Creative coders give
graphic spin to data

All these sites are operating without Google's permission, clearly violating the company's user agreement. But none charges any fees, and Mountain View-based Google, which declined to comment through a spokesman, has made no effort to shut them down.

"Why would they?" asks Kenneth Tan, who works for a Chicago-based media research firm and is relying on Housingmaps.com to find a new place in New York. "This is fantastic publicity for the company."

Before Housingmaps.com launched in March, Tan spent up to 30 minutes a day reading through Craigslist postings in his price range, trying to figure out if any were located where he wants to live.

On Housingmaps.com, the listings he wants are represented on a single map, marked by either a red or yellow pushpin symbol. Yellow come with apartment photographs; red have none. A click on a yellow pin sends Tan directly into the Craigslist posting on the street where he hopes to live.

"It takes two seconds to glance at the map to see if there is anything for me that day," Tan said.

Computer animation engineer Paul Rademacher developed Housingmaps.com shortly after Google Maps launched in February, matching it with all the U.S. apartment listings on Craigslist. He says he was intrigued by Google's technology and began tinkering with it after a long apartment search.

James Brown, founder of Floridasexualpredator.com, charted the home addresses of every registered sex offender in Florida's Megan's Law database, then wrote a software program that automatically converts addresses to the correct latitude and longitude.

Holovaty requested data from Chicago Police but never heard back — so he wrote a program that automatically retrieves crime location data each time the department's Web site is updated.

Why go to this much trouble?

The site's creators said it was for the love of discovery and a chance to help their communities.

Brown came up with the idea for his site after watching television reports about a kidnapped girl with his father, a former policeman in Ocala, Fla. Rademacher says he wanted to help others avoid painstaking and time-consuming searches for new apartments.

"I figured out a way to do it and I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't share it with everybody," said Rademacher, who lives in Santa Clara.

None said they did it for the money. But their efforts are certainly getting attention.

Several companies have approached Rademacher about setting up other sites that marry data to Google maps. And San Francisco is among cities interested in whether Holovaty can develop crime-mapping sites for them.

"I would be happy to help them set it up," Holovaty said. "The world is a better place whenever you provide more information."

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