About the Author:  Sean Gorman founded FortiusOne in 2005 to bring location based analytics to the mass market. Sean brings over 10 years of experience at the forefront of the geospatial revolution as a researcher, practitioner, and entrepreneur at FortiusOne. Through both academic and entreprenurial efforts he has been working to make geographic data more accessible to the public since 1997 culminating in the creation of GeoCommons – a crowd-sourced repository of statistical data and social feeds that can be easily mapped, remixed and reused by non-technical users. Sean has been featured in media such as, Wired, Der Spiegel, ABC, Washington Post, Business 2.0, MSNBC, CBS and CNN. He also holds a PhD. From George Mason University in Public Policy where he was the Provost’s High Potential Scholar and was the recipient of the Fischer Prize. He has published dozens of articles on geographic data sharing and analysis, and authored the book Networks, Complexity and Security: The Role of Public Policy in Critical Infrastructure Protection. Read more from this author

College students can return to school with peace of mind because of a new form of mapping technology, UCrime. Students, faculty and teachers can view crimes that occurred at all U.S. universities through a drop down list on the site or on iPhone. UCrime can also assist in finding areas to live, demonstrating locations that have high concentrations of crime. This tool is powered by Google Maps.

InLET Earthquake Simulator Map might be the solution for people who live in areas that are “earthquake” prone. Based on Microsoft Virtual Earth, the simulator creates scenarios for the different magnitudes of earthquakes in a given area. This new tool assesses damage of property, possible number of casualties and the bridges affected.

The Millennials are getting their feet wet with GIS. Starbucks, Wal-Mart, NVision Solutions and the U.S. Military are a few of the companies that hired GIS specialists to solve their spatial issues. The specialists that these companies hired are none other than certified GIS high school students. SpaceStars, a certification program for entry level GIS/RS technicians offers programs like the Spatial Projects and Community Exchange, and Spatial Technology and Remote Sensing (S.T.A.R.S.), which these students are certified under. SpaceStars hope to continue this program in an effort to let interested students experience on-the-job training.

MAPme, a map authoring service, announced the release of their Google Maps widget. This new application will let users embed flash apps as a widget anywhere they can edit HTML. MAPme widget is a pure flash object that allows users to add YouTube videos and even their own images to the ‘map’s hotspots.’ Facebook and iPhone applications will be available soon.

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