Last Friday evening I received an email from Nathaniel Eliason of Hypothesis, a Winston-Salem-based web design firm, and in it he pointed me to winston-salem-crime.com which is a crime map that his firm designed for residents of Winston-Salem.  He must have also emailed Esbee because she posted it as well, and to be honest I guarantee you they got a lot more traffic from her than they will from me. By coincidence I stumbled across a Oakland crime map callled Oakland Crimespotting developed by Stamen Design. 

It’s interesting to see two firms using their expertise to provide a public service and at the same time show off their capabilities, and I do think this is a public service because it’s far easier to understand the crime data when you can see it presented graphically on a map.  Not sure why the city doesn’t offer this service themselves, but since they aren’t I’m glad someone’s doing it.