Global Dirt.

A consortium of soil scientists have come together to produce a digital soil map archive of the whole world. This is a tremendously wild undertaking, because until now, this kind of information has been scattered, disconnected, and at best, a personal trip to an obscure archive in a basement in the Congo might result in the map you need to do good work. Not to mention how you would resolve replicating the map in any way other than bringing your own personal scanner with stand alone power source to said basement in the Congo.

This is a very exciting development in the global sustainable development community because soil is the basis of everything: food, food security, water scarcity and threatened biodiversity. Soil sustains us, and by 'us' I mean all of us. Not just Americans. If you go to the site you can see quotes from stupendous people making a difference, like Jeffrey Sachs and Kofi Annan.

So I tried the site out, and in less than 2 minutes I had a comprehensive soil map of Madagascar. This essentially saves me a couple weeks of time. And it's absolutely gorgeous.