A couple of months back, datalibre.ca got hacked, Google delisted us, and our host shut us down.

I finally got around to doing a reinstall of wordpress, and replacing all the infected php file. Some twiddling left do do yet, but … we’re up and running.

Sorry for the glitch in service. But we’re back to our free data agitation now…

I am doing some research at the moment on the topic of Mapping the Risk of Homelessness in Canadian Cities.  To date I have not found many interesting or engaging maps in Canada albeit I did find some thematic static informative PDF maps.  I did however find some interesting maps in the US and one in Dublin.

Los Angeles Homelessness Hotspot Map

The purpose of the downtown Los Angeles Homeless Map is to visually tell the story of downtown’s homeless population. Before a problem can be solved it must be understood. These maps exist to convey the situation on the streets to City leaders, the Police Department and all those who are concerned with homelessness in our city.

There is an animated version of the Map.  Street count data were systematically collected by the LAPD on a bi-weekly basis.  The data were mapped by Cartifact. 

The system geocodes each address to produce coordinates for the address. The plotted points are then placed onto a map of downtown Los Angeles and styled to better convey the information.

San Francisco Chronicles Maps of Homeless Haunts

Layered over the city’s familiar streets and neighborhoods is a separate map seen from the vantage point of the homeless: Market Street is Main Street, the daytime hub; the Mission is a place to buy heroin; Golden Gate Park is the wild frontier – and the area around Pac Bell Park is a campground for people with pets.

This interactive Flash map is part of the San Francisco Chronicles Newspaper 5 part series on Homelessness entitled Shame of the City.

Dublin City Homeless Services Map

CentreCare map of self-referral services for homeless people over 18 in Dublin City.

Responses to October 2007 Draft Strategy

Arising from the 2006 National Summit, the Draft Canadian Digital Information Strategy (CDIS) was issued for review in 2007 from any interested person or organization. The review period is closed; however, the Draft Strategy remains available. All responses to the 2007 Draft Strategy are posted online.

Submissions received, including the name of the person or organization making the submission, have been posted in the official language in which they were submitted. Content of the submissions has been posted as received; however, minor reformatting may have occurred during HTML conversion. Personal address information has been removed.

Unfortunately, there were no folks from the free and open access movement (Except for Russel), there were no new media artists, there were no open source organizations, no media activists, there were no free data advocates, no podcasters, no organizations doing interesting work with media, no geomatics groups, no businesses, no volunteer organizations or civil sector organizations that submitted comments and feedback.

This lack of presensence is perhaps attributed to: short time to respond, exposure, who got sent the notice, the government speak of the document, the belief that it will not make a difference, cultural disconnect with the process and so on.

Too bad though!  As this document could have been greatly improved with inputs from those groups.  The consultation process was boring and lacked interactivity and so on, but alas it remains a consultation on an issue that may affect your/our works access into the future and your/our access to other works.

If someone has ideas on how to make participatory democracy sexier than this process then put it forward, otherwise this is what we wind up living with.

Very cool tourism and historical project – Passage to Freedom – Underground Railroad Locations and information.

Via: Spatial Sustain

This is a most interesting use of political geodemographics – The Copyright MPs.

Found this via Digital Copyright Canada – Terry McBride, NettwerkMusicGroup,

So “Cause” and “Data”, why is this so important to a brand and thus so important to our Artists? In today’s world many fans expect their musical Artists to support causes that reflect what they themselves relate to; view it as supporting a cause through osmosis via the Artist. Such causes can be common things such as fair trade or greening. Or in the case of an Artist like Radiohead, simply a musical style; or State Radio a social stance. In today’s world of instant news and search, the ability of a fan to find out loads of information on an Artist is quite easy, thus the chance to dislike an artist is also easy… Whether we like it or not what you stand for these days is as important as the music for music fans, especially Uber fans. So what causes do you think are key to attracting you to a Musical Artist?

So why is data valuable? Well as in the early days of BDS and Soundscan, data when viewed properly allows one to see patterns of interest that can be monetized in many different ways. Nettwerk in the early days was one of the first companies to correlate data and micro market records on a city-by-city basis. Many Artists such as Sarah and BNL owe their success to such an approach. So looking at Myspace what is valuable data on an Artist page? I, for one, would say that the number of friends is not valuable, yet the number of times a song has been played is. Especially in some cases the second of the four tracks listed. We have found that which ever song is listed first, can actually impact digital track sales. I also think that scanning fan comments can also be valuable as it crowd-sources a general feeling towards the Artist. What other points of Data do you think are key to gleam from something like Myspace? read more …

I spend lots of time looking at science, social science, qualitative data and quantitative data, but had not thought of data form the music scene. Of course there is data, of course it has a purpose, and of course it is critical to the industry!