Slashdot Mirror
Google Map Hack & Chicago Crime Data
joepez writes "In recent weeks we've seen some great Google Maps hacks (HousingMaps,
Google's own Ride Finder,
etc.), but this weekend Adrian has brought us something truly innovative. He's merged Google map data with Chicago crime data to present a once a day updated crime map of the entire city, including some really nice summarized data. Adrian calls the project Chicagocrime.org. How long till we have real time crime data showing up on Google's map? Pull open HousingMaps next to Chicagocrime.org and figure out if that low rent apartment is truly worth it. Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?" There's also a cheap gas hack as well.
Not a single comment, and the site is already crawling. I guess some people actually read the articles!
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
If you select 'prostitution' you can check out the best areas to go to pick up a hooker. Not that this is of any use to me as I'm a) not single and b) not in the US.
Pull open HousingMaps next to Chicagocrime.org and figure out if that low rent apartment is truly worth it. Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?
Why can't it be both. And if there is a way to keep it free the better for me.
Evolution or ID?
A better implementation for this would be to link to each individual State's sex offender's registry. This data is readily provided and is in the public domain.
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Combine housing maps and crime maps to discover exactly where not to live in Chicago!
Not sure if this has been implemented yet. Or even how to do so, but I think a cool Google hack would be a graphical trace route program simillar to NeoTrace.
Not sure how it would make money, but would be cool as hell with those satellite maps.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
The NYPD uses a system very much like this, called COMPSTAT.
More about the history of the program here (clicky)
Here's an excerpt from the NYPD website:
"Among the Command and Control Center's high-tech capabilities is its computerized 'pin mapping' which displays crime, arrest and quality of life data in a host of visual formats including comparative charts, graphs and tables. Through the use of MAPINFO software and other computer technology, for example, the CompStat database can be accessed and a precinct map depicting virtually any combination of crime and/or arrest locations, crime 'hot spots' and other relevant information can be instantly projected on the Center's large video projection screens."
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?
I doubt that Google intended on getting third parties dependent on GMaps. If they really wanted that to happen they would have released an open API rather than having to have people poke around in the code to figure out how it all worked.
Yeah, you can do some REALLY neat stuff with GMaps now (and even some of the things I suggested should be available when it first came out) but I just don't think that it was Google's main intention.
If anything, they just want to be a player in the same markets as Yahoo and MSN and not have to link to their competitor's mapping products.
I'm just simply amazed by both of the tools mentioned (the Crime Data and the Housing Maps)... we really live in interesting times. Why do these hacks work so well? Has google built an API to access these maps and to plot points on them, or have the developers of each of these hacks reverse-engineered the Google maps interface and figured out how to place stuff on them?
<obligatory>
It's already been done
</obligatory>
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I was able to tell the moment the Slashdot story went online... the chicagocrime.org site suddenly stopped responding. And it's not like we could have linked to a mirror.
So you'll just have to take my word for it -- it was pretty cool. I found out that there were three reported crimes at Chicago cemeteries, for example -- a theft, a trespassing, and a vandalism. Crimes at airports included a "theft by lessee" -- looks like there's somebody at Midway who you shouldn't get your rental car from.
The gas station link is holding up better, though. Hope it's not hosted at a gas station... kablooie!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The Chicago Police Department already has a web interface, called Citizen ICAM, which displays the same info. I do believe that the new site is compiling its data from ICAM. You can check out ICAM at http://12.17.79.6/
It would be really useful if it could tell where the crime was about to occur .. in advance
And noting that it doesn't appear at all, I can only conclude that there is no crime in Chicago.
It must be a wonderful place to live!
I haven't been able to connect to the site yet, but I'm wondering how closely it resembles the crime map view in SimCity. :)
Ah, what a great game...
http://nerdfortress.com/
It's amazing how fast a company can go from being Slashdot's little darling to suddenly being suspected at every turn of being the new EvilEmpire(tm).
Guys, these people are making wonderful tools and making them available for free, and letting people mess with them. They're probably reading comments like that slack-jawed, thinking "man, you just can't win with that crowd!" Give em a break! :)
-M
Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?
I think it's just a case of people using tools in ways their creators didn't envision. As Perl's Larry Wall says, that's the mark of a good tool.
Another way to look at it is that if you serve people, they become dependent on you. Google is trying to build its business by offering services and getting people hooked.
I, for one, welcome our new information infrastructure servant overlords.
sigs, as if you care.
It let me see that one prospective condo was right in a corner of fairly low crime, bordered by much higher crime. I could have guessed that visiting the neighborhood, but it was nice to see somewhat empirically.
Most exciting phrase in science: not "Eureka!" but "Hmm... That's funny..." -Asimov (abridged for \. limits)
a howto which describes, how to combine Criagslist with Google Maps similar to the site mentioned inn the summary (http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/)
How hard is it for the editor who posts these stories to the front page of Slashdot to replace them with Coral Cache links?
Seriously, just make it an automated process or something. ALWAYS make it a Coral link.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
A geographical map of sites unreachable due to the Slashdot Effect.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The trick is to come up with a visual representation so that if some crook is hitting South Side liquor stores about once a week, somebody sees it. In classical policing, that's not likely to be noticed unless the crook commits all their crimes in the same precinct on the same shift.
I'll tell you what the real crime is... not submitting any mirrors! We're going to get arrested for arson on this guy's server.
Mirrordot came up empty but there does seem to be a Coral Cache available.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I live in a resort community in the Colorado rocky mountains. Every fall we have a few weeks
of elk (wapiti) mating season where tourist type folks drive around looking for the herds of elk.
I think it would be really cool to have a google maps app on a website where people could click on a map to show where they saw elk.
How would I go about doing that?
I whipped up a google maps hack of geolocation of Illinois registered sex offenders: http://demon.dopeman.org/sexOffenders/ It was amazingly easy.
I used all of the tutorials and shit that the rancidbacon peeps created. made it rather simple. actually delightful.
now if i was only mapping locations of something cool.. rather than depressing things.
stupid maps.
Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public. - Frank Zappa
We already have PortlandMaps. You can see crime maps, tax maps, appraised value, bus routes, upcoming road improvments, much better satallite imagery... Google Maps has nothing on these guys. Every city should have something like this.
Just you wait until it's $6.50/gallon.
Deleted
since, judging by my abilities to connect to the server, some criminals seem to have made off with the server
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> How long till we have real time crime data showing up on Google's map?
and then the next logical step...
Dear Google Inc.:
I was pleased to hear that Google's map data had finally been merged with real-time crime data. To celebrate, I knocked over two liquor stores on the 800 block of Harrison, then mugged a guy over on Grant and committed some minor vandalism around Eastwood. Then I headed on back to my apartment to see my efforts rewarded on your site.
Imagine my surprise when I got back to my browser and discovered... NOTHING! I kept reloading the damn window every 15 minutes, but not a blip showed up. I cannot express my disgust.
It used to be the Google name meant something, but ever since your stock price hit $240 you've just been slacking. It's like nobody cares any more. It's enough to make a petty criminal like me lose his faith in humanity.
Signed,
-Disgusted in Chicago
How long till we have real time crime data showing up on Google's map?
How long before real estate interests make him pull the site down or make the agencies providing the crime data stop providing it - or stop providing it in a computer-useful form?
Not a purely academic question. My wife noticed that crimes we's heard about from other sources was not being reported in some areas of Silicon Valley and asked the San Jose paper in question about it. The person she reached said that they didn't want to depress real estate values. B-(
Then they wonder why we don't subscribe these days, and prefer to get our news from the web.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Because sex offenses of a particular kind are actually related to sexual addiction, and there is an extremely high recidivism rate due to the fact that prisons don't treat addiction very effectively, and treating addiction at all is difficult in the first place, and these are people that are extremely deep into their addictions to have committed their crimes.
Having said that:
* Why don't we fix the prison system so it does treat addictive behaviors related to sex?
* Why don't we distinguish between sex crimes that are connected to an addition and those that are not, and not track sexual offenders who are unlikely to commit a new crime?
* Why are there so many people on the list who don't deserve to be there? (Misguided applications of the statutory-rape laws come to mind, as others have pointed out.)
Without fixing these problems I am opposed to the sex offender registry, but I do understand why it exists.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Although "negro" is considered offensive (maybe parent doesn't know that), bringing up facts does not make parent racist.
Blacks are seven times more likely to commit homicide than whites.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
Chicago really is a dangerous city. I didn't even apply to the University of Chicago (even though I had a reasonable chance of being admitted) due to the fact that the neighborhood around the college is so dangerous that students can't even leave!
E = m c^3 Don't drink and derive E = m c^3
Just becase it's a dynamic site doesn't mean it won't benefit from Coral caching!
Sure, the dynamic bits still have to get through, but what about all the graphics that get served out? I know that's just bandwidth, and requires almost 0 processing on the sender's part, but it would still help when 250,000 slashdotters descend on a site at once. At least his bandwidth won't max out anywhere near as quickly.
I was able to use the site via the Coral Caching system (before it got totally zonked) and it appeared to serve data to me correctly. Am I an idiot? I mean, if you submit a novel (as in uncommon) query to the site via the cache and it responds, that proves it's at least working correctly, right? Might help, but it won't hurt.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
something that is "innovative" is never described that way by anyone involved, to them it was just work.
these maps are cool, but not innovative, innovative would be if google was able to predict the weather month by month on a farily high resolution (current weather systems do predictions for 200 km square blocks.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.