July 28, 2008Warning: This entry is 100 percent shameless self-promotionData is a sleepy enough topic already, I'm the first to confess. And some of you may think of public radio as just as big a snooze-fest (though that's an opinion I don't share.) So, what a perfect union, then, for me to appear on WVTF's Evening Edition with Fred Echols (whom my daughter, Hadley, amusingly calls "Frechols" -- sorry, Fred) to talk about the DataSphere. Fred was kind enough to take an interest in the site and my curiously-titled job -- data delivery editor. He interviewed me for about 20 minutes and either found it worthwhile enough -- or at least handy when he was desperate to fill a time slot -- to air pretty much the entire interview on evening last week. A few cuts from the interview also ran as a short story the next day on Morning Edition. So, if you're curious about how this whole DataSphere thing works, check out the interview, and learn a little bit about the man behind the curtain. (Oh, and for the sake of full-disclosure, WVTF General Manager Glenn Gleixner is my brother-in-law, though that had no bearing on this interview that I'm aware of. Fred had no idea when he called, though he did express his sympathy.) July 11, 2008Is this thing on?Indeed it is. The ol' DataBlog's been quiet lately, which I regret, but I don't regret that it's mainy because I took some time off. (Forgive me for not having announced that so someone could burglarize my house and thereby land my own dwelling in the crime data.) I'm back, but, alas, when you're the only guy who does your job, things tend to pile up while you're gone, and all you get on your return is the chance to do all your regular work, plus what you would have been doing the week before. But I'm caught up, and ready to blast some new data at you. Fresh in the DataSphere, please find a database of economic development data for all of Virginia's 134 localities for 2001 through 2007. This is a list of announced jobs and investment tabulated by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. I say announced because, while companies often open and factories or expand them with promises of a certain number of jobs and spending, they don't always fully come through. Even when those promises are tied to hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funded incentives to do business in a certain place. That said, the data is still a measure of who is keeping their local economy vibrant growing, and who isn't doing so well. There's only so much new and expanding business to go around, so things can be competitive. Some localities just aren't players in the economic development game. Look at the data and you'll see that most years roughly half of Virginia's cities and counties have no new jobs or investment. Meanwhile, some just grow and grow -- think Fairfax, for example. Roanoke, my hometown, has had some success, but not enormous success. In that period, the city had 36 announcements for a total of 2,238 jobs and $182 million in investment. Calculated per capita for comparison to other localities, Roanoke averaged a rank of 45 in jobs for every 1,000 residents over the period, and 36th in investment per 1,000 people. Could be better, but could be a whole mess of worse. How did your locality do? March 26, 2008Data Gets Personal: Who lies in Springwood Burial Park?It's called a database, which could hardly sound more indifferent, or more inhuman. But go digging into the database of information on graves in the old and overgrown Springwood Burial Park in Roanoke, once Roanoke's premier, private all-black cemetary, and you'll find way more than hard, unfeeling statistics.  This is lives, stories, deep heartache and grief that speak to you from cells in a spreadsheet. Roberta P. Turner, died in 1938. Her stone reads, "TILL WE MEET AGAIN." Two years later, her daughter Ruth, 17, died, too. Her stone reads, with solemn determination, "I WILL FOLLOW." Levi Barber Jr. lived but 15 years, from August 26, 1923, to a week before Christmas in 1938. The pain his death inflicted is carved right into the stone in the words, "MOTHER'S DARLING." All credit for this fascinating piece of history goes to Robert Bird, the retired Roanoke municpal auditor who with a troop of Boy Scouts has made clearing the graveyard a mission, along with documenting the identities of more than 1,000 people who found their last resting place there between 1937 and 1979. Roanoke Times columnist Shanna Flowers wrote about the effort in a column in Tuesday's paper. So far, Bird has identified the occupants of 289 graves, and catalogued all of the information he's gathered in a meticulous spreadsheet he graciously shared with me so I could put it online for people to search. The first idea was that people who have relatives buried there might learn a little something, or just as good, share some information with Bird. But anybody might find themselves pulled into this history in columns and rows. March 24, 2008Put this in your spread sheet and sort it: I'm famous!So, I’m in the men’s locker room at the Downtown YMCA last week after my workout. In fact, I’m just out of the shower, a towel around me, and just about all of the physical issues I go to the gym to correct on full display. And a guy says to me, “You write for the paper, right?” Not so unusual. I see the guy in there from time to time, though I don’t know his name, and I talk newspaper biz out loud. It's not a big secret where I work. But that’s not what’s triggered this. It’s my face. He just recognized me. He wasn’t quite sure where – was it in the newspaper, or on the web? – but he saw my face and put it all together. Well, this was really satisfying. I follow my blog traffic and traffic on the site. I know how many people check out my work. But this was different than seeing some numbers. This was something altogether separate from data. This was something that eases up to being, for lack of a term that’s not such an overstatement, fame. Continue reading "Put this in your spread sheet and sort it: I'm famous!" » February 7, 2008What's yer poison, Virginia?The answer to that one is Jack Daniels. As in Old No. 7. As in Tennessee whiskey. Virginians spent over $21 million on Jack Black last year, making it the favorite distilled spirit in the Commonwealth in terms of dollars in sales. You can see the top 50 for 2007 in a new bubble graph I just posted. (I know this is only two, but I'm already in danger of becoming obsessed with these bubble graphs.) Turns out we have some pretty refined taste in spirits. Grey Goose vodka. Crown Royal. Jim Beam. But not everything we bought in quantity goes down as smooth. Well up on the list is Aristocrat brand vodka, which, well, doesn't exactly live up to the image suggested by its name. We bought more bottles of Aristocrat than any other liquor. As a former bartender, my guess is that's because it's the house vodka in all manner of bars from Richlands to Reston. The one that surprised me is Jagermeister at number 6 on the list. This is a dirty-motor-oil dark liqueur that tastes like black licorice soup and brings on a kind of intoxication that feels more like a narcotic than a drink. (Or so I've been told.) Popular with the regular bar set, which is to say younger folks. Generally swilled as a shooter, and lately mixed with Red Bull energy drink. The kind of thing everybody buys you on your 21st birthday, as if you weren't already on your way to embarrassing behavior without the help. Most of these top shelf liquors, you buy because they are smoother and more drinkable. Jagermeister, that stuff ain't about the taste. It's about the punch. January 10, 2008More professional solicitors, same old patternAfter Roanoke Times reporter Amanda Codispoti showed me a database a few months ago of contracts between professional solicitors and public safety-related charities that revealed the huge portion of funds the solicitors keep, I got curious. Is it only rescue squads and volunteer fire departments who are cutting these kinds of deals? It's not. We now have available in the DataSphere a database of over 4,000 contracts between solicitors and charities of all kinds and sizes, running from January 2000 to June 2007, and the pattern is the same. These contracts raised nearly $2.1 billion, according to the data from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which keeps the tallies. The solicitors kept about $1 billion of it. It didn't matter much if the charity was a local Civitan Club or UNICEF. January 8, 2008Is this thing on?Thought you might be wondering. But I haven't gone away. Just took some time off for the holidays, but I'm back and working on more fresh data for you. Here's what's going on and coming up: -- I've updated our Virginia Tech and UVa football recruiting database and the related map. -- Within a day or two I'll have an expanded database of contracts between professional solicitors and charities. This one includes all kinds of charities -- everything from the ACLU and the American Cancer Society to the World Wildlife Fund. It covers fundraising campaigns back to 2000. -- We're gettting closer to offering searchable real estate transfers for Roanoke, as well as mapped crime data. -- And there's other stuff in the works, too: mapped sightings of the elusive cougar, two years worth of Roanoke parking violation data, and more. So, keep checking back for what's fresh in the DataSphere. And Happy New Year. 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 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 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 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. October 29, 2007Could be fame, could be notoriety.The Roanoke Times, the DataSphere and yours truly got a little media attention Monday from an important website in journalism circles, Poynter Online. Columnist Ken Sands posted a piece called "What Does a 'Data Delivery Editor' Do?". He gives some background on the creation of the DataSphere, and a little praise, too: "Pretty innovative stuff for a newspaper. That's what can happen when you create staff positions such as 'data delivery editor.'" Don't hold your breath, though, for the interactive mash-up of black bear sightings... October 23, 2007Greetings from the DataSphereWhat is this thing, this DataSphere? Think of it as a toolbox, a library, a warehouse full of data. Yeah, I know. Data. Makes you want to have a nap. But this is no online statistics class. This is stuff you can use: dozens of search-for-yourself databases on topics from schools, crime and politics to Virginia Tech football and trophy freshwater fish. Its news you find yourself and filter yourself, all set up for you to search with a click or two. The Roanoke Times isn’t the first to offer a site like this. As the cliché goes: Talent imitates, genius steals. You can see some fine efforts – ones that inspired us – at websites for papers like the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Indianapolis Star, the Greenville (S.C.) News, and the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press. We are, however, the first paper in Virginia to offer a site like this. We feel like we’ve got a good beginning with databases we’ve collected ourselves, and links to searchable data on both government and commercial sites elsewhere on the web. I’ll post a fact of the week, plus links to stories by our staff and others that relate to data. I’ve also got links to documents in the news, like the Michael Vick indictment and the Virginia Tech Review Panel report. We’ll get better as we go. There’s plenty more data to come, like real estate transfers and property assessments and crime statistics. And then there’s this blog, where you can offer your thoughts on what you found, or wish you’d found. I’ll be posting here often, pointing out new data, showing off the newsy nuggets and just plain oddities I find, and gathering your thoughts. So, consider this an invitation to help make this site as useful as it can be. Well, what do you think so far? |
.....Advertisement.....
|
...Advertisement...
...Advertisement...
