Killer Maps

Once upon a time, HousingMaps and Google's Ride Finder ruled the world. Then a guy by the name of Adrian Holovaty (whose blog can be found here) merged the Google map data with Chicago crime data to make a truly innovative concept: chicagocrime.org. This guy used to work for the LJ World. Could KUJH TV give Lawrence something like this?

I don't know.

Adrian blogs about how chicagocrime uses Apache/mod_python, PostgreSQL and Django, but I have no clue what they exactly do or how KJHK could use them.

Let's say it will work. That means KUJH TV needs 415 students who go to the police station each morning to help us. They will only map certain crimes such as burglaries, vandalism, murders, assaults, narcotics, and sex offenses. On the day of their police shifts, the 415 students will write a short synopses of each crime like chicgocrime's blotter.

How will KUJH-TV sort all of this information? Chicagocrime separates them many ways. KUJH TV should start simple by allowing people to browse by crime, street and date.

If this all works, it would be so simple, right?

Not even close. Instead of implementing something like this, many news organizations are marveling over it. The New York Times says "The most influential mashup this year wasn't a Beatles tune remixed with hip-hop lyrics. It was an online street map of Chicago overlaid with crime statistics." John Dowdell writes in his blog, "Certainly seems more efficient than getting everything from what the daily newspaper prints." USA Today says, "Who'd have thought that the ubiquitous old Internet maps would become one of the Internet's coolest new tricks?"

So why can't KUJH TV create something like this? It only took Adrian 50 hours to make.