Homicide blogging

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Permalink Reply by Tracy DeLatte on February 11, 2008 at 8:35pm

Google Earth and Google Maps do allow you to display information hosted on a server. If you had a database that could generate longitude, latitude and some facts in kml format then viewers could look at the homicide information using Google Earth (or Google Maps if the file isn't too large).

I have no database experience. All of my work with Google is done by manually writing the kml files. If you found a database programmer you could automate things and have reporters plug information into the database to have the database spit out the kml file.

Here's a Google Earth story I've done on road trips in Texas. (Google Maps or Google Earth)

I got the idea off a site for geocaching which gets updated regularly by a user-driven database. (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gmnearest.aspx?lat=32.826&lon=-9...)

If you built a page and embedded your map you'd have a start. You could use your map to link to blog entries or you could have your blog link to maps.

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Permalink Reply by meg martin on February 13, 2008 at 12:40am

Casey,

I've got very little database experience, but I'd imagine you'd want to do two things before you meet with your CAR expert, and they go hand in hand: 1.) pull together some data and 2.) decide how you might want to present it.

If you can pull together your local homicide data, I'd do it. And put it in an Excel spreadsheet, with all the fields of information that you'd like to collect -- even the information that you don't want public. That way, it will be in a format you can use later -- or at least something you can convert to a SQL database, if you need to.

You probably won't have all the data you want -- but if you can get it later, that's okay. I'd imagine it would be better to know exactly what you need by working with a small-ish sample than to gather a bunch of data you don't know how you'll want to use. (And it'll probably save time in the long run.)

The next step will probably bring you back to the first. As you look at the data you have, you'll probably start to think of ways that you can present it to tell the stories you find. What are the most compelling ways to get to those stories? And how can you provide access points to the big-picture story in different ways? When you start to answer those questions, you might find that you need more data -- or photographs, or audio, or video or other information... -- so you can add those fields to your Excel spreadsheet.

You might even want to roughly sketch out how you want folks to navigate this project. How will they enter it? What elements will lead to what other elements? Should there be a central piece that holds everything else together? What's the most effective way of updating and showing updates? How should people interact with the data? How can/should they be able to search it? (And on and on and on...)

That way, when you meet with your CAR genius, you'll have some solid information; you'll know what you have, what you need and what you want; and you'll be able to articulate what you'd like to do with all of that. That should be a really solid foundation for the two of you to build upon -- and to figure out how to put into place...

I hope that's helpful (And I apologize for the length -- it was kind of a mind-dump. But it sounds like a fascinating project!...)

Best of luck,
-- meg

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Permalink Reply by Casey Cora on March 10, 2008 at 12:48pm

Thanks for the suggestions. I've been busy getting all the data together. We've narrowed it down to a handful of categories and fields. I've been plugging the data (including latitude/longitude coordinates) into those. Pretty basic stuff so far.

Figuring out what the page(s) will look like is next on the to-do list. That brings its own host of challenges, but I'm looking forward to working with the Web team to find out what's possible.

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