www.roanoke.com

And on Williamson Road and Salem Avenue and Windsor Avenue, and about 100 other places.

Roanoke registered 110 graffiti complaints in 2007 and up to January 5 2008. See where they happened on the map just posted in the DataSphere.

I was noodling around learning how to flow large numbers of locations and information onto a Google map and needed some test fodder. My boss, Senior Editor for New Channels Dwayne Yancey, suggested the graffiti complaints, for which you can find details in the city's online permit center.

It was a good test case, so I decided to go ahead and put it out there for you all to peruse.

And within a day or two, look for a similar maps with the most recent month's worth of crime data for Roanoke and Roanoke County.

After 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.

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.