FortiusOne has just gone live with GeoIQ, a web service with API that returns heat maps for all kinds of geospatial data. The demo heat maps are overlaid on a Google Map, and aren’t just pretty to look at, they are also immediately useful. For example: Want to know where supermodels live in NYC? Here is a heat map for single women in their 20s making over $100,000:

The latest innovation is the javascript API, which lets you turn turn your own data into a heat map and add it to your existing implementations of Google Maps, Live Local and Yahoo! Maps. Get the making-of story on the company’s blog, which among other things promises the release of reams of open-source geospatial data next month.

This should also make for an interesting 3D challenge: In which virtual globe will it be easiest to return a GeoIQ heatmap overlay for a given view? The fact that GeoIQ’s API is accessed via javascript might point to a natural alliance with Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D’s API, but then again Google Earth’s network links can automatically query an external server in any language. Any takers?