I might need to restrict the dataset to some subset of the United States because of resource limitations. I am not Google, and cannot store as much data as I suspect would be necessary to provide optimal performance.

There are all kinds of interesting and useful things that could be done on top of the base project.

• I believe that once I am able to display total population density, then it is relatively easy to extend the code to allow displaying one of many different flavors of demographic data, e.g. the non-white population. I would like to do that, think I can probably do it, but hesitate to promise it.
• Allowing the user to select information from one of several different censuses is also clearly within the realm of imagination. I believe that this is slighly more ambitious (in part due to disk space limitations), and probably not within the scope of the class.

• I did a project integrating maps, floorplans, and a virtual walkthrough about ten years ago at UIUC.

• I am not a graphics whiz. I am not sure what algorithms to use to select what data is likely to be visible. OTOH, I have Google and a copy of Foley and Van Dam within easy reach.

There are numerous opportunities for the performance to be inadequate. Determining the right data to display for a given clipping region, retrieving the information, aggregating information (when zoomed out), rendering the PNG image, and serving the image all take time (in addition to the time Google takes, which I won't be able to control). I expect that some caching and prefetching of data will be required.