Wednesday, September 24. 2008

UCrime Mashup Pinpoints Campus Crime...Just Slightly Off on Maps

Back in August, UCrime.com launched a website/mashup showing crimes committed at selected colleges and universities around the U.S. The company shares data with SpotCrime.com, another online crime alert mashup. I found the site extremely useful and will benefit students interested in understanding the types and locations of criminal activity on campus.

The maps are Google mashups which is fine. As usual, I selected campuses with which I was familiar and the first one I went to was my alma mater, Rutgers University in lovely New Brunswick, NJ. However, the map was centered on Matawan, NJ, a lovely place in its own right, but definitely not New Brunswick. So, it took some repositioning to get to the RU campus. So, guys at UCrime.com, if you are reading this...please take note that you should center the map on College Ave. New Brunswick.

Posted by Joe Francica at 08:57 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) |

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we'll get the center changed today.

thanks for pointing it out.

Colin

#1 colin (Link) on 2008-09-24 09:56 (Reply)

In looking at Ohio State University, I note that they did find the campus. The crime events shown are rather strange in that the great majority of those shown are not on campus and a couple are miles away. No information is presented on the source of the event data nor what problems were encountered in the geocoding of the crime events.

Campus locations are often "address free" as can be seen in an incident at Ohio State some years ago when a national pizza chain refused an order from the press box at the stadium the evening before a big game because no address could be provided.

#2 Duane Marble on 2008-09-24 13:38 (Reply)

Boston colleges didn't find the service's geography on target either.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1121949

#3 Adena Schutzberg (Link) on 2008-09-28 19:21 (Reply)

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