For those of you tracking the progress that developers are making with the Google map API, you'll be hard pressed to find a better implementation than that of ChicagoCrime.org. The clever developer of this site has incorporated the Google Map API along with some publicly available crime data from the City of Chicago. Visitors can browse crimes by type, street, date, police district, ZIP code, Ward, or specific location. Viewing a them like Arson will reveal details of a specific occurrence sorted by date/time accompanied by an address and a direct hyperlink to a crime map served via the Google map API.
According to the site, they incorporate crime data obtained from the CPD's Citizen ICAM Web site, which is a publicly available database of reported crime. See http://12.17.79.6/. (See disclaimer below)
When viewing the resulting map revealed by a search users can toggle the display to show the map (a typical vanilla Google map), Satellite (imagery from Google Keyhole), or a hybrid (a combination of the two previous options).
For developers creating their own apps, the site also provides news which describes all the latest progress and developments.
About the developer... as referenced in a lead from http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/, the developer of ChicagoCrimeMaps, Adrian Holovaty, gained so much notoriety from his efforts that the Washington Post not only hired him but they created a new position just to accommodate him. It seems the newspaper was so impressed that Holvaty will soon be taking up a role with the "Post" as "editor, editorial innovations". He'll be charged with coming up with new ideas for site features, implementing things quickly, and working on special projects. (source: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=86489)
Note to users: Citizen ICAM (the data source) only gives access to 90 days' worth of crime, and there is a week delay before crime reports are available online. Because chicagocrime.org gets its data from Citizen ICAM, they have the same limitations.
For more information about the Google Map API See:
For those of you tracking the progress that developers are making with the Google map API, you'll be hard pressed to find a better implementation than that of ChicagoCrime.org. The clever developer of this site has incorporated the Google Map API along with some publicly available crime data from the City of Chicago. Visitors can browse crimes by type, street, date, police district, ZIP code, Ward, or specific location. Viewing a them like Arson will reveal details of a specific occurrence sorted by date/time accompanied by an address and a direct hyperlink to a crime map served via the Google map API.
