

EveryBlock source code released - blazamos
http://blog.everyblock.com/2009/jun/30/source/

======
brandnewlow
It's up on Github: <http://github.com/brosner/everyblock_code/tree/master>

~~~
adrianwaj
<http://code.google.com/p/ebcode/> too.

------
christofd
Truly amazing - giving away the source code!

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>

~~~
bretthoerner
> Truly amazing - giving away the source code!

They had to as part of the terms for the Knight Foundation Grant. Not that
it's any less amazing, or anything. Just saying.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
Knight Foundation, as in the people behind KITT?

~~~
SwellJoe
That was Knight Industries, silly (Knight Industries Two Thousand). Obviously,
Knight Foundation is the non-profit arm of the company.

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?

------
forsaken
Not everyday that you get to see the last 2 years of internal works of the
minds of 3 commiters on a major open source web framework. There's some crazy
and amazing code in there. Going to take a good while to extract all of the
awesome out, but it is bound to be one of the bigger contributions to open
source in quite some time.

------
ben
They really seem to have gone beyond the terms of their funding and tried to
extract the code into useful standalone pieces. Thanks for that, guys.

------
adrianwaj
I wonder beyond just city names, what extra data is needed to get an
implementation running. What map data is required, how about GPS data? What is
the geographic taxonomy... suburbs, zones? I'd like to get something running,
but want to have the code as comprehensively implemented as possible.

~~~
adrianwaj
I've sent some feedback to EB, but will post here especially with it being now
open-source:

\--

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.

\--

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

------
nopal
Unfortunately, the HTML and CSS that makes EveryBlock so useful is not
included in this release.

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.

~~~
igorgue
Here is a video of Adrian talking about Everyblock's internals:
<http://blip.tv/file/1957362>

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.

~~~
nopal
I've seen the video, and I am a programmer.

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.

------
mjr578
I wonder if they are going to release their iPhone app code as well.

------
kompiebutut
what a great news!

~~~
billydean
Mamma mia! That's-a some great-a news!

------
pibefision
Congrats! this is great!

