Metro Mapper Blog

Louisville Metro Crime Updated - 2003 Through Now

2009-06-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

Metro Mapper now shows all reported crime in Louisville, KY from January of 2003 through June 1, 2009! That's hundreds of thousands of crimes! Our monthly updates will keep your informed of crime around you.

As part of our upgrade to the Your Mapper platform, there are a number of new features available to you:

Link to More Details - Each map popup contains an Information icon that links to a full page of details about the crime, including the full case report (when available) and an interactive street view. You can also leave comments, and send the link of the specific crime to others.

Mobile Access - The mobile icon at the bottom of the map allows you to get a link to your search for your mobile device. Just email that to your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android phone (or any phone with a web browser) and see that search and create new searches wherever you are!

Data Feeds for Your Searches - When you do a search on the map and choose the center location, the types of crime, a date range and/or keyword, you can use the icons at the bottom of the map to grab RSS (for feed readers) or KML (for your own maps) versions of that search. That way you can see new crimes when they appear without having to visit our site directly.

And as before, you can embed the map into your own site. If you are a web developer, can even program your own map or service based on crimes using the Your Mapper API.

Powered by Your Mapper

2009-06-02T10:19:00.004-04:00

The Metro Mapper site is now powered by the Your Mapper platform! You can tell an immediate difference when you visit each of the maps on the site, since they have a new look, more data, and more features.
New Features

Consistency
All the maps now have a consistent visual interface.

More Information
All data has been updated and will remain updated, and most maps contain more data and details than before.

Location Details
Every single marker location on a map has its own web page, with details, ratings, comments, street view and more. You can visit the page by clicking the Information icon in the mapped location's popup. Share this detail page with your friends.

Search Links
When you perform a search, you can click the map link icon at the bottom of the map to get a link directly to that search in real-time. No need to bookmark to your account!

Data Feeds
You can also grab RSS and KML data feeds of your search for use on your own feed reader home pages or interactive maps. When the search has new results, you see it right away!

Mobile Links
Take your search with you! Click the mobile link to get an on-the-go optimized version of your search to access from anywhere. The mobile Your Mapper site works on any mobile phone browser, from iPhone to Blackberry to Google Android. Tweak your search on your phone, or start a new one!

Speed
The new site and searches are much faster than before.

Changes to Metro Mapper Services

All of your bookmarks and links will still behave as you expect. And your Metro Mapper accounts will work for the Your Mapper login as well, so you don't need to create a new account.

However, if you use the Metro Mapper embedded map services, you will have to make a change. Your maps will continue to work for now, but will stop working soon (a month or so, but we'll see how people take to the transfer). The data and features of your current Metro Mapper maps will become out of date. Instead, what you will need to do is head over to Your Mapper, login, select the map you'd like to embed, and get the new code for your site. We'll be providing detailed instructions on the site and contacting each of you individually to assist in the switch.

We hope you enjoy the upgrade to the site, and the new features Your Mapper provides!

Your Mapper - Coming in June

2009-05-13T18:13:00.006-04:00

June 2009

Things to expect:

New National Site
Data feeds for Everything
Comments and Ratings
Developer API
Retrofitted Metro Mapper
Mobile Version
More Datasets and Maps

Google Earth: Historical Imagery and 3D Ocean Floor

2009-02-03T06:38:00.011-05:00

Google released the newest version of its Google Earth product, and has included some terrific new features.

One is the ability to see all of their historic satellite imagery for an area. Most parts of the US seem to go back to 1993, but some go back to the 1940s. You can cycle through each set of images and play them in a loop. A side benefit of this is that you can now see the month and year that the satelitte pictures were taken.

Louisville had about 10 sets going back to 1993. Here is an animation I made of part of our Ohio River waterfront development over time:

And here is a more detailed version of the entire set (click for high resolution):

Another feature is the ability to dive under the ocean and see all of the earth's ocean floors in 3D, thus increasing Earth's coverage by 233%.

You can also now record everything you are doing, including image history, zooming, panning, toggleing features, audio description, etc, and then share this with anyone else throught Google Earth. The recipient can play back what you have demonstrated, including your voice over.

Google LatLong: New in Google Earth 5.0: Historical Imagery

Tonight: Free Presentation at UofL Honors Lecture Series

2008-10-29T12:43:00.010-04:00

Metro Mapper will be making a free and open to the public presentation tonight at UofL. The fun starts at 7pm. See our previous post for more event details.

Here is a detailed overview of what I will be speaking about at the event. You can print it out beforehand, or I'll have copies on hand tonight so you can follow along, know what to expect, and take notes for questions.

PDF of Presentation (PDF)

UPDATE: We tried to live stream the event, courtesy Nick Moorman, but some technical issues prevented it from working out.

Presentation
Biography – Michael Schnuerle: Louisville, UK, Australia, Paris, Edinburgh, San Fran, Louisville
Technology – Convergence and new tech 2005: Map APIs, Ajax, Hosting Costs, Open Source
The Metro Mapper Site
Site Overview – types of maps, daily traffic, updates
Cool Examples – filtering, historic overlays (UofL)
Services – free to public, account, bookmarks, embedding free and paid
Revenue – ads, sponsoring, consulting, custom work, embedding, collaboration (PVA)
History – 2005 technologies, city crime, other data, embedding, full time
Career Path – Computer Graphics, 2 years abroad, Big/Small Companies, Independent
Technical Overview – PHP, MySQL, Data -> Convert -> Site -> Embed
Tools Used – Photoshop, Dreamweaver, MySQL Administrator, SmartSVN, WinSCP
The Your Mapper Prototype
Site Preview – logo, interface, maps
Key Differences – National, browsing, tools, data loading, social media, mobile
Open Data - Open Municipal Geodata Data Standard
The Future of Online Maps
Google Earth – Exporting data into a 3D environment, 3D cities, 1:1 correlations.
Mobile Tools – iPhone, Google Android, GPS, ubiquity
Location Based Tools - Connecting where you are to useful information, social
Data Loading – Making public data truly public

Municipal Partnership: Jefferson County PVA and Metro Mapper

2008-10-21T13:18:00.006-04:00

We've launched a new map as part of a partnership with the Jefferson County PVA. We've put all of their property values on an interactive map that is embedded on their site. There is also a version on our Metro Mapper site.

It's a perfect example of working with existing government data, and creating an interactive map for the government agency's site. It's going to keep people coming back to their site, and gain a whole new following of people that find the Metro Mapper site then see the property value map. I think it’s really going to improve the way people search for information, and raise everyone’s expectations for what the government should be providing to citizens.

Here is the full press release text from the PVA:

Jefferson County Property Valuation Administrator, Tony Lindauer, announced today another enhancement to the PVA award winning website. All property parcel values across Jefferson County will be viewable on a free interactive map.

The new service supplements the existing address search, since it allows citizens to see the property values around them at-a-glance without having to know the neighboring street names.

A citizen can enter any address or street and see the closest parcels. A marker for each parcel will show a popup with useful information, including the property and land value, owner name, date assessed, parcel thumbnail, and type of property. The popup will include a link to the subscription web service, which gives even more detailed information on property.

The new service will be available on Monday, October 27, 2008. Lindauer said the interactive maps, similar to Google Maps, will be more user friendly in accessing snapshot information for each parcel.

Michael Schnuerle, of Louisville Metro Mapper, who designed the enhancement for the website, said: “It’s great that the Jefferson County PVA is constantly improving the website. This visual mapping tool will make browsing for property information much easier. “

To facilitate the data exchange, the PVA is using the open data format called the OMG Standard.

Metro Mapper at UofL Honors Lecture Series, Oct 29

2008-10-21T13:09:00.008-04:00

I will be speaking at the University of Louisville Honors Lecture Series Wednesday, Oct 29, 2008 at 7pm.

I'll talk about maps, demo the current Metro Mapper site, give a technical overview of how it was made, show some cool maps and data, preview the new Your Mapper national prototype, discuss mobile location-based tools, speculate on the future of online maps, and take any questions.

And I'll discussing my big announcement from this coming Monday.

Before the event, post some questions here and I'll incorporate them into the presentation!

Become a fan of Metro Mapper on Facebook and RSVP to the event so they know how many seats to have. Space is pretty limited since it's in a classroom: RSVP for Event

Map of Estcorn Honors Center at Threlkeld Hall's Location on Campus: www.tinyurl.com/mmuofl

Thanks to the student organizers for putting it all together:

Greer Waldrop
Venkat Ramakrishnan
Greg Shaw
Amruth krishnamurty
Michael Miao

Parking - For off campus people, you can use the Floyd St Parking garage, which costs a bit before 7, but after 7 is free. Also after 7, you can park on the streets in the area without worrying about being ticketed. I know the even starts at 7, but you should be alright if you arrive just before 7.

Idea Festival Wrap-up: 5 Blog Posts

2008-09-29T08:15:00.004-04:00

The third Louisville Idea Festival is now over, and it was a fantastic trip through architecture, video games, mobile phones, ninjas, word games, the Berlin Wall, and Aliens vs Predators. I was able to blog 5 of the Idea Festival events, take a few photos, Twitter live updates, and a few location-based concepts.

Here are my five posts:

The fest is over for this year, and I'm sure it will be coming back stronger than ever next year. If you'd like more general recaps, check out:

Idea Festival Flickr Pool

Flickr Photos tagged with IF2008

Tweets with IF2008 tags

Thanks to Wayne Hall, the official IF blogger, and Michelle Jones at Consuming Louisville for coordinating the bloggers.

University of Kentucky Alumni Class Notes

2008-09-24T09:20:00.006-04:00

Some people have brought to my attention that the Fall 2008 Kentucky Alumni magazine printed a small update about me in the class notes area. I contacted them and they said they compiled it from a clipping service that picked it up from the Courier-Journal article back in April.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in. Here's the cover.

Live-blogging Louisville Idea Festival 2008

2008-09-24T08:50:00.007-04:00

For the September 25-27 Idea Festival held in Louisville, Kentucky, I'll be one of the 5 local people to be live blogging events on the official Idea Festival Blog. The blog is still being run by Wayne Hall, and this year he enlisted some blogging help with the assistance of Michelle Jones over at Consuming Louisville.

I'll officially be blogging these three events:

Thursday, Sept 25, 1pm

Puzzled? by Will Shortz

The puzzle editor for the New York Times, talking about the world of puzzles.

Friday, Sept 26, 1pm

BIG: Designs on the Future City by Bjarke Ingels

A danish architect who will speak about city planning and future city structures.

Saturday, Sept 27, 8:45am

Serious Play by Jane McGonigal

A video game designer who will talk about the power of games, virtual worlds, and how they affect our society and the future.

I'll also post back here to let you know when these events are upcoming and going on. And I invite everyone in the area to come to the Festival and see some of the speakers and events, most of which are free. Come hunt me down and say hello, since the Press Pass I have will also allow me into all the other events. Thanks Michelle and Wayne!

Ryder Cup 2008 Map - Events around Louisville

2008-09-09T14:23:00.005-04:00

We've joined forces again with Louisville.com to bring you all of the Louisville area events from The Cup Experience relating to the 2008 Ryder Cup and put them on an interactive map.

Ryder Cup 2008 Map - Events around Louisville

Interesting Maps: Wood Bowls and 3-D Photos

2008-08-21T21:37:00.006-04:00

Maps seem to be cropping up in the oddest, and most interesting, of places. Wired has pointed out a few of these in their newest issue.

Wooden Map Bowls

So you can go to a German site, use the Google Maps API to zoom in on your state, city, neighborhood, or favorite national park, and turn the topography into a wooden 'bowl.' I put bowl in quotes because the functional, bowl-like qualities of the finished product will vary greatly depending on your chosen location.

Fluid Forms has created a very interesting concept, that is well exectued. Try it out!

3-D National Park Images

Three dimensional movies are becoming more common in an effort to lure people into theaters. Now you can experience this in your own home.

You can either purchase a $15,000 Vizard 3-D display, or make your own at home for about $300. Then head over to the US Geological Survey website to view lots of classic and new 3-D pics of national parks. I couldn't find any actual 3-D maps though...

University of Kentucky Students Compete in Google's 3D Campus

2008-07-09T16:53:00.006-04:00

The results for Google's 3D campus competition are now in, with nine international campuses winning out of 81. The winners seem to have been picked based on quality of the models and going the extra mile.

The most number of building modeled by any winner was 61, while the students at University of Kentucky modeled 322 buildings! Wow. UK did not place in the winners, but I have been admiring the students' effort for a while now.

Congrats to UK for their efforts and some stellar work! It looks like other universities in the state did not participate, including the University of Louisville.

Go ahead and find your university and download it into Google Earth to view the campus in 3D.

Download UK's campus here.

The Impact of Maps on Crime - Atlantic Montly Shows How Sharing Crime Data Leads to Action

2008-06-26T16:58:00.006-04:00

In the newest July 2008 issue of Atlantic Monthly, contributing editor Hanna Rosin tackles the question "Why is crime rising in so many mid-sized American cities?"

The answer was discovered when the police shared their data with someone who created a visual map (seen in the print magazine) of the problem. The North Memphis police shared their crime data with University of Memphis criminologist Richard Janikowski, and he turned that data into an answer.

He’d built up enough trust with the police to get them to send him daily crime and arrest reports, including addresses and types of crime. He began mapping all violent and property crimes, block by block, across the city. “These cops on the streets were saying that crime patterns are changing,” he said, so he wanted to look into it.

By sharing their data, the police were able to let a private citizen create a tool for them, and obtain new information in the process. It was a win-win situation, and a great reason for government data transparency.

When his map was complete, a clear if strangely shaped pattern emerged... Hot spots had proliferated since the mid-1990s, and little islands of crime had sprung up where none had existed before, dotting the map all around the city...

What he came up with ended up showing a correlation between new Section8 housing and crime, a very unpopular and controversial result, and something not intuitively discoverable.

Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with [a] map of Section8 rentals... On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots.

Most of the article deals with the implication of this outcome and how to handle it, and the complex socio-economic issues it raises.

On a side note, our Louisville police chief also got involved, and a University of Louisville professor was looking at these patterns too.

The “Gathering Storm” report that worried over an upcoming epidemic of violence was inspired by a call from the police chief of Louisville, Kentucky, who’d seen crime rising regionally and wondered what was going on. Simultaneously, the University of Louisville criminologist Geetha Suresh was tracking local patterns of violent crime.

It's great to see such a terrific outcome come from the sharing of public data and is just the sort of thing the OMG Standard is trying to accomplish. A success story, but it only came because of the years of trust that Janikowski garnered by working with the local police full time. Months or years could have been shaved off the timeline if the data was made easily available to the public from the beginning.

List of Interesting Street View Sites in Louisville

2008-06-11T12:12:00.002-04:00

Here are some interesting places in Louisville, Kentucky.

Churchill Downs
Louisville Slugger Museum
Center for the Arts and Humana Building
Louisville skyline from JFK Bridge
WHY Louisville Store
Ye Olde Lava House
Cherokee Triangle Castleman Statue
Entering Cave Hill Cemetery
Distillery Commons
Fair and Expo Center
University of Louisville
Largest White Castle in the World
Courthouse
EP Tom Sawyer State Park Pool
UPS Airport Hub
Waterfront Park from I-64 (see 8664.org)
Dog Hill in Cherokee Park

Please add your own links in the comments below!

The blue lines in this map show the coverage area.

Google Maps Mania Lists "Your Mapper" in Best of 2008!

2008-06-11T11:39:00.001-04:00

The Your Mapper project is listed in the Google Maps Mania blog as the best of 2008, as a project that

Google Maps Mania: Google Maps Mashup Award Winners!

"Collectively, these mashups have been widely recognized as game changing web concepts that have helped to bring geographic relevancy to millions of points of information."

Google Street View for Louisville, Finally!

2008-06-11T11:23:00.003-04:00

Alright, this is going to freak a lot of you out, but contrary to local and national reports, Google has updated their street view for Louisville and Lexington Kentucky!

Bardstown Rd and Highland Ave

So now you can see buildings, streets and people for almost any place in the city.

In addition, they have added all the following cities:

MA: Springfield
NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
NJ: Newark
VA: Virginia Beach
NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
SC: Columbia, Greenville
GA: Atlanta
FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
AL: Huntsville
MS: Jackson
TN: Knoxville
KY: Lexington, Louisville
OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
MI: Ann Arbor
MO: St. Louis
KS: Topeka
NE: Lincoln
OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
NV: Reno
CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton

Look for it to appear in our maps soon!

Your Mapper - NetSquared Conference Report (Part 2)

2008-06-02T11:48:00.007-04:00

The NetSquared Year 3 conference in San Jose was a fantastic blast, and I wanted to share some of my experience with you all.

Ben Peskoe and I left for the conference on Monday afternoon May 27, and arrived in San Jose Monday night. We stayed at the Hilton in Santa Clara which was near the Yahoo campus, and as soon as we checked in and took a look at the view, we were off to the Meet and Greet event.

NetSquared had drink tickets and a small buffet waiting, and we started meeting some of the organizers we'd talked to or heard about, like Jennie Frohmann, Billy Bicket, and Daniel Ben-Horin. We started meeting some of the other project people and participants, like Ask Your Lawmaker, Know More, and Benji from iLoveMountains.org.

We retired to the hotel lounge and chatted some more with great folks like Georget Lajtai and Zoli Piroska (two Hungarians from Greener One), Christine Egger and Peter Deitz (from Social Actions), John Kim and Peter Manzo of Map This!, and the Scotsman Thomas Turnbull from My Green Map.

Then next Tuesday morning was the start of the conference, and we met Matthew Saunders from PingVision who was giving a speech on Drupal, and Sean Tanner of MapLight.org on the bus over to the Cisco Conference Center. Ben and I setup, making sure our branding and marketing was clearly visible to all. Our Project Lead, Ted Ko, shows up and helps us get ready, and sets up a 19" LCD that he brought so we could show the site.

Lots of people were intrigued by he story of the community designed logo through the site 99Designs, and thought it meshed well with the community aspects of the Your Mapper concept. We used the logo a lot, and I think everyone was familiar with it by the end of the conference. I'm surprised more projects did not show off their project through t-shirts (from Kopilot), logo, and branding. I think Know More was the only other project with shirts.

So the conference begins, and I think everyone is still writing their 2-minute speech or is just going to wing it. Mine is towards the end and seems to get lots of people over to our table for the Carnival, tradeshow-like event next. Here the three of us talk to a non-stop barrage of people and unfortunately don't have time to talk to everyone that comes by. Some of the people include Rob Miller with the Open Planning Project who is doing some great open map stuff, Tantek Celik who shows me the benefits of hCard, and Andrew Turner and Mikel Maron at mapufacture who are creating tools to load and manage geographic data and who have a neat logo too. To top it off Roselind Newland stops by, who works for TechSoup but is originally from the Louisville KY are and wants to return some day. Chad Dickerson from Yahoo stopped by to talk about his Fire Eagle, and David Collin from the American Cancer Society was interested in our OMG Standard.

After the Carnival and other speeches are over, we break for a terrific lunch outdoors, with Vegetarian and Omnivore lines. Then the three project panel discussions begin, along with other speakers, and will continue until lunch on Wednesday. We watch the first panel discussion, then I head out to a session on "Getting the Most Out of Your Online Community" then to the Hack Room, then the Drupal presentation.

In between sessions Ben and I do an impromptu video interview, which you can watch here:

Scott Dyer finally shows up from Louisville after a flight delay, and he joins the Your Mapper team, ready to shine and show his enthusiasm for the project. Ted heads home, and we go back to the hotel for a night of dinner, drinks and entertainment. The dinner is great, and I finally get to talk with Justin Massa of MoveSmart.org about the Illinois IDEA initiative and share some of my successes here in Louisville.

At dinner I talk with JD Lasica from Ourmedia, who is very interested in the OMG Standard and writes for the IdeaLab blog on PBS.org, and knows Steven Clift from e-Democracy.org whom I talked with a few days ago on the phone. JD later interviews me and records this great little video interview and blog post.

Next I talk with Laura Welcher from the mind-blowing Long Now Foundation and the Rosetta Stone project. We discussed her project, and all things map related, including time-based diachronic maps, and the inherent difficulty of showing lots of overlapping regions on maps.

The final day started on Wednesday with a tale of Scott's 5 am trip into the mountains to watch the sunrise. All four of us donned their Your Mapper tshirts for the day and we headed to the conference. I headed to Benji Burrell's presentation of the iLoveMountains.org website and I have to say it was one of the most impressive presentations and uses of technology at the entire conference. I spent the next session writing my 7 minute panel speech, which began at 11:20am. This setup was much more comfortable to me, and I told a few stories and answered some questions along with two other projects: Rosetta Stone and Social Actions.

We had a quick lunch while I sweated the final 2-minute speech, and decided this time to just write an outline of key points and speak more off the cuff. I think it went pretty well.

The final presentations were next, then the voting block. Every attendee got 3 coins that they could use to vote for any number of the 21 projects. We fielded a few more questions at our Your Mapper table from Allison Bradley at SoulMilk and Meagan Hessel at the Charter Association and My Schools.

The vote results then came quickly, with first place deservedly going to Ushahidi. After that we wrapped things up, said goodbye to Ted, then headed to the In and Out Burger (those are good burgers) for a celebratory dinner. Scott left us for the airport, Ben and I were back at the hotel, and spent a little time using the hotel amenities. We chatted some more with the attendees, then got ready for our all-day flight back to Louisville.

It was a great conference and I was pleased just to be a part of it, making new connections and learning a lot about this trail-blazing space we are all occupying. Now back to my topophilia.

Your Mapper - NetSquared Conference Report (Part 1)

2008-05-30T14:46:00.002-04:00

We just got back from the NetSquared N2Y3 Conference in San Jose and had an incredible experience meeting some extraordinary people. The depth and breadth of the projects in the competition was amazing and we were honored to be part of it all. Your Mapper did not win the top prize, which went to a terrific project called Ushahidi, which maps violence though cell phone reports in Kenya.

I'll post a more detailed and full report of the conference details, attendees, and connections we made on Monday. For now, you can read about it all with NetSquared's coverage.

Your Mapper Project Interview by Ted Ko

2008-05-21T15:08:00.002-04:00

Ted Ko, my NetSquared Project Lead, interviewed me about Your Mapper and its social impact.
Full Project Interview

Some of the questions included:

What're the top 3 social benefits you see resulting from the Your Mapper project?
Do you feel that this project is the kind of thing where people begin to benefit immediately or it needs to reach a certain scale or tipping point before it makes a real difference to people?
What would you say are the top 3 reasons why this project is going to succeed?
How will this project contribute to the "tech for social benefit" space?
How will it help other developers and non-profits use the latest tech for positive impact?

The Open Municipal Geodata Standard Organization Website

2008-05-13T20:11:00.004-04:00

I'd like to announce a new website that I'm starting up called The Open Municipal Geodata Standard Organization Website, or OMG Standard for short, at www.omgstandard.com. The idea behind it is to have an open forum to discuss and collaborate on how to involve governments to effectively release their public data to communities.

The goals at the moment are to:
1 create an open standard for the structuring of municipal data
2 convince governments it's in their best interest to make the data easily available
3 provide tools to let this happen efficiently

I've been thinking about this for a while but was spurred into action by the discovery of a few similar pushes on the internet, the participation in the NetSquared contest, and by Ben Peskoe, a fellow entrepreneur who coined the name "Open Municipal Geodata Standard." Metro Mapper is based on the idea of collecting public data, turning it into a map, publishing the map online, and allowing citizens to view, interact with, and share the data in an appealing way. One major difficulty is in the manner in which the data is obtained.

Some municipal datasets are available online, but this is pretty rare. Even if they available online, the format is difficult to deal with, the data is incomplete, or it's hard to make sense of the data once you have it. Most of the time though, the data is locked up in an old internal database that only one expert person can get to, and finding that person can be difficult. Usually that involves mailing some sort of non-electronic information request, which may or may not be granted, and even it if it is granted, it could take a long time due to limited resource and other priorities. Then you have the issue of getting updates later.

It's not that municipal governments don't want to get the data out to the public, it's more a matter of time, limited staff, budget cuts, and larger priorities. Most people working in the public sector are acutely aware of the problems with their system, but don't know how or can't change it even though they would like to.

So what's the ideal solution? I think it's to help out governments by telling them what would be the biggest benefit to their citizens, giving them a road map for execution, helping them execute, and showing how it can reduce costs in the long run and benefit the community. The result would be digital data feeds on government websites that would contain downloadable information for free.

Luckily some smart people have already started working on this problem. Illinois has an organization called Illinois Data Exchange Affiliates (IDEA) that has similar goals and has had some success. The Sunlight Foundation works to create government transparency and recently had a very successful 'Open Government Working Group' with Google and Yahoo where they produced 8 Principles of Open Data. Sunlight also created PublicMarkup.org to create the Transparency in Government Act of 2008 which aims to bring more national government information online. Every Block (a journalistic project like Metro Mapper) is also a part of this movement and has an interesting blog post about the topic. There is also an active Open Government Google Group which discusses some of these issues. And OpenTheGovernment.org seeks to advance the public's right to know and to reduce secrecy in government.

Where does the OMG Standard fit in? I think it could work in conjunction with some of the above organizations, but with a more specific national goal of helping state and municipal governments publish their public data in a certain format on their websites. Obviously this would benefit Metro Mapper, which in turn would benefit the community. But I also think it is a benefit to the local governments.

For now, think about these issues and start a discussion in the comments below. Soon I'll be putting up a starting point on the OMG Standard website, where we can collaborate on these issues, and you can become a member.

We Have a Winner on the Logo Contest

2008-05-13T16:34:00.005-04:00

I've just awarded the prize to EastSideDesigns.biz for his submission of logo #158 . Congrats! Thanks to everyone who talked with me or sent me messages about the designs they liked. It was really helpful to get some community feedback for this.

His logo won because of some very simple ideas that he came up with that lent themselves well to the site. One is the use of the bendy Y person in a previous design, and the use of the little smile in the winning design. Also the faded blast radius target element is really great for showing importance to things that are close to the user, without looking too much like a bullseye. I'll hopefully work with him to finalize the design into a finished logo for the site.

I'd like to thank the other designers that participated. In addition to giving credit to EastSideDesigns.biz on the final site for his logo, I'd also like to credit on the site some of the other designers for some great ideas, especially helio brazil, wired iris, pacmanb, netso, and year_ago_today. Some parts of them might be turned into icons on the site even though they are not in the logo.

Thanks to 99designs for a great site and service. I was really amazed at the number of submissions and the quality of the designer's work. It made it difficult to make a final decision, that's for sure!

Logo Contest Over - Decision Today

2008-05-12T06:23:00.002-04:00

The logo contest is over for our new national site, Your Mapper. Take a look at the entries and let us know what you think here.

http://99designs.com/contests/7184

Although we have to pick just one, the final logo might incorporate some of the elements or colors of the other logos, so feel free to let us know how you would 'mix and match' things.

Contest: Design Our New Logo and Win $150!

2008-05-06T16:57:00.005-04:00

A Crowdsource Design Site for a Crowdsource Mapping Site Logo

For the Your Mapper project, we decided to use an existing site to "crowdsource" the design of our logo. This means that we are starting up a paid contest to determine our logo. Anyone can contribute a design for free, everyone can vote for and comment on the designs, and to the winner goes $150 in cash!

Since our new site and service, Your Mapper, will be a community contribution data driven site, it's only fitting that we put our money where our mouth is an let the community decide on our new logo. We are using a site called 99Designs for the contest, since it has a great community of talented designers, and they've created some very interesting logos quickly.

Contest Link: http://99designs.com/contests/7184

We need the logo quickly, so the contest is only on for 3 days, and is over this Friday afternoon. For the next three days, people will be submitting designs and we will be commenting on and grading them along with the rest of the community. Everyone can build upon existing ideas and come up with something terrific.

I especially welcome everyone in the Louisville and Kentucky areas to submit their ideas, or at least vote and comment on what is submitted. And if you are outside the area, please participate as well - it's open to everyone.

To the contest winner we will give $150, credit on the new site, and a web link back to the designer's web page.

We see this as another great new media experiment (like our Twitter experiment) and hope that it works out for everyone. Get started now!

Louisville Courier-Journal Writes First Full Article About Metro Mapper

2008-04-29T07:22:00.004-04:00

Louisville's newspaper, the Courier-Journal, wrote their first full article about Metro Mapper on the front page of the Business section. It's a great distillation of about three hours of interview with the reporter, Bill Wolfe.

It's great to finally get some local coverage for the site. The first map launched over 2 years ago, and the site officially launched a year ago. No news coverage, except for some excellent local blogs (Forge Louisville and Consuming Louisville), until now. I think I got coverage because of doing something outside of Louisville, namely the NetSquared contest.

I talked to a local friend of mine who said the same thing about his company: 2 years of great stuff, no coverage, one national blurb, then the C-J covers it, then after that Leo and other smaller news outlets and TV.

It's great that the Courier (at least anecdotally) seems to cover a good local company first, but strange that other publications wait for that to happen.

Anyway, Metro Mapper is grateful for the coverage and hope there will be more to report in the future! Thanks Bill!