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

The Google GEO APIs team developed a KML Interactive Sampler page. Now people, who want to learn KML, can learn by examples. The Sampler page uses the Google Earth Plugin to demonstrate various features while displaying KML code.

Next week, George Mason University and the University of Virginia are celebrating GIS Day(s). They invite the general public to their GIS festivities. GMU’s featured speakers include Carmel Menzel, ESRI and Justin Procopio, National Geographic Society. David Rumsey, an expert on historical maps, will speak at UVA’s GIS Day.

The Google Maps API terms of service is causing the Ordnance Survey grief. The OS was unhappy with local authorities signing up to the Google Maps API terms of service as it required a “broad” re-licensing of the data to Google and the users of Google maps based sites. According to the OS, Show Us a Better Way broke copyright regulations by embedding info on Google Maps that was “derived” from OS data. Yesterday, Google released an updated Terms of Service for both Google Maps and Earth. For OS’ sake, the new published terms should help solve this issue.

Google announced the Google Geo Challenge Grants. The challenge encourages organizations, especially non-profits, to use maps as mediums to communicate issues and implement plans. The grants range from US$5,000 and US$100,000. For more the challenge guidelines, visit the Geo Challenge page.

Yesterday was “Make Slashgeo Known to the Community Day!” We encourage our readers to also show their support for our fellow GeoFriend!

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