doesn't delete it from your music library - it simply removes the title from that particular playlist.

You can quickly give a song to an existing playlist from the main iTunes window, whichever view you happen to be using: Select the song, right-click it, and then, in the pop-up menu, choose "Add to Playlist". Scroll towards the playlist you want to use and then click the mouse button to add the track to that playlist.

If you need to see how many playlists contain a certain song, choose the track, right-click it, and choose "Show in Playlist" in the pop-up menu. When it's time to get rid of the playlist once and for all because the party's over, select the playlist icon iTunes and press the Delete key. You see a message box from iTunes asking to confirm your decision. If you autosync the iPad, the playlist disappears there, too.

iTunes DJ: Get the Party Started

 
The conventional iTunes song-shuffle feature can be inspiring or embarrassing, depending on which songs the program happens to play. The iTunes DJ feature lets you control which songs iTunes selects when it shuffles at your next wingding. Additionally, it shows you what's recently been played and what's coming up in the mix, so you know what to expect.

Click the iTunes DJ icon in the Playlists area of the iTunes Source list. You now see a new pane at the very bottom of iTunes. Use the Source pop-up menu to pick a music source for the mix. You can use either an existing playlist, the Genius, or your whole library.

If you can't stand the song list that iTunes proposes, click the Refresh button in the bottom-right of the iTunes window. iTunes generates a brand new list of songs for your consideration.

Click the Settings button at the bottom of the window. In the Settings box, you can alter the number of recently played and upcoming songs that iTunes displays. If iTunes is DJ'ing your interactive music party, the Settings box also has a place to put a Welcome message for guests changing up your music with the Remote program on their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads.

Arrange the songs if you feel like it. Back on the playlist, you can manually add songs, delete them in the playlist, or rearrange the playing order. To include songs, click the Source list's Music icon and then drag your selected tunes onto the iTunes DJ icon. Click the Play button. And let the music play on.

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Steps to automatically Sync the iPad

Automatically Sync the iPad

 
As with every iPod model that's come before it, the iPad offers the simple and effective Autosync feature. Autosyncing automatically puts a copy of every song, podcast, and video in your iTunes library right onto your player. In fact, the first time you connect your iPad to your computer, the Setup Assistant offers to copy all the music in your iTunes library over to your new tablet. If you choose to do that, your iPad has already been set for autosync.

If you added more music to iTunes since that first encounter, the steps for loading the new goods onto your iPad couldn't be easier: Plug the little end of the USB cable into your Windows PC or Macintosh. Plug the cable's flat Dock Connector end into the bottom of the iPad. Sit back and let iTunes leap into action, syncing away and doing all that heavy lifting for you personally.

You can tell the sync magic is working because iTunes gives you a progress report towards the top of its window that says "Syncing iPad…". When iTunes tells you the iPad's update is complete, you're free to unplug the cable and take off. Autosync is a beautiful thing, but it is not for everyone - especially if you have more than 16, 32, or 64 gigabytes price of stuff in your iTunes library. In that case, iTunes fits what it really can on the iPad.
 

Sync Music

 
Once your iPad's connected and turning up in iTunes, you can modify all of the settings that control how are you affected your tablet. Thanks to iTunes 9's long, scrollable screen filled with checkboxes and lists in most categories, it's easier than ever to get precisely what you want on your 'Pad. If you want to sync up all or just some of your music, click the background music tab.

In addition to synchronizing all your songs and playlists by title, you can sync them by artist and genre as well. Just turn on the checkboxes next to the items you want to transfer to the iPad, click the Apply button, and then the Sync button to move your music.
 

Sync Video

 
In iTunes, videos fall into two main classifications: Movies and Television shows. Each type has its own tab in iTunes. Full-length movies are huge space hogs and can take up a gigabyte or more of precious drive space - which is a significant chunk of the 16-gigabyte iPad. Serious movie-watchers tend to move films off and on portable devices. So iTunes provides you with the option to load all, selected, or even just unwatched films. To change up what's playing at your portable cineplex, click the Movies tab when your iPad's attached to your computer and turn on the checkboxes next to your selections.

Since the iTunes Store sells Television shows by season or individual episode, iTunes enables you to sync TV shows in several ways: by show, by selected episodes, through the number of unwatched episodes, and so on. Click the TV Shows tab with your iPad connected and make your choices. Once you decide what movies and Television shows you want to port to the tablet, click the Apply button and then Sync.
 

Sync Photos

 
The iPad, in case you have not noticed yet, constitutes a handsome electronic picture frame. To get your pictures on the website, you can sync photos from your computer's existing photo-management programs, like Adobe Photoshop Elements - or perhaps a folder of photos.

To inform iTunes which pictures you want to capture along on the iPad, click the Photos tab. Here, you can choose the photo program or folder you need to pull the pictures from, and then switch on checkboxes next to the photo albums you would like on the iPad. If you use iPhoto '09 on the Mac, you might also need the options to pull over specific iPhoto events, as well as Faces and Places. When you've picked your pictures, click the Apply tab and then Sync.

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Subnet Mask Tutorial

The subnet mask plays an important role in computer networking. It's used to determine the subnetwork an IP address belongs to. It achieves this by masking the part of the IP address that will be used to create the subnetworks and not masking the portion of the IP address that will be used for host addresses.

Networks based on TCP/IP use subnet masking to split an IP address into two parts; the first part is used to divide the network into logical subnetworks, the second part is used to assign computers, otherwise known as hosts, to subnetworks. The subnet mask and IP address are interdependant; you look at the IP address in relation to the subnet mask to determine how many subnetworks and how many hosts per subnetwork there will be. We will focus solely on class C addresses as these are the most likely class readers of this article will encounter.

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