Geo-crime mashups
I think I've hit a personal first: a depressing mashup. Oakland Crimestopping is a Flash-based vizualization tool overlaying reported crime data in Oakland, CA, by type (from aggrevated assault to murder to burglary) and time on a Virtual Earth map.
Fortunately, I live nowhere near Oakland, but if I did I think I'd try to live on a pontoon on Lake Merritt. This is what July 27 to August 24 2007 looks like:
To fuel an ongoing level of anxiety, you can subscribe to email alerts or to customized RSS feeds based on specific queries. Example - track all the fun and games going on within 1/2 mile of High St.
This post by the one of the site's developers, Michal Migurski, mentions future areas to cover might include San Francisco and Berkeley. Check out the juicy implementation details.
Two more crime maps tools you can get depressed about are Portland's CrimeMapper (e.g. a generated report on crimes on Richmond, Portland in the last 12 months) and LA Times' Homicide map (536 murders in 2007 and counting).
(via information aesthetics)