EveryBlock source code released
blog.everyblock.com
blog.everyblock.com
This will encourage many others, using this system, to start local micro-news channels in their own communities. Instead of the local newspaper/TV channel owning the regional media turf, this could enable discussion culture in a more democratic way. The question is... aside from hackers: who is ready for this? I remember the cartoon from Gaping Void - "the future belongs to the geeks, nobody else wants it" - http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003301.html
They had to as part of the terms for the Knight Foundation Grant. Not that it's any less amazing, or anything. Just saying.
Seriously, though, I assumed it's a non-profit associated with Knight Ridder, who publish newspapers and such. Which I just noticed is only one letter off of Knight Rider. Coincidence?
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There should be a page of installations for various countries it has been setup. This may prevent duplicated efforts for various countries, and better promote existing implementations.
Also, non-programmers would be interested ie potential webmasters or administrators. Even a hosted version could be a good business model. As such, check out http://nationbuilder.com when it's released stemming from http://whitehouse2.org
And multi-language? What if I'd like to do something for a single country in two language versions.
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Also, only Business Reviews, Lost and Found, and Real Estate listings, when clicked bring up actual data. Otherwise, the user sees an information measurement screen before reaching any data. This intermediary step detracts from the site - why can't there be an aggregation of all information from that category in an added feed column that's also available in RSS. This would be especially useful for cities just beginning and when there's not a lot of data, or, when all subcategories are of interest to a user. For example, an rss feed of all police calls for an entire city would be of interest to reporters.
Even Craigslist has an aggregation, per city > per information top-category: http://telaviv.craigslist.org/jjj/ .. with rss
I'm not sure why the Knight Foundation didn't insist that these components be part of the release, unless the designers were paid out of a separate budget.
I understand that releasing these components would have led to clones of the site, but I think, to a certain extent, that is one of the goals of the project.
To me, it would have been nice to have the design to use as a starting point.
It also seems that it's part of the source code of the site.
When reddit went open source, they included their CSS, images, HTML, etc. I think this makes it easier to get going. Reddit and EveryBlock are going to continue to innovate enough to differentiate themselves from the clones.
I also hope they've included the mapping code/JavaScript. I haven't had a chance to look through the source to see if this is the case.
If you're a programmer (which I think you're not), after watching this video you'll know that the design is not the important thing about EB.
I understand the power of EB comes from the code that allows it to aggregate, sift and categorize data.
My point is that what makes that data useful is the interface with which people interact with the data.
Look at the interface differences between day one and day 365 - http://blog.everyblock.com/2009/jan/23/oneyear/. UI/UX design is not easy, and it's a challenge for most developers.