Slashgeo

Matt at the PerryGeo blog shares his top 10 for WMS layers. From the blog: "Software like GeoServer and Mapserver are making it easier to publish data via WMS and the number of WMS servers is surely growing… but how do you find them? There is no central registry for WMS servers but efforts like the refractions research ogc survey, mapdex and a few google tricks are making it easier to find data distributed via WMS." Any other valuable WMS layers nobody should miss?

Access to geospatial data and metadata is amongst the great challenges of our discipline. The geowanking list lead me to the OSGeo Geodata Metadata Requirements wiki page, which as close ties with their Public Geospatial Data Project. If they succeed in their mission, which includes "Run a repository of open geodata", it may have numerous significant positive impacts. See related stories below (this PGDP project was featured on slashgeo last March).

Tim Schaub writes "Ok, you're putting together a new web mapping app and you want good looking data without all the work of hosting it. You might decide to rely on a publicly accessible web mapping service (WMS), but how can you find what's out there? A number of sites have links to these resources, but they come up short if you want to know the extent of the data, or what it looks like. The recently launched http://wms-sites.com/ is an effort to ease your pain. The site houses a growing catalog of useful WMS resources. Each layer (just under 3,000 at this writing) can be browsed in a slippy map interface – kudos to the OpenLayers team. The most useful way to find data is to enter a keyword or two in the search box. Hover over listed results to see the layer extent on a map, or consume the RSS if you prefer GeoRSS in the Resource Description Framework." Read what's left of the announcement with search examples below. See also related stories.