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Several weeks ago now, I wrote a story about the concern and confusion caused in some places by U.S. Census Bureau address canvassers passing through neighborhoods -- and lawns -- in search of dwellings to which census questionaires will be sent next year.

That prompted us to wonder who these workers are, and what it's like to do this front-lines census work. Just a few weeks ago, there some 900 of these workers in the field in Southwest Virginia. Come spring 2010, more than 12,000 census workers will be back in the field following up on questionaires that weren't returned.

The result is a story that ran in Monday's paper. In case you missed it, by all means, check it out.

Here's the top of it, just for a tease:

The answer came to Hugh Hughes at church, via postcard.

It came to Margaret Cunningham through the car radio.

Each needed work, and each found it at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Hughes, 45, a cabinetmaker and father of four, got laid off from his last job in Lynchburg in December. "I got a turkey and a pink slip," he said.

About the same time, Cunningham, 49, a career human resources professional, was finishing up a master's degree at Radford University. "I graduated into an economy that was just sliding down the hill, no brakes."

In the car one day, she heard an ad for job openings at the census. She called the bureau right there from her cellphone.

Hughes saw the same call for workers on a postcard that arrived at Rainbow Forest Baptist Church.

Within a few weeks, both were temporary federal government employees, trudging through neighborhoods helping to confirm the address lists to which census questionnaires will be mailed in 2010.

"It's been a godsend to get some money into the house," Cunningham said.

Such are the stories of the happy collision of the 23rd decennial census and the worst economic downturn in decades. It's a $14.7 billion operation that over two years will need thousands and thousands of workers.

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As a journalist and data fiend, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but after the earthquake rattled me out of bed at 4:08 a.m. Saturday, I had no idea where to confirm it, or report it.

But others around here did. Minutes after the 3.0 quake hit, people were online at the United States Geological Survey Earthquake Center Website answering the survey under the heading "Did you feel it?" By 5 a.m., a hundred people had made reports.

By Monday afternoon, the number was over 500.

I got curious about where those reports were coming from, and whether they reflected where the quake's epicenter was. Despite the skews in the data from things like available Internet access to make a report to simply knowing you can make a report, the frequency of reports is in fact highest near the epicenter.

I put it all together on an interactive map you can check out now in the DataSphere, using the data summary for the reports that's available on the USGS site. Lots of good data there, by the way, including the latitude and longitude of the quake's epicenter (which put it in a suburban back yard just off Garst Mill Road in Roanoke County) and the quake's depth beneath the earth's surface (about 8 miles).

I wish I'd had all this about 4:10 a.m. Saturday. Instead, like most of us who felt it, I was left to sit in my bed and wonder what the hell that was that just happened. My wife and I ran through the exact same list of possibilities that many others have recounted -- tree fell on the house, car hit the house, gas leak and explosion. We didn't figure out that it wasn't just our house that shook until my wife overheard someone on the street in front of our house asking the question people would be asking all day: "Did you feel it?"

No one was hurt and no property was damaged, so it all amounted to was a great communal experience predicated on answering that question.

Happily for a data nerd like me, hundreds of you chose to answer that question online, too.

Keep up with new posts and new data in the DataSphere on Twitter.

The Roanoke City Police Department’s latest crime fighting tool is a pdf file.

Starting this week, the department is posting every 24 hours an updated list of people wanted for felonies, misdemeanors, parole violations, and so on. The one online as I write this is 76 pages.

It’s not the most detailed document, just a list of names with a gender and age by them. There’s no indication of the charges against anyone on the list. (There is a separate "Most Wanted" page that includes photos and charges.)

The pdf isn’t the friendliest format, either. How many people will scroll through a document that long? But it’s a logical move by the police department to get these names out there. In a story on the new practice in today’s paper by Amanda Codispoti, the police say getting these names before the public has led to people on the list being turned in, and even turning themselves in. A partial list used to be published in the now defunct Crime Tracker published by WSLS (Channel 10).

The Roanoke police and the The Roanoke Times don’t always agree on what the public ought to know about crime in the city. As newspaper people, we naturally want to know everything we can know, while the police tend to see more value in withholding certain information.

But year or so, the department has come around to sharing this kind of data on a regular if limited basis – they’re one source of the data in our crime database -- and that’s to be applauded.

I first looked at the wanted list with an eye for finding a way to co-opt it and turn it into a database to post in the DataSphere.

I’ve learned in my year and a half in this job that you all really like any data with names in it. And why not? We’re all curious about people in our community, and some are just plain nosey.

In this case, though, I decided it against it. Managing daily updates from data converted from a pdf is more than I have time to do, for one thing.

Plus, the information available is just incomplete enough to make a newspaper like mine uneasy. For me to post a list of names that simply says these people are wanted by police, without saying what for, and without enough information to distinguish the Jim Johnson or Sally Williams on the list from the one you know, that just seems fraught with potential for giving readers wrong or inflated ideas about real people.

As a data editor, I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to stuff like this.

Not everyone does.

In journalism circles, there was a big dustup recently over a website developed by the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times called mugshots.tampabay.com, which aggregates jailhouse mug shots from three different police departments. It’s updated frequently, it’s searchable, and, in a voyeuristic kind of way, fascinating.

You start looking at these people, what they’re charged with, sort them by age, gender, even height and weight, and it’s like me eating a bag of chips. Suddenly I’m at the bottom and I’ve wasted 20 minutes and put on another half a pound.

But is it journalism? some journos asked. Is this what newspapers ought to be doing? Isn’t it just generating Web traffic by sharing the faces of people who committed crimes that would never rise to the level of being covered by the paper?

In sum, is the St. Pete Times doing this just because it can?

And yet, no one seems to be asking those questions about the police departments themselves doing the exact same thing. Mug shots are different than names, of course. You can be interested in a picture of a person you know nothing else about. You don’t need to recognize the face, like you would need to recognize a name, to find the information useful or interesting.

The names and mug shots are also different in another key respect. The wanted list is intended to bring wanted people to justice. The people in the mug shots are already charged and in custody, which raises the question of why the police themselves post them.  Maybe shaming the criminals is part of it. Police in other parts of the country have, in that interest, released names of drunk drivers or men patronizing prostitutes. And the Roanoke police post photos of people caught shoplifting.

But what do you think?

Am I too conservative about this stuff? Is there an argument for the police to be as careful as I’m being? Should they, for example, give more identifying information, like race, or height and weight, or a last known address? Or at least give the charges so you have a more precise idea of what to think of your friend or neighbor whose name is on the list?

You tell me.

Earlier this week, I wrote a story for the paper which I also posted here about people becoming concerned about address listers from the U.S. Census Bureau coming onto their property. The story was sparked by a news release from the Census Bureau intending to explain what the workers are doing and how to identify them.

It turns out this isn’t just a matter of people being a little freaked out. Some people are really freaked out.

The day the story published, I got an email from someone named Donna.

“Matt, I don't know about you but I am starting to get a little nervous with all this Big Brother activity. You know what they do in Irag [sic] with GPS coordinates, don't you?”

She referred me to a few links and a YouTube video. I also did my own Google search. I found long, long threads on assorted blogs about this. Donna is not alone in her worry and accusations.

Some of the concern – and concern is an understatement in some cases – is born of confusion about why Census workers are in the field in 2009 when the census isn’t until 2010. (The answer is these people are not Census takers. These workers are checking and confirming the addressed to which the actual Census forms will be mailed in 2010.)

Some seem creeped out by a stranger coming into their yard, collecting information into a computer, and leaving without saying a word. It’s as though they’d feel better if the worker had knocked on the door and said what they were doing. It seems secretive, and therefore suspicious.

But most of the angst centers on that hand-held computer they carry – a Global Positioning System (or GPS) unit which they use to mark the coordinates of dwellings and their address as they go along.

Bloggers and commenters out there suggest this is everything from just one more obnoxious invasion of privacy by the Federal government to a plot by the shadowy New World Order.

Others commenters have responded that the GPS mapping is just a more accurate means of documenting the address list to which the census forms will be mailed, and knowing precisely where they are. Location matters, because the census isn’t just about counting people, but counting where they are. The numbers of people and their locations are used to drive federal decisions from how much federal money flows into an area to where the lines for congressional districts are drawn.

The Census Bureau itself rarely opens its mouth on any subject without mentioning its promise of security and confidentiality of the data, and that it’s required by law.

But where do you stand on this? Do you trust that the process is as benign and secure as promised? Do you think the intentions are benign, but worry about how that information could be used by others whose intentions aren’t so benign? Or do you think it really is part of an ongoing effort by the federal government to know way to much about you?

Finally, have you had an encounter of any kind with a census address lister in your neighborhood or at your home? What happened? Did you trust them? Ignore them? Worry? Run them off your property? Call the police, or the U.S. Census Bureau?

I’d like to hear. Drop me a comment here. This is a national conversation, but I want to see what the same conversation sounds like in the community where I live.

Between January 1 and April 17, 585 properties were sold or transferred in the city of Roanoke. During the exact same period last year, 765 properties changed hands.

You can do your own real estate market research in the just-updated Roanoke City real estate database in the DataSphere. The database, which is the same data searchable in the Roanoke City GIS, has sales through mid-April.

Search by price range, date range, owner’s name, seller’s name, address, even neighborhood. Choose commercial properties, apartment buildings, or condominiums only. See not only sale prices, but assessments and other information like square footage and acreage.

Results are mapped for you, 100 parcels at a time.

Keep up with the DataBlog and data updates in the DataSphere on Twitter.

The decennial U.S. Census is a 2010 thing, but all the groundwork to make the Big Count happen is already underway. Workers are in the field, and their presence has apparently prompted some concerned calls from residents not sure about them, which further prompted a re-assuring news release from the U.S. Census Bureau, which in turn prompted me to write something for Tuesday's paper:

That weirdo staring at your house and holding something that looks like a camera might not be a weirdo after all.

It could be a representative of the U.S. Census. Not everyone can tell the difference, apparently, and people have been calling census offices to make sure.

The bureau put out a news release Monday to help the public recognize its address listers.

Some 3,000 census workers are in the field in Virginia right now building the address lists that will be the mailing list for the 2010 Census forms. That work will continue through midsummer.

They wear official identification badges and carry handheld computers that they use for data entry. They also might be carrying workbags with "U.S. Census Bureau" on them.

"Anyone who is worried by someone gazing at his house or knocking at her door should ask for identification," said William Hatcher, regional director in the Charlotte Regional Census Center, the hub for census operations in Virginia and four other states.

Feel free to ask for the census worker's name and the phone number of the local census office to call for verification, Hatcher said. "We want residents to feel safe so that census workers can safely do their jobs."

Katie Blixt Cody, spokeswoman for the Census Bureau, said that she wasn't aware of any specific incidents or confusion in Roanoke. "One thing that we have heard is that the handheld computers can look like cameras, because the lister has to hold it up to get the GPS map spot," she said.

"We really just want to alleviate concerns and let people know we are out there."

Follow the latest developments in the DataSphere on Twitter.

Here's the list of the five most popular DataSphere items for the week ending Monday, April 27:

1. Virginia freshwater trophy fish database

2. Map: Layoffs in Southwest Virginia

3. Roanoke Valley crime map and data search

4. Map: Scrap tire piles in the Roanoke region

5. Radford crime map and data search

Follow the latest in The DataSphere on Twitter.

Just a heads up that the data for the Roanoke Valley crime map just got it's weekly update. It now has offenses through April 20. Same goes for the separate database and map of Salem felonies.

To refresh your memory, the valley-wide data includes only serious violent and property crimes. The Salem-only data includes all felonies.

A repeated thanks to the Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem police departments for providing this data consistently and reliably each week so we can offer it to you on roanoke.com.

Finally, don't forget you can now follow the latest updates and additions to the DataSphere and the DataBlog on Twitter.

Every Wednesday, on page A2, The Roanoke Times publishes a list of the most visited DataSphere items from the previous week, be they databases, maps, graphics, or whatever.

I'm not above shameless self-promotion, so I figured I'd start posting the same top 5 list here in the blog. Just one more way of letting you know what's knew or updated or just buzz-heavy in a particular week.

So, here's this weeks list:

1 - Roanoke Valley homicides, 2006-2009
2 - Map: Layoffs in Southwest Virginia
3 - Roanoke Valley crime map and data search
4 - New Roanoke elementary school attendance zones map
5 - Map: Scrap tire piles in the Roanoke region

And don't forget you can now follow the latest additions and updates to the DataSphere and the DataBlog on Twitter.

Thanks for tuning in,

m

Ok, I've caved. I've been a facebook user for a while in my personal life, but never got into Twitter -- until now. And it's strictly for professional reasons. It's just one more way to get the word out to the data hungry in the world about what's new in the DataSphere.

So do me -- and yourself -- a favor and sign up to follow the DataSphere's latest at http://www.twitter.com/The_DataSphere.

I'll do my best to be regular with updates on my latest blog posts, data updates and new additions to the site.