or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk



Fun Big Brother-ish Tools

   September 11th, 2007

Here's two online tools I recently heard about, that provide information on people or places.

Information on People:
FundRace 2008: Type in a zip code (01824 [Chelmsford, MA]) or name (Gates, William), and the website lists 2008 political campaign donations, who they gave to, and how much.

Information on Places:
Zipskinny: Type in a zip code, and the website gives all kinds of demographic information (based on the 2000 census data). Also, you can type in up to 20 zip codes to compare locations in various categories (similar to one of my favorite city comparison websites, Sperling's Best Places), or see the top 100 zip codes for different categories (oldest, youngest, highest income, etc).

And who said public documents couldn't be fun?

demographic tools, demographics, fundrace 2008, huffington post, sperling's best places, zipskinny




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2 Responses to “Fun Big Brother-ish Tools”

  1. Chris Skaryd Says:

    I find it (as a programmer) extraordinarily funny that they have a leading zero problem in their display for your chosen zip code.

  2. Brian Herzog Says:

    Speaking of this, I was helping a patron a few weeks ago try to sign up for a dating website. Even though we typed in “01824” we kept getting an error saying “zip code must be five digits.” Obviously, neither of these companies are on the East Coast.