The notion of layering data onto maps doesn't just apply to cityscapes. It can be rather useful for brain surgery, as well. A recent article in the Financial Times profiled Atamai, a company which makes "virtual augmentation for neurosurgery" software, allowing the information coming from probes in brain tissue to display against a 3D representation of brain structures. Two aspects of the story stood out: the first, that the team which came together to form Atamai conceived of the project as a "GPS for the brain," a way to construct a standardized way of mapping brain locations for surgery; the second, that much of the code is open source, and runs on a variety of computer hardware (pretty much anything able to run Python and the VTK graphics suite).

An open source virtual augmentation system for locational positioning during brain surgery? I'm dizzy from the futurism.

(Complete text of article at -- and found via -- BookOfJoe)