[Sigia-l] Is kartoo.com / Self Organizing Maps in practice?

[Patrick Debois]

When I first saw http://www.kartoo.com/ , I wondered what they were using.
The closest I found is self organizing maps (SOM) principle as a way of 
visualizing information.
But most links are demo's are specific trials (like websom).

That made me wonder two things:
-what uses kartoo?
-are there any other applications of self organizing maps?

--
FYI: A nice thing I came across was the use of SOM for picture searching
http://www.generation5.org/content/2004/aiSomPic.asp)