Megan Taylor

This week I started volunteering my time and skills at the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper serving the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, North Fordham and University Heights. The Norwood News is also part of the Bronx News Network, a series of community papers serving various neighborhoods in the West Bronx.

One of the projects I'm working on is a series of maps of various districts in the Bronx, starting with city council districts.

The first map was to be a simple graphic with no animation or interactivity. The second would be a map of all the city council districts in the Bronx, with clickable regions and information boxes for each district.

I started out with Photoshop and some images from the New York City Campaign Finance Board (for future reference, images are located here).

After about 45 mins of tinkering, I realized that method wouldn't work. At the size that was required for the paper, I couldn't get enough detail for people to easily figure out where the district lines were.

My next attempt was to start drawing the districts in Google Maps. By hand. (Using the My Maps Shape function)

I got frustrated enough with that to do what I should have done at the beginning: send out the call on Twitter asking for maps.

Derek Willis was kind enough to respond with the shapefiles from the New York City Department of City Planning. (A later search gave me this response to a question on Yahoo! Answers, with a long list of maps.)

Now, one of the reasons this hadn't occurred to me before is that I've never really worked with GIS data before. I don't have any software for it, and neither does the Norwood News.

So at this point I had to get the shapefiles into a format I could actually work with, preferably KML, which works with Google Maps.

A quick Google search brought me to Conversion of Shapefile to KML : An overview of tools available. It looked like my only option would be GeoCommons, a free online tool that lets users upload data and create maps from it.

GeoCommons will also provide a downloadable version of the data is CSV or KML format.

After downloading the KML file and uploading it to my own server, I plugged the link into Google Maps to take a look at what I had: city council districts for New York City.

Now I needed to narrow it down to just Bronx districts. A simple matter of removing the districts I didn't need from the KML file, which conveniently labeled each data set with the correlating district number.

In the end, this project probably took 5 or 6 hours. If I hadn't been muddling around so much, I could have done it in one or two. But now I have a file of all the Bronx districts in KML, which can be altered to remove or add as much information as I want. And to see it, I just have to enter the URL for my KML file into Google Maps.

I've missed doing this kind of work (lately I've been doing more writing and very basic computing tasks) and really look forward to doing more projects like this one at the Norwood News.

New York City is in the process of opening a whole lot of data to developers as part of the BigApps competition.

Contestants will be asked to develop functional digital applications that will facilitate the dissemination of and greater access to publicly available City data. NYCEDC will manage the competition (including logistics and promotion) and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) will coordinate the formatting and release of selected City data to the public. The BigApps Competition will help to make City government more transparent, accessible and accountable and stimulate innovation in information technology that could lead to new businesses and job creation.

In order to do this, developers have to send in a request for data

These descriptions should provide as much detail as possible about the type and level of data desired. In addition, respondents are requested to describe how they envision the data being used in software applications that provide a useful service to City residents, visitors and government.

The Open Government NYC Meetup group is running BigAppsDevCamp, a workshop to help developers navigate the system of requests and proposals required by the city. They are also collecting project ideas.

Today, I saw an example of where New York should be heading. Infosthetics pointed out San Fransisco's open data initiatives, including DataSF and San Francisco CrimeSpotting.

DataSF is an online repository of datasets available from the City & County of San Francisco. Similar to the goals of the data.gov and USASpending.gov initiatives, DataSF aims to improve access to data, help the community create innovative apps, understand what datasets the public likes to see, and receive feedback on the quality of the data. Included data ranges from all the trees located in the San Francisco streets (planting date, species, and location) to all its building permits or complaints.

In my opinion, that's how New York should be running this competition. Don't make developers try to guess how detailed your data is, or what you are collecting. I'm hoping there is an enterprising developer out there is who requesting ALL NYC data and will then make it all available to the public.

I feel almost as if Mayor Bloomberg saw my previous post about NYC data.

we.gov PDF09 by stevegarfield

Among the topics being discussed are:

• State-of-the-art online politics and advocacy
• Designing .gov for participation
• Twitter as a platform for organizing and fundraising
• The future of political journalism, blogging and network media
• How to use online video for political and issue based advocacy
• The rise of mobile politicking and organizing
• Rethinking media campaigns and organizations from the ground up

During his keynote on how technology is improving government yesterday morning, NYC Mayor Bloomberg announced the "BiggApps competition," challenging developers in the audience to "play with city data."

MayorBloomberg PDF09 by magnifynet

Here's the press release for the competition:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES FIVE TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVES TO IMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACROSS CITY GOVERNMENT

City Providing Data to the Public to Allow for the Development of Applications for Computers and Mobile Devices as Part of "NYC Big Apps" Public Contest; 311 and NYC.gov Enhanced through Skype, Twitter and Google

Obama Administration Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra Applauds City Efforts

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced a series of technology initiatives designed to increase transparency and improve access to information about City services. The City will provide data to allow for the development of software applications that can be used on websites and mobile devices, and through what will become an annual competition known as NYC Big Apps, the City will encourage innovative and useful applications. The Mayor also announced the launch of 311 Online and other improvements to 311 and NYC.gov through services provided by Skype, Twitter and Google. With call volume to 311 continuing to increase, 311 Online will allow the City to maintain the current level of service with current staffing levels, potentially avoiding more than $4 million in additional costs next fiscal year. The Mayor made the announcement in remarks delivered through Skype to the Personal Democracy Forum at Lincoln Center, an annual conference that explores how technology and the Internet are changing politics, democracy and society. New York City Chief Information Officer and Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Paul J. Cosgrave also attended the conference.

"We've already made great strides increasing the accessibility of City data and transparency of City government, and these initiatives will use private sector technological innovation to bolster those efforts," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Through NYC Big Apps, 311 Online and services offered by Skype, Twitter and Google, we're working to provide public information to New Yorkers in as many ways as possible."

"We applaud New York City's leadership on delivering a more open and innovative government," said Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra. "These five announcements align well to President Obama's Open Government Initiative and reflect best practices worthy of replication to achieve excellence in public sector performance."

"Today's package of initiatives represents an historic stride in transparency - even for systems that have made accessibility commonplace," said Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Cosgrave. "As successful as we have been in opening up City government to those it serves, the key to technology deployment for any organization is to continue innovating. As 311 and NYC.gov grow, the City needs to adapt and engage New Yorkers in utilizing the data it collects to keep fresh these enduring avenues of access."

NYC Big Apps

Through the NYC Big Apps annual competition, the City will provide an array of data sets to encourage the public to develop applications that could benefit New Yorkers. Approximately 80 data sets from across 32 City agencies and commissions may be made available on NYC.gov, including such categories as citywide events, property records and sales information, recreational facility directories and restaurant inspection information. The City will invite the public to create innovative applications, and winners will be awarded a cash prize and marketing opportunities. Mayor Bloomberg plans to congratulate the winners in person at a dinner. The contest will begin this fall. The program will be administered by New York City Economic Development Corporation, which today issued a Request for Expressions of Interest to solicit information from software developers and professionals in related fields to identify additional data sets to be aggregated.

"Finding opportunities to engage our innovative high-tech workforce is integral to the continued growth of the media sector in New York City," said New York City Economic Development Corporation President Seth W. Pinsky. "By making City data available to a broader audience and encouraging our entrepreneurs to create new applications using that information, we leverage existing resources to stimulate investment and create jobs."

311 Online

Mayor Bloomberg launched 311 Online, a one-stop, searchable web portal on NYC.gov for thousands of New York City services. Through the site, New Yorkers can obtain information, report problems, lodge complaints, check the status of previously-filed complaints and request City services - just as they can by calling 311. Users can browse through a directory of City services, search for available services by specific demographic or service type, and access quick links to featured services and top services. Keyword searches and advanced search options allow customers to navigate directly to the information. Users will be able to attach pictures, videos and audio files to their complaints and service requests.

311 Skype and Twitter Accounts

The Mayor announced 311 Skype and Twitter accounts. Through Skype - a software application that enables calls to be made over the Internet - people from around the world will be able to call 311 for free. The City will use Twitter - the free, social messaging service - to 'tweet' information regularly about such things as alternate side of the street parking status, schools closures and information about citywide events. 311NYC tweets will be 140 or fewer characters in length and can be sent to any mobile device via texting, instant messaging or the web. Information about emergency events and services will continue to be accessible via Notify NYC.

Google Collaboration to Improve Site Content on NYC.gov

The Mayor also announced that the City is working with Google to use Google search patterns to better understand the usage of NYC.gov and ultimately improve site content. By analyzing trends for New York City-related searches made by Google users, the City will tailor content to user preferences and improve costumer service.

---END PRESS RELEASE---

The competition will make about 80 data sets from 32 city agencies and commissions available to developers to create "applications to help Internet users navigate vast stores of data in areas like citywide events, property sales, recreational facilities and restaurant inspections."

It will be run by the NYC Economic Development Corporation and the winner will get a cash prize, a dinner with Mayor Bloomberg, and marketing opportunities.

At the same time, unrelated to PDF09, a meeting on Open Data Standards in NYC was held by the New York City Council Committee on Technology in Government.

Looks like data is definitely getting some love (or at the very least, lip service) in New York. I wasn't able to make either event, so if you did, let me know how it went in the comments!

On top of the Empire State Building, Manhattan, New York City, by meironke.

One of the things that makes doing web journalism in New York City absolutely frustrating is the lack of online data.

I'm not looking for anything strange. The first data set I wanted was crime reports that include individual crimes and locations. NYPD publishes weekly crime statistics, but not data that could easily be plotted on a map.

It absolutely stuns me that one of the biggest, most famous cities in the world is so backward. And why hasn't the police department been slammed with FOIAs from every journalist in the city for the past 15 years?

Guardian DataStore

About a week ago I posted to Twitter an idea for creating a data hub for NYC, in the vein of The Guardian's Data Store. Everyblock does a good job of the collecting what data NYC does put online, but their job isn't to track down city departments and convince them that providing clean data in multiple, usable formats would be to their benefit.

About a year ago, some journalists were complaining about the "data ghettos" that began popping up on newspaper websites. The problem was/is that newspaper organizations began publishing databases without context.

How would my NYC data hub be different?

It's not. I don't envision this as journalism. It is, instead a service provided TO journalists.

The idea needs some more fleshing out, some investors, and a business model. But it's doable, and necessary. I don't ever want to hear another editor turn down an idea because it will take 2 years and a FOIA to get the required data.

The launch of Data.gov yesterday was accompanied by a lot of fanfare on Twitter and blogs.

I think it's fantastic that Obama is following through on his promise to make government more transparent, and looking forward to Data.gov being a very useful tool. Right now though, it's a bit wimpy. While there is a lot of data available in machine-readable formats, it hasn't been translated into visualizations that humans can easily understand.

I should mention that US Government Web Services and XML Data Sources, a non-government site, has been collecting data released by the government and releasing mobile applets for a long time now.

In reaction to the launch of Data.gov, Sunlight Labs has launched Apps for America 2:

Just as the federal government begins to provide data in Web developer-friendly formats, we're organizing Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge to demonstrate that when government makes data available, it makes itself more accountable and creates more trust and opportunity in its actions. The contest submissions will also show the creativity of developers in designing compelling applications that provide easy access and understanding for the public, while also showing how open data can save the government tens of millions of dollars by engaging the development community in application development at far cheaper rates than traditional government contractors.

A post on the White House blog, "Your Government & New Media," encourages people to find out where agencies are getting involved online and use these venues to communicate with the government.

So, look for opportunities to jump in and connect with your government -- at our websites and blogs, through videos and photos, in social networks, through widgets, podcasts, and more. Abraham Lincoln knew what he was talking about. This is government of the people, by the people, for the people.

View, comment, rate, participate, and share. The government is paying attention, even as we continue to learn ourselves. The more people engage, the more meaningful all of this becomes, and the more progress we can make.

Here is a list of examples of government being "cooler and more approachable than you think." (Descriptions are added from each site.) I gathered these from multiple blogs and websites.

• EPA’s Pick 5 to help the environment

Do more to protect the environment by choosing at least five actions (below) you'll commit to. Pick 5 also helps you identify more actions you can take in the future. Then let others know what you committed to through Pick Five. Show the actions you've taken.

• National Park Service Facebook App

You may use this application to share and view stories, experiences and galleries related to your experience our our nations wonderful National Park system.

• Library of Congress Flickr photo stream

The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library's pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images more widely.



• Peer-to-Patent project

Recently a group of academic and business professionals have proposed a collaborative, online process in which members of the public pool together their knowledge and locate potential prior art. This pilot will test whether such collaboration can effectively locate prior art that might not otherwise be located by the Office during the typical examination process.

• Presidential Directives and Executive Orders

In this section you will find official actions by the President that have a significant impact on how the federal government functions but do not require legislation or Congressional approval. See listings below of the official Proclamations, Presidential Memoranda, and Executive Orders that President Obama has issued since his inauguration.

• Freedom of Information Act

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.

• Transparency and Open Government

We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.



• Recovery.gov

As the centerpiece of the President’s commitment to transparency and accountability, Recovery.gov will feature information on how the Act is working, tools to help you hold the government accountable, and up-to-date data on the expenditure of funds.

• White House Blog, Health Care Reform Forum (slideshow), Live Streaming from the White House, Open for Questions, Podcasts, President’s Weekly Address
• Town Hall in Turkey
• Serve.gov

This website is a new portal for you and all Americans to find your own ways to serve in your own communities. Just choose your keyword - "education," "environment," or whatever interests you - and type in your zip code to see what opportunities our partner organizations have in your area. Americans are putting their own country back on the right track, be a part of it.

• Troop Tube

TroopTube is the new online video site designed to help military families connect and keep in touch while miles apart.

• TSA blog and other federal blogs
• U.S. Government channel on YouTube

The official YouTube channel of the U.S. Government, linking you to videos across government. Visit the playlists and other channels for a wide variety of interesting videos!



• State Department’s DipNote blog, on Twitter, on Facebook

Official Blog of the U.S. Department of State - offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information. This blog offers the opportunity for participants to discuss important foreign policy issues with senior Department officials.

• USA.gov, USA.gov’s government FAQs, email and online chat, USA.gov on Twitter

As the U.S. government's official web portal, USA.gov makes it easy for the public to get U.S. government information and services on the web. USA.gov also serves as the catalyst for a growing electronic government.



• FBI widgets

Add links to FBI content by incorporating the widgets and modules below into your own website or blog.

• Open Government Dialogue

This online brainstorming session, open from May 21st to 28th, 2009, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government.

• Open Government Initiative and Innovations Gallery

Consistent with the President’s mandate, we want to be fully transparent in our work, participatory in soliciting your ideas and expertise, and collaborative in how we experiment together to use new tools and techniques for developing open government policy.

I hope these sites are useful to those interested in becoming involved in the direction of government for the next several years. If I missed any good ones, please leave them in the comments!

For the past month or so, I've been looking for data sets to play with. As a journalist, I really enjoy finding interesting ways to visualize data, and I needed some to play with.

I came across Visualize This: Days Spent Working to Pay Taxes, a challenge posted to Flowing Data:

About 28.2% of the average American's income goes towards taxes, which means the first 103 days of the year is to pay for government. At the end of these 103 days - April 13 - is Tax Freedom Day. However, because of varying state-by-state tax burdens and average incomes, Tax Freedom Day varies by state. Alaska, for example, has the earliest Tax Freedom Day (March 23) because it has low state and local taxes while Connecticut is last on April 30, because of "extraordinarily high federal income taxes." For this Visualize This we're looking at the number of days each state spends paying taxes this year (2009).

FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better - mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.

So, I didn't get mine done in time for the contest, and the results were posted today.

Edit: These two are my favorites:

an interactive Adobe Flex based visualization

Tax Freedom Day by State 1977-2009 from Alex Lundry on Vimeo.

Here is my belated attempt (click for larger view):

I wanted to do something with the state median incomes as well, but I'm having trouble getting the numbers to make sense.

On Wednesday evening I spoke to a group of five students who are taking part in the Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative.

I've mentioned BYJI here before, mostly begging for help with my public speaking anxiety.

To my surprise, the whole thing went pretty well. The kids were Web-savvy enough to have uploaded a few videos to YouTube, and knew of Twitter, though none are using it yet.

I talked about the "newspaper crisis" caused by lack of innovation, an old business model and the problems with advertising and paywalls. (The kids' immediate reaction to paywalls: "That won't work." Out of the mouths...) I went over the basics of online journalism: blogs, social networks, multimedia. I also talked about citizen journalism a little bit, in terms of how everyone can have a voice in their communities, which is a big problem in the Bronx. They really liked the concepts of "Not Just a Number," which I showed them, along with the Las Vegas Sun Web site.

One student asked me how he could learn to code, and I directed him to the W3Schools site. Another asked about the future of news on e-readers like the Kindle. And of course the final question was "Where are we going?"

Thanks to Mindy McAdams, Craig Lee, and Tracy Boyer for their advice and inspiration. I've uploaded a powerpoint presentation to Slideshare which I used as a guide for my presentation, although it was really more a conversation than a speech.

One of the many reasons I use Twitter: finding out about what projects journalists are developing and launching.

Yesterday I saw two such posts:

and

1. Tampa Bay Mug Shots, also known to some as "Facebook for underachievers" is a simple and fun glance at booking data in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. A carousel of mug shots is accompanied by some basic crime data and arrest records.

The information presented here as a public service is gathered from open county sheriff's Web sites in the Tampa Bay area. The booking mug shots and related information are from arrest records in the order and at the time the data was collected. Those appearing here have not been convicted of the arrest charge and are presumed innocent. Do not rely on this site to determine any person's actual criminal record.

2. The Miami Herald's 60 Seconds is actually a relaunch/update of an older project, and I worked with Stephanie Rosenblatt on the Flash video player during my internship at The Herald. There are 10 new videos in this series about South Florida characters.

I know that in some circles, this type of journalism may be looked down upon. No evils or corruptions exposed, no event described, no protesters sprayed with pepper spray.

But I see it as an example of what journalism should do more of: exposing a community to itself. In both cases, the profiles are of people who live or work in these communities. Just because it's also entertaining ('cause I firmly believe that the funniest thing about any person is their mugshot) doesn't mean it's not useful and informative. Stories are still being told.

The MediaShift Innovation Spotlight looks in-depth at one great mash-up, database, mapping project or multimedia story that combines technology and journalism in useful ways. These projects can be at major newspaper or broadcast sites, or independent news sites or blogs.

This week, I covered New York Time's Represent.

Represent is a look at the future of online journalism -- focused, local and geographically relevant. It's a different way to group and browse information based on an individual's political districts.

Some have compared Represent to EveryBlock. It does fill a hole in EveryBlock's coverage, taking the concept of block-by-block news and expanding it to fit the political realm of information. In fact, EveryBlock recently hooked up with The New York Times to display political news items for each block.

Check out Represent Helps New Yorkers Track Their Politicos to learn about how Andrei Scheinkman and Derek Willis did it.

The MediaShift Innovation Spotlight looks in-depth at one great mash-up, database, mapping project or multimedia story that combines technology and journalism in useful ways. These projects can be at major newspaper or broadcast sites, or independent news sites or blogs. The main spotlights will run every other week, with mini-spotlights running on the off-weeks.

Another mini-Spotlight this week, featuring the Washington Post's TimeSpace framework for media browsing.

TimeSpace, a Washington Post project, is a coverage mapping framework that displays content from multiple sources in space (via a map) and time (via a timeline). A display map, covering anything from a single city block to the world, is tagged to show viewers where news is being covered. Viewers can also view the news map as it appeared at different points over the preceding hours or days, giving them a picture of how the news events unfolded over time.

Check out Washington Post's 'Web Ninjas' Build Map-Timeline Combo for how they did it and screenshots of the development.

Please let me know of any innovative projects you are working on or have seen lately. It doesn't have to be from a major newspaper, it just has to be an innovative blend of journalism and technology. Please e-mail me at mtaylor[at]megantaylor[dot]org to submit a Spotlight recommendation.

This morning I discovered the Times Labs blog, where the Times Online is writing about innovation in online journalism and sharing experiences.

It was through this blog that I found out about the Digging into Data Challenge.

DIDC was announced by agencies in the U.S. UK and Canada to search for ways to use the huge amounts of data that have become available to the public.

The idea behind the Digging into Data Challenge is to answer the question "what do you do with a million books?" Or a million pages of newspaper? Or a million photographs of artwork? That is, how does the notion of scale affect humanities and social science research? Now that scholars have access to huge repositories of digitized data -- far more than they could read in a lifetime -- what does that mean for research?

Applicants have to form teams from two out of the three countries. A list of data repositories is provided, although it doesn't look like you'd have to use those specific datasets.

DIDC is being sponsored by "the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the United Kingdom, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the United States, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from Canada."

Submit a "Letter of Intent" by March 15, 2009, final applications are due July 15, 2009. Winners will be announced in December, and will receive grants to build their projects.

The MediaShift Innovation Spotlight looks in-depth at one great mash-up, database, mapping project or multimedia story that combines technology and journalism in useful ways. These projects can be at major newspaper or broadcast sites, or independent news sites or blogs. The main spotlights will run every other week, with mini-spotlights running on the off-weeks.

And this week we're back to our normal column. I found a really great project produced by two individuals who did not set out to create journalism, but have done so nevertheless: BronxRhymes Uses Locality, Maps to Track History of Hip-Hop.

BronxRhymes is an attempt to raise awareness of the history of hip-hop in the Bronx, the northwestern borough of New York City where the musical style is thought to have originated. The history of hip-hop is illustrated through rhymes and plotted on an online map.

Inspired by music, history and technology, Masha Ioveva and Claudia Bernett created a way for the community to become engaged in its history, at a time when gentrification may be wiping it away.

Please let me know of any innovative projects you are working on or have seen lately. It doesn't have to be from a major newspaper; it just has to be an innovative blend of journalism and technology. Please e-mail me at mtaylor[at]megantaylor[dot]org to submit a Spotlight recommendation.

I started out this month really wanting to highlight newer, better projects in my Innovation Spotlight Series at MediaShift.

I spent a week or so collecting, sorting, e-mailing, and calling. I've spent the past 2 weeks doing interviews. And I ended up with 4 or 5 projects I wanted to write about.

Wait a sec, my posts only come out every other week...

I had two choices: hold onto some projects for next month or do mini-posts on my off-week.

I didn't want to hold onto things because I'm sure that I'll be flooded with great new projects next month as well. I was concerned that the inconsistency of the mini-posts - I won't always have the time or material to do them - would affect the series.

But I got over that. And thus I present you with a mini-Spotlight, discussing the natural evolution of journalism from data collection to online tracking tool: ProPublica Puts Spotlight on Tracking TARP Money.

Please let me know of any innovative projects you are working on or have seen lately. It doesn't have to be from a major newspaper, it just has to be an innovative blend of journalism and technology.

In English: People who write software are invited to send in cool ideas to improve the software that runs I Can Has Cheezburger if we provided API (pronounced AIEE-PEE-AHHH) access to our photos and shtuffs.

In Lolspeak: Fansy pants and shiny fings for nuuuuurrrrds!!!

There are no words. I'm going to be thinking about this for the rest of the week.

Sunlight Labs recently announced Apps for America, a mashup contest to create applications using Sunlight data to "make Congress more accountable, interactive and transparent."

Sunlight is offering $15,000 as the first prize, and scaled prizes to second, third and honorable mentions.

Entries must be applications that use a host of government information APIs or datasets, including the Sunlight Labs API, OpenSecrets.org API, the FollowtheMoney.org API, the Capitol Words API and other Sunlight APIs and datasets. We also encourage you to use Sunlight's code libraries, which the Labs recently open sourced.

Adrian Holovaty - Founder, Everyblock.com, Django Project, Aaron Swartz - Director, Watchdog.net, Peter Corbett - iStrategyLabs, Xeni Jardin - BoingBoing.net and Clay Johnson - Director, Sunlight Labs will judge the entries.

Submissions are due on March 31st. Winners will be announced on April 7th.

EveryBlock, the darling of data journalism, just releases a new feature: Neighborhood Trends.

Brilliant.

Until this release, EveryBlock data was most useful for people living in the cities that are covered. When I moved to NYC, one of the most exciting things for me was being in a city that EveryBlock covered. (Wow, that makes me sound like such a dork. But it's true.) Of course, they started covering Miami soon after, so I would have been happy either way.

I live in the Bronx, a borough which is historically painted with the black brush of crime, the red brush of danger...OK, point is, people asked me if I was buying a gun for self-protection.

I'll not deny that there are some areas of the Bronx I won't go. But my neighborhood is pretty safe. I've only been living there a few months, and as part of my New Year's Resolutions, I vowed to get involved in my community. No sense living somewhere you don't know anything about.

EveryBlock just gave me a shortcut to learning about Kingsbridge Heights.

I can see what sources are publishing the most about the Bronx. That tells me what sites to visit and read from. Also, where to apply for jobs. :)

I can see where graffiti is located and where its being cleaned up, (or not). This tells me where the punks are hanging out at night.

Where's the closest store selling liquor? (licenses) What buildings would I want to avoid moving into when I decide to move? (Building violations) Etc.

I have a few complaints though:

1. I want to see trends over at least 6 months. I'm getting 2 months here.
2. I want to see if crime is rising or falling. It looks like the way that EveryBlock gets that information (in 2 weekly police reports) isn't translating well to the charts.

I need Spotlight projects!

So far, I've covered Neighborhood Watch, The Big Picture and California Schools Guide.

If you are working on, have just finished, or know of a recent project that is an innovative blend of journalism and technology, please let me know.

Thanks!

I deliberately left something out of my resolutions post last week.

I left out my recent efforts to defeat my greatest weakness: Design.

Forget about when I started building Web sites (age 11), my relationship with design didn't start until I got into online journalism.

And I learned that I couldn't design my way out of a keg. ::shudder::

For a while I thought I could get away without being able to design visual elements. I could shoot photos and video, I could program in Flash and code a site from a .pdf. After all, there's a reason for having designers, right?

I was wrong. I learned that sometimes, there just isn't enough designer to go around, and you have to be able to make your own decisions. Things move faster and more smoothly if I don't have to go ask the designer about an element.

Also, there are design elements to everything else I do online, from customizing a Twitter page to visualizing data. I was going to have to learn.

But how do you learn design?

I didn't take a class, or sign up for a workshop. I just started reading design blogs. Following designers on Twitter. Paying attention to what I liked about certain Web sites and what made them ugly.

And I've made progress. I'm not good at details, but I can spec an overall design that doesn't make people wish for blindness. I'd say I've reached paper bag status (as in can design my way out of), but anything more is beyond me.

I want to get better, because I hate not being able to do things. And because Web deisgn is important. I know I'll never be a designer, but it would be nice to have a touch of the craft.

So if you've got resources, blogs, Web sites, or people that I should be paying attention to, please let me know in the comments.

Edit: I decided to add in a list of what I'm reading.

• 24 Ways
• A Brief Message
• An Event Apart
• Authentic Boredom
• DesignM.ag
• Fuel Your Creativity
• Garrett Dimon
• i love typography
• Jason Santa Maria
• Mark Boulton
• The Grid System
• Web Designer Wall

Even though I graduated from college in May, I have trouble with the concept of not being in school. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I love school, and I miss all the things that come with it: being a part of a community, constantly learning new things, the surety of having something to work toward for the next few years.

Obviously, these are all part of living in the real world as well, but they seem harder and less tangible. I've lived in the Bronx for three months now, and I still only know the building super and the guy at the convenience store down the street. I'm so busy trying to make rent that I'm not learning the way I was in school. Sure, I learn new things on the job, but it's very different. As for goals to work toward, instead of aiming for a degree I know I can get, I'm working toward a career in an industry that's too busy trying to land on its feet to notice my efforts.

There's no despair in this. Just readjustment. And resolutions.

I don't need to be in school or have my dream job to learn new things or to be a journalist. I just have to carve out the time to do what needs doing.

So here's a list of things I want to learn or do, regardless of jobs.

1. Formally learn Javascript. I have some experience, but mostly in the vein of searching for the code that will do what I want, and implementing it. I'd like to be able to write a little on my own.
2. Learn PHP. Like Javascript, I know quite a bit just from fiddling with websites (especially WordPress). But I'd like the formal knowledge that would allow me to manipulate databases without have to do a Google search every ten minutes.
3. Write. I recently signed up at BrightHub, a science and technology site. I'd like to write at least one article a week. In addition, I want to try some pitching for publications. I think that my deficiency in published writing (due to a proficiency in multimedia and programming) has been detrimental to my career goals.
4. Produce multimedia and web development projects. I want to keep my skills fresh, even if I'm not using them in day-to-day work. So each month I'll come up some sort of project to work on, be it video, photography, data analysis...just something to keep me from getting rusty.
5. Find a way to participate in my new community. I've been poking around community boards for the Bronx, and have also found some interesting groups in Manhattan. I want to get involved. There are also a few online communities that I'm a part of that I'd like to be more involved in.

I think these are good ways to be a journalist without the benefits of working for a publication. I'm still busting my butt to get a job in news, but until then, this is a good simulation.

What else can I do to be a journalist without the framework? What tips or advice can you give me for fulfilling these resolutions?

I submitted this for my entry to Publish2's “I Am the Future of Journalism” Contest:

I have the will and the adaptability to be the future of journalism.

It's not that I know how to write stories, use a video camera and write code.

Those are secondary qualities.

I am passionate about news. Passionate enough to learn new skills, to experiment with technology, to challenge myself to tell stories in multiple dimensions.

The power of news is change. It's a cliche, but knowledge really is power, and journalists are the disseminators of information.

In journalism school they say "Show, don't tell." Somewhat ironically, print stories are limited in this capacity. Radio and television are better at showing.

But the mediums are merging. The buzzword is "convergence," but what it means is that the media is catching up with technology.

A story is no longer a block of text. It is more than the sum of it's parts; it includes video, links, databases, infographics and audio. A story is an experience. And when forced to acknowledge wrongness on such a level, how can people but work to change it?

Journalism makes an idealist out of me.

I've worked in a cramped college newsroom and a spacious metro daily. But the job was the same: What is the best way to make this information meaningful?

To that end, I've used Flash, Twitter, maps, video, podcasts. I'm learning more programming languages, exploring social media and experimenting with the possibilities introduced by the Internet.

Abraham Maslow, a psychologist in the early 20th century, said "He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail." The more tools we have, the better our stories become, because there isn't just one way to do it.

I'm going to need a ginormous toolbox.

I don't dream of working in a smoke-filled newsroom, surrounded by press hats and old coffee. I dream of the day when the world is my newsroom. I'll work from the streets or my living room, and the physical state of the newsroom will be a server.