10 Cool Things About GeoCommons

GeoCommons is chasing an ambitious goal –  to help create and support a community where people can easily explore, create, and share intelligent maps and geographic data. The community resource has been under the microscope recently and garnered some harsh criticism from the GIS developer community, however, there’s no doubt about one thing… Geocommons is a very cool concept and is indeed sharing some way cool data and maps with their user base. Want to know (and see) the safest place to go to school? Are you worried about a tornadoe touching down in your area? No worries, you can find out at Geocommons. We’re pleased to show our appreciation for the resource by offering up our list of 10 cool things about GeoCommons.

1. Geocommons enables user to explore a huge open geodata repository with over 2 billion location attributes, 35,000 variables 
2. The user community has access to more than 1,500 geodata sets on population, environment, health, education, crime, politics, traffic, employment and “everything in between”
3. Users are able to create information-rich intelligent maps (het maps) using multiple layers of data
4. Share your maps and data to tell stories, collaborate and influence – best of all you can upload and contribute your own data
5. GeoCommons is built on the GeoIQ Web services platform, which enables developers to build intelligent maps into their Web sites and applications. 
6. Access to the GeoCommons data repository is open and users can store and save their data using the “MyMaps” option
7. A new easy way to create mashups and other applications by creating and exporting maps from your personal workspace. 
8. Uploading an unlimited amount of your data to GeoCommons for high-speed rendering without the 100-point limitation.
9. View cool mashups like Barack vs. Clinton – Show Me the Money! A map explaining where the Presidential Candidates Getting Their Money?
10. stay informed about updates anc ool things via the blog at http://blog.fortiusone.com/. Informative updates touch on hot topics like mapping the spread of TB and mapping the immigration debate.

Geocommons visitors are greeted with a cool “spotlight” map, a list of popular and cool maps and provided with tips on how/where to find interesting geographic data.

A map of TB hot spots around the world

http://www.geocommons.com/