Following the presentation that my father and I went to by J-Lab on their proposal for a new content hub in Philadelphia,there was a lot of talk of scrapeable databases and Philadelphia’s creative technology community. And since I can be loosely considered a citizen journalist and having a degree in computer science am definitely a technology professional, I’m throwing my hat, so to say, into Philly’s creative technology community, and starting a new site to explore ways to use Philly’s data to keep citizens informed and elected officials accountable.
The most obvious benefit to success in that field for Frankford would be to replicate what Ed Goppelt did with the now defunct Hallwatch. Frankford needs to be able to keep track of who is buying it’s houses, and knowing who’s buying multiple properties is important. And you currently can’t search by name on the BRT’s website, but you could under Hallwatch. Also, crime statistics are available on the web. I don’t see a way of telling if Frankford’s crime is getting better or worse. The data’s out there but not in a format where we can make easy comparisons to the past or compare to other regions. So down the line, maybe I’ll help make that happen again.
[link] http://phillycoder.com
