The Oregon-based map publisher has been producing meticulous paper maps of the Western U.S. since 1994 but waited until now to create a digital application.
That, in turn, has set off a race among companies like SpotCrime to turn crime data into mash-ups of maps and analytics, producing charts and graphs in Web-friendly formats.
Smith is almost certain to focus on operations inside the philanthropy, particularly the management of engineers producing products like communications tools for disease specialists in the field or Google maps identifying geothermal fields.