The Promise of Everyblock

Former Postie Adrian Holovaty has unveiled his idea of local journalism called "Everyblock." It's not available here yet, which is a good thing --- that means ColumbiaTalk is safe for at least another few months ;)

If he pulls off what he is trying to do, and the searches of public information provide quality feeds, then this is really something to watch -- think the power of a Google search on a local Zip Code level. Here's his introductory blog post explaining what Everyblock is all about.


Introducing EveryBlock

Posted January 23, 2008 by The EveryBlock Team

"What's happening in my neighborhood?"

For a long time, that's been a tough question to answer. In dense, bustling cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering. Every day, a wealth of local information is created — officials inspect restaurants, journalists cover fires and Web users post photographs — but who has time to sort through all of that?

Our mission at EveryBlock is to solve that problem. We aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We're a geographic filter — a "news feed" for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.

Today we're launching in three American cities: Chicago, New York and San Francisco. On each site, you can type in any address to read local news and public information near you. You'll find three main types of news:

* Civic information — building permits, crimes, restaurant inspections and more. In many cases, this information is already on the Web but is buried in hard-to-find government databases. In other cases, this information has never been posted online, and we've forged relationships with governments to make it available.
* News articles and blog entries — major newspapers, community weeklies, TV and radio news stations, local specialty publications and local blogs. We do the work of classifying articles by geography, so you can easily find the mainstream media coverage near particular locations.
* Fun from across the Web — local photos posted to the Flickr photo-sharing site, user reviews of local businesses on Yelp, missed connections from Craigslist and more. We figure out the relevant places and point you to location-specific items you might not have known about.

We like to toss around the word "news" to describe all of this, and that might surprise you at first. Isn't news what appears on the front page of the New York Times? Isn't news something produced by professional journalists?

Well, it can be — and we include as much of that on EveryBlock as possible. But, in our minds, "news" at the neighborhood or block level means a lot more. On EveryBlock, "Somebody reviewed the new Italian restaurant down the street on Yelp" is news. "Somebody took a photo of that cool house on your block and posted it to Flickr" is news. "The NYPD posted its weekly crime report for your neighborhood" is news. If it's in your neighborhood and it happened recently, it's news on EveryBlock.

Our team of four has worked long and hard for several months to bring you these three sites, and we're excited to unveil them to the world — but they're just the beginning. In the grand 21st Century tradition, our site is a work in progress, and we intend to add data and features rapidly over the coming days, weeks and months. If you have ideas, or find kinks in the system, we hope you'll take a moment to send us feedback at feedback at everyblock.com. Every message goes to all four of us, and we read every one.

In the immediate future, look for about three to four more data types in each city. And we're actively working on obtaining dozens of more data types from city officials. There's a long way to go. Again, we need your help — please do e-mail us with any data-source ideas you might have.

Finally, as we've been working on EveryBlock and accumulating expertise in this area for several months, we've got much more than a single announcement's worth of ideas and writings — so please come back to read this blog (or subscribe to the RSS feed) if you're interested in what we're doing.

We've had a ton of fun clicking around our sites while we've been building them, and we hope you find them useful, fun and serendipitous. Enjoy!

The EveryBlock Team
Chicago, IL

Making Her Voice Heard

Here's a portion of the letter we received from McKenzie Ditter, whose family owns Bun Penny. She gave us permission to reprint:

The Bun Penny market and cafe has been a part of the Columbia Mall for nearly forty years, and my family has owned it for the past eighteen. We have always struggled to survive in the mall, but after General Growth Properties' acquisition of the Rouse Company, it has become impossible. The day before this Thanksgiving, my father was notified that Bun Penny must leave the mall by January 15th. Just as they decided that Columbia no longer needed the Poinsettia Tree, they have decided that Bun Penny no longer has a place in the Columbia Mall.

Until now, my family has kept news of our closure a secret from customers and employees for fear of jeopardizing the final shipments from our food distributors. Now, with Christmas passed, I think it is safe to spread the word. I'd like Columbia to recognize the plight of small businesses in the profit-before-people culture fostered by companies like GGP. I want people to see how far the new owners of Columbia are straying from James Rouse's initial vision. My family has been struggling to pay an ever-increasing rent of $38,000 a month to a company based in Chicago that shows little to no regard for the traditions and institutions of Columbia.

I don't know what the future holds for Bun Penny, but knowing that it will no longer be a part of the mall is sad. As much as I dislike the superficiality of what the mall has become, it's hard to forget that it has been a second home to my father, mother, brother and me for as long as I can remember. As a little girl, I played in the straw barrels that we used for gift baskets. I threw temper-tantrums in front of customers, had countless crushes on cute deli boys twice my age, and broke more bottles of wine than I can remember. I collected coffee beans from the ground, made sandwich signs and window murals, sewed tablecloths, and catered the beautiful weddings of some of Columbia's most powerful residents. I can make a gift basket with my eyes closed and recite the prices of hundreds of cracker boxes and jellies and teas in my sleep. For better or worse, Bun Penny has been an extremely important part of my life, and I know I am not alone.

Bun Penny is a family business - not just my immediate family, but the extended family of employees, customers, and even old Harry the produce man. There are men and women working at this store who have known me since before I was born. The Bun Penny family has seen births, teenage romances, graduations, marriages, divorces, and deaths. Through it all, there has always been love and support for anyone in need. This family deserves to know how much they are worth and how much they have meant to us. This is not the first time that a family business has been driven out of the Columbia Mall and it does not bode well for the few that remain. Considering the Poinsettia Tree debacle, tradition appears to be a tender topic during the holidays and GGP's continued efforts to undermine such traditions should not go unnoticed. If Columbia wants to preserve its other institutions, it must continue to make its voice heard.

McKenzie Ditter

WaPo Launches Local Blog Directory

This one caught me by surprise. The Washington Post is creating a directory of local blogs. You can list yours here. Hopefully, this will help more people discover our blogs. Before the folks at the Post's Web site embarked on this project, they had a little summit with area bloggers to get their thoughts. Most people seemed pretty enthusiastic about the idea; anything that drives traffic is good, right? The home page lists hot topics and shows a sample of recent postings. There are also "picks," though I don't know who does the picking. The site also offers some Post widgets you can add to your blog to get a feed of certain content, like the politics blog The Fix (thus letting you embed a blog in a blog!). Finally, there are a few resources, such as a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal guide for bloggers.

Blogger Buzz

Here's a new feature in Google's Blogger software that has Facebook-like appeal:

Browse Profiles! Find new blogs to read!
Say you live in Albuquerque, count the Smashing Pumpkins among your favorite bands, and like sushi. Starting today, we’re making it easy for you to find other bloggers who share your interests.

Now you can go to any Blogger profile page (start with your own, or perhaps another popular blogger’s) and follow any of the links on the page to get a list of other bloggers with the same industry, occupation, location, interest, or favorite book, movie, or music.

What if you could "friend" bloggers of likemindedness?

Vacation

The blogger's lament. I had the best of intentions but just could not bring myself to blog much over the past three weeks, two of which have been spent away on vacation. We spent one at Myrtle Beach watching our son play a baseball tourney and the other at Lake Powell in Arizonia (the pic is of Rainbow Bridge, a mile hike from the lake). This being my first blogging summer, I realize I'll have to come up with some way to feed my personal blogs while away; at the office, at least there was plenty of help (although I see a few things didn't get updated while I was away!)

Blog Heaven

WaPo's business staff just launched two more blogs, one called Small Business on washingtonpost.com and one on government contracting dubbed Government Inc. That brings to five the number of active bizzy blogs on the site, with tech guru Rob Pegoraro's popular Faster Forward and the tech staff's Post I.T. effort in the mix.

This is all part of the newspaper's effort to experiment with all sorts of online content. Over time, I'd like to distinquish the WashBiz Blog from the cookie-cutter blog template we are using since it is not really a blog in the classic sense. It's a more a newsy roundup. Which may mean we need to tinker with the name :)

Any ideas?

Our consumer blog and a jobs blog are on hiatus as the women who wrote them are currently on maternity leave. That raises another interesting issue...how to sustain these things when people are away. Or does that matter? My personal belief is that it is important to be consistent so readers have some expectation about what they are getting and can make reading the sites part of their routines. But, that said, perhaps online readers can be a forgiving bunch as long as they understand why things slow down.

What do you think?

Thinking About Multi-Media

How to measure success on the Web? It sounds like some folks are getting ready to change the definition. Nielsen NetRatings says it will scrap ratings based on page views in favor of time spent on a site. This is a nod to the YouTubes of the world, where people spent a lot of time watching video but don't necessarily flip through as many Web pages.

However, the story says the change hurts Google some because it sends people to other pages and helps AOL, which gets credit for instant message use.