neighborhood
Your Mapper - Know Your Neighborhood
Three major empowering things would be improved in the world if this project happens.
One: Empowering local public citizens to learn about their neighborhood and take action when they identify a need. Citizens can view interesting things happening around their home and office on a map, and get notified when new things happen.
Two: Empowering local people to collect information that is currently locked up in government databases, and use our toolset to load that data and make it geographically and visually accessible to the public.
Three: Empowering local websites, blogs, news organizations, and companies by allowing them to embed searchable, interactive maps on their site as a service to their site audience.
Your Mapper is an online news organization that empowers people to obtain and load information in their home town, and make it available to their neighbors. We provide the tools that make this happen.
People who load the data (called "Mappers") only have to decide on what data they want, contact their local government agency for it, and assemble it into a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is ready we provide the tools to load it into Your Mapper, turn it into a public searchable map, and let the Mappers manage the data online and updates to the data.
People who look at the the online maps (called "Citizens") can type in any address in the United States, and see a list of all the maps available. They can subscribe to feeds and updates and downloads. Each map will have meta information provided by the Mappers, and Citizens can rate the quality of the data and map content, leave comments, flag inappropriate data, and save their favorite maps.
The community aspects and rating system ensures that the best maps bubble to the top of the site, and even allow Mappers in the same city to 'compete' to load the highest quality, most valuable information to for the Citizens.
Local websites and businesses (called "Community Sites") can choose which maps they might like to put on their own websites, choose the starting point, map size, and other options, and with a little cut & paste can have these maps on their site in no time.
The core idea behind Your Mapper is to create an easy way to make public information that has long been locked up in internal government databases, and present it to the world in a way that is visually appealing, easy to understand, and local.
Examples of these kinds of datasets would be crime, restaurant health reviews, traffic accidents, building permits, sex offender registries, property values, and pollution sources, or anything that can be linked to a physical address or location.
Because each government office stores each of theses items internally in very different formats, it would take too many resources to create a relationship with these local agencies and obtain data dumps on a regular basis. Your Mapper empowers concerned citizens to collect and share this information, since they know their town or city and have a good idea of what others living there would want to see made public.
I do not believe that altruism alone is enough to encourage local Mappers to load and maintain quality local data, so Your Mapper actually compensates the Mappers based on the amount of website advertising and embedded map revenue generated that is specifically related to their maps. This would empower the Mappers to become "local experts," much like Google's Knol project and Helium.com does.
Currently I run an online news service called Metro Mapper, which provides interactive maps of crime, restaurants, sex offender locations, and historic sites to the citizens of Louisville, Kentucky and the surrounding area. We have a set of internal tools that allow us to load data quickly and turn it into useful maps for the public.
Your Mapper would make these tools available for public use, and extend Metro Mapper nationally. An essential social community layer would be added on top of Metro Mapper to allow Mappers and their maps to be rated, flagged, and commented on.
Your Mapper would leverage our existing technology and reporting tools for Community Sites to embed the maps quickly and easily on their own site.
I consider Metro Mapper to be a proof of concept for a local municipality using some high-profile datasets, and the first step to creating the truly groundbreaking, national, and more robust service of Your Mapper.
Business Manager/Partner
A skilled business person who understands new web technologies and would be a good compliment to my existing skill sets and experience.
PHP Developers
PHP and MySQL programmers who are excited and knowledgable about internet programming, AJAX, user interface, and "Web 2.0" concepts. Security, database scalablity, and performance are all important issues to consider.
People Person
The forward facing part of the service, forging initial relationships with government agencies, courting local Mappers, working with Community Sites, and generating interest in local areas and the press.
Examples of some datasources for the Mappers to tap.
Crime Map: http://www.metromapper.org/index-crime.php
Bridge Saftety Ratings: http://www.metromapper.org/index-bridges.php
Local Restaurants (a Community Site): http://www.louisville.com/entertainment/dining.aspx
City with Easy-to-grab Datasources (Washington DC): http://data.octo.dc.gov/
Downloadable Crime Stats: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/pages/-4258-/
