November 30, 2007You like maps. Really. You do.The DataSphere site has been up for about a month and a week so far, and already some patterns for its use are emerging. In the not-so-surprising category, our database of Virginia Tech football under Coach Frank Beamer leads all other sites within the DataSphere, and by a lot. But in the last three weeks, we've begun posting interactive Google-based maps, and they have instantly proved to be a very popular way to "experience" data. There's our homicides map, our map of holiday lights displays, and most recently our map of black bear sightings, which in one day got so many hits it vaulted to third place all time on the list of most popular DataSphere items. Not that I can grant all wishes -- know-how and resources are always an issue, especially for a start-up kind of enterprise like the DataSphere -- but I do wonder: What else would you like to see mapped? November 28, 2007Bears in unlikely placesYou've seen the video, the photographs: bear runs through downtown street, bear wanders into hospital, bear eats out of backyard birdfeeder. It's can't miss stuff for newspapers and TV news. We're suckers for these things. And here we go again. Now in the DataSphere, a map of sightings of black bears in interesting places around the Roanoke and New River valleys, with pictures and video in some instances. There aren't a lot there yet, and that's where you come in, gentle reader. Email me with your sightings, friends. Send the date, time, location and a description of the bear and what it did, and don't forget the pics and vids if you got 'em. I'll stick 'em on the map and we'll all have more fun than a bear dosed up on ketamine. As an aside, here's how this map "happened." A while back, the DataSphere was featured in a story on a prominent online journalism trade magazine site, called Poynter Online. Interviewing our editor, Carole Tarrant, the author asked what was next in the DataSphere. Carole replied, as a joke, that we'd be mapping sightings of black bears. The author took her seriously, and told the world that yours truly would be mapping black bear sightings. Right away, we started seeing hits on the site from people doing Google searches for black bear sightings in Roanoke. Well, we can't let the people down, now can we? November 27, 2007More on GISFew governments in our area don't have a GIS (geographic information system) mapping function on their website these days. But Roanoke Times business writer Jeff Sturgeon just turned me onto a local GIS site that's offers some stuff others don't. The Western Virginia Water Authority has a GIS that will, among other things, show you where buried utility pipes are and the topography of the land. Just another friendly data offering from the DataSphere. November 26, 2007Crime data updatesWhile we still have no comprehensive crime data in the DataSphere, I've been cobbling together what I can from available sources. In the public safety section, We've posted links to crime data online from Roanoke County, Vinton, Montgomery County, Blacksburg and Botetourt County. The presentation and quality varies. Vinton's data is mapped, while Blacksburg's is searchable. The rest are static offerings you have to scroll through, though they go back as much as two or three years or more. Noteworthy for its absence is Roanoke City. The Roanoke Police Department offered offense reports on its crime analysis page until last week. The department's education information specialist, Aisha Johnson, said she took the data tables down while she revises the page. She could be done by the end of this week, she said. More on that when it's available. Meanwhile, I've updated our homicide map to include homicides in the counties and cities surrounding Roanoke over the last two years. Altogether, 24 homicides are mapped. November 13, 2007Where Roanokers are dying.Roanoke has seen 15 homicides since Jan. 1, 2006. Nine victims died by gunshot, four by stabbing, and two by blunt force trauma. Well over half the victims were black, three were women, and the victims have an average age of 36.9. In four cases, no arrests have been made. Details for each victim and case are available in our interactive homicide map in the DataSphere. It’s an old story, but there it is, high-tech and clickable. We don’t have many violent killings in Roanoke compared to some places, but the patterns are the same as about any urban center. Murder victims are most likely to be young, black and male. Guns continue to be the preferred weapon. Eventually we’ll map Roanoke’s murders back 10 or 15 years. What do you reckon that map will look like? November 12, 2007Happy National GIS Day!Yeah, I know. Pretty geeky. I didn't know there was such a thing as National GIS Day until a news release from Roanoke City landed in my in box. It's part of the National Geographic Society's Geography Awareness Week to promote geographic literacy. The city and the Western Virginia Water Authority are offering a GIS seminar with demonstrations today from 10 a.m. until noon today in the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building. (Sorry for the late notice.) What's GIS? It stands for geographic information system. Basically, it's a way to access information using a map as the basis for it. What it means for you is, lots of good stuff you need to know about your locality (or one you might move to) is available now on almost every local government website. At least around here. You can see real estate sales info, tax assessments, where schools are, where fire hydrants are, where the flood plain is, and on and on and on. So, in honor of National GIS Day, I'm posting links to area government GIS sites in the real estate section of the DataSphere. You'll see some are better than others. Roanoke's has the most to offer. Roanoke County's offers surprisingly little by comparison, but it's still there for you. Others fall in between. So, dive in, click around the map and see what GIS can do for you. November 8, 2007How much space do you need?Parking space, that is. I just posted an interactive map of off-street parking lots in downtown Roanoke in the DataSphere. There are 30 of these suckers with, get this, over 6,500 spaces available. Four thousand are in city-owned lots and garages alone. Of course, you have to pay, but for all the people who seem to think parking is too much of a hassle to come downtown, lack of a place to leave your jalopy ain't the issue. What is it about Roanokers that so many of us must park on the street directly in front of where we're headed, and do it for free, or we'd just rather not go? What gives? Are we just not cosmopolitan enough? And if we're too provincial to want to pay to park, will we be sophistocated enough to bother with the new art museum? November 7, 2007Roanoke's billions...Yes, I said billions.I'm a work-a-day guy, really. Blue-collar upbringing, no real wealth in the family. So, I confess a certain degree of ignorance about large amounts of money. Still, this number blew my mind. $5,413,786,000 That's the amount in deposits in banks in the Roanoke metropolitan statistical area for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. That's right, there are three commas in that number. Billions. The number comes from a database of bank market share and deposits just posted in the DataSphere. The data also covers the Blacksburg-Christiansburg MSA, where there were $2,214,750,000 deposits in the same period. This is a small but interesting data set. You can see just how big each bank is in its market, and outside of it. You can see which monster bank holds a quarter or more of the deposits in your MSA. And you can see all the billions of bucks floating around here. Not much of it's mine, I promise, but when you add it all up, there seems to be plenty for each of us. If only we could distribute it a little more, um, evenly? November 6, 2007Who says data isn't funny?Comedian Dave "Gruber" Allen knows a good database when he sees one. Allen opened the Nickel Creek show at Roanoke's Jefferson Center last night with his stand-up act. At one point, my fellow Roanoke Times staffer Christina Rogers reports, he mentioned that Tuesday is election day, and gave a shout out to our voting database. This teriffic little tool allows you to enter your address to find out where your polling place is, and also tells you exactly what's on the ballot for you. It was put together by RT web producer Meg Martin and Luda Nichols and Dana Rose Bailey in our online IT department. Very handy stuff. And apparently fully-appreciated by Allen. Yeah, but who's he? From Tad Dickens' review of the show in Tuesday's Roanoke Times: He played guidance counselor Jeff Rosso on the lamented "Freaks and Geeks," and is the Naked Trucker on "The Naked Trucker and T-Bones" show. Here, he played another character: Todd Carlin, who will soon be seen in the movie "Largo," according to imdb.com. That movie, inspired by a favorite Nickel Creek haunt, the Los Angeles dinner, music and comedy club Largo, will also feature the band. November 5, 2007Are you helping as much as you think?It's June 2004, your phone rings, and it's someone soliciting donations on behalf of the Virginia Police Chiefs Foundation. It's a reputable group that supports law enforcement and the community across the state with education, training and scholarships. You want to help, so you send in a check. That particular campaign, which ran for a year, raised $1,106,907, according to data from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. But $981,907 of it -- about 89 percent -- never made it beyond the company whose workers made that phone call to you. That's right, 11 percent of your large-hearted effort to help actually went to the people you intended it for. The situation is common. Research by Roanoke Times reporter Amanda Codispoti found that from 2004 through 2006, professional solicitors raised about $23 million on behalf of Virginia-based public safety charities like the Fraternal Order of Police and local volunteer fire departments. The solicitors kept $17 million of it. See for yourself what happened in the campaign you contributed to in the database behind Amanda's story. Of course, this is business. The solicitors aren't charities themselves. And as Amanda's story points out, the solicitors do have overhead. Fundraising isn't cheap, they say. If it was, the organizations would just do it themselves But did you know it worked this way? And how does that leave you feeling? November 2, 2007Dig in, rock out, or just take a hike.Some databases have a shelf-life. Others, well, that's stuff you can keep around forever and come back to again and again. And sometimes you forget you even have it. Turns out there are a few searchable databases -- mainly fun stuff -- that have been laying 'round roanoke.com for years, gathering cyber-dust to varying degrees. But they're still great information, and we've added them to the DataSphere for your amusement. One is a terrific searchable list of hikes in the region put together over the years by our weather guru, Kevin Myatt. Another is a collection of recipes from Larry Bly and the late Laban Johnson (who, coincidentally, was my newspaper advisor at Patrick Henry High School back in the day.) And finally, we've added our videos of area bands -- the MusicCast -- to our entertainment listings. So, by all means, dig in, rock out, or just take a hike. |
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