I don't know how many of you know what GIS is or how it works... but think of it as an online step UP from paper maps. You can layer a lot of information on stuff. You can see with what I'm working with that I am ONLY working with states and capitals. But when I open the US template, it has cities, rivers, counties, highways, etc ALL part of the information. I can zoom in on the US map and get cities. I can set parameters to show schools, museums, shopping malls, etc. The wonderful thing w/ GIS is that I can see what the populations for 1999 are. Or 2002 (not quite updated). See how many single households there are, single females, single males, people of different ethnicities and a ton of OTHER aspects.

Uh, anyway...