The Memory Leak

Zillow has made an agreement with 282 newspapers to list real estate classifieds.

How might this work exactly? For example, real estate advertisers who currently buy classified listings in their local paper will be able to choose to have their listings and open house information shown on Zillow. Not only will this contribute to the number of for-sale listings buyers can browse on our site, but also has the potential to create an incredibly comprehensive online source of open house information, by locality. And this is just the beginning; we have lots of other content-sharing ideas that we’re eager to start digging into.

I wonder if better market knowledge will exacerbate the subprime meltdown by forming a tighter positive feedback loop. Once people know how many subprime loans are in a neighborhood, I bet they would avoid buying a house there. Lower demand means lower prices. Once market value falls below the loan amount, the assets of banks begin to suffer, causing writeoffs … like the one just taken by Bank of America.

I’ve always liked Zillow’s heatmaps. I just wish I could scale the colorramp of the heatmap to make it based on numbers that fall within my current mapextent.

Speaking of real estate, an Austin realtor has blogged about a subprime loan map published by the New York times. Just glancing at the map, I get the feelling rural areas can be blamed for the subprime lending crises. To be more balanced, a map showing dollar amount of subprime loans by county is needed. Maybe zillow will support that.

The internet has cut into classified ad revenue at local newspapers.

I think newspapers can still play a role, though. Most cities require permits to be purchased for garage sales. Some cities, like Bryan TX, display garage sale maps, but don’t do a very good job at it.

I think newspapers could mashup garage sale permit locations, and add value by allowing garage sale vendors to purchase additional advertising, upload photos, and list the items they have for sale. This would then support a slick map based web gui.

Additionally, SMS based LBS could allow cell phone users to get a list of nearby garage sales when out shopping.

I’m guessing the doppler weather sites get a lot of hits.

A typical use case is “when will the storm reach my house”?

Seems to me weather sites could provide a tool that allows the user to place two markers, on different timesteps of the image. The software could then extrapolate a timeline to allow the user to predict when the storm will hit.

Advertisers could be offered an option to purchase ad space that appears along the timeline.

The Washington Post has rolled out LoudonExtra.com in an attempt to get hyperlocal.

In their announcement, they note:

Key to the hyperlocal strategy of The Post and many other papers are searchable databases. Anecdotal evidence indicates that they attract considerable viewers. In December, Gannett Co.’s Asbury Park (N.J.) Press dumped three huge public-record databases onto its Web site: local property sales and ownership, and state employees’ salaries. By May, the paper had added searchable databases for local crime, school test scores, state deaths and public school employees.

But when I go to the Asbury Park Press, I don’t see those databases. I really think the key to hyperlocal journalism is map based views of these databases (maybe Asbury has them, but I can’t find them).

(BTW, The Washington post has been scooped by Fortius One, in finding some strange pattern to the DC Madam Scandal.)

Here in San Antonio, local government maintains foreclosures and crime, while the Texas Education Agency maintains boundaries as well as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated school report cards. However, the San Antonio Express-News’ website shows none of this information. With a good user interface, these datasets could quickly hyperlocalize a newspaper.

Token rant: who’s idea was it to have two Harris middle schools in San Antonio - one in NEISD, the other in San Antonio ISD? Whoever it was, they should be put in detention hall. I googled for Harris and went to the wrong one. My son missed his basketball game.

Not long ago Don Henley was accusing Clear Channel of homogenizing the airwaves.

Clear Channel now seems to be changing directions. They’ve been bought by a private equity firm. They’ve been selling a lot of their assets.

They announced recently they are rolling out HD radio in 48 large markets. With HD radio, it appears hyperlocalization will be possible … I wonder if it will ever extend beyond traffic reports. Clear Channel VP Jeff Littlejohn says:

“HD Radio is the future for broadcast data delivery, allowing us to not only deliver traffic data, but provide additional services a well.”

Clear Channel is localizing in other ways too, with a localized version of Facebook. For example Dallas has KissNation, while San Francisco has Wild Space. I can’t tell if differences between the sites are a result of different local culture, or simply different pre-ordained music formats.

The Express News quotes Clear Channel VP Evans on why they want to be local:

“Our feeling was that our listeners wanted to connect on a local level”

.

I dunno about all this … when I want to feel connected with a local community on the radio, I just listen to the News from Lake Wobegon.

Watched a good program on Frontline last night about what is happening in the news industry.  Particularly interesting is the part about “hyperlocalization” of newspapers.  An old saying goes: dog-bites-man is not news, but man-bites-dog is.  Not for hyperlocal news though.  If a dog in my neighborhood bites someone, I want to know about it - quickly.

A neighbor of mine down the street saw a suspicious looking truck driving slowly around.  She emailed a long list of neighbors speculating what it might be doing.  Replies and replies to replies evolved the speculation towards panic.  Remember the lady in the Simpsons always saying “think of the children!”

So what does this have to do with GIS programming?

Eventually I think there will be a grid of video cameras, much like what has happened in Britain.  As this proliferates there will be a need for GIS tools to interact with a map of icons representing video feed sites.  I can imagine a map based site whereby you could track each step of a car along a path in your neighborhood by clicking on near real time video feed icons on a map.

I expect neighborhood associations will some day require RFIDs in all cars before allowing entry.  With congestion pricing in UK and toll road RFID in US, the infrastructure is already here.  Also expect the car insurance industry to offer discounts for those agreeing when and where to drive, as verified by RFID and/or GPS tracking.   Tools that connect the dots of RFID readings on a map in a sensible manner will be a challenge.  Routing applications will be able to plan trips using conditions from real-time feeds or based on historic time of day stats.

Maybe as news feeds include GeoRSS tags I will be able to write tools to allow support subscription based on distance:  Murders within 10 miles, burglaries within 2 miles, vandalism within 1 mile.

While I do regret seeing good newspapers suffering, their cartography is usually less than impressive.  Cartographic presentations of news summaries could also be presented in many interesting ways.  Even of classified adds, like a colorramped raster of garage sales per square mile.