Originally Posted by JillyS

It would be great to include a "short cut" list of useful phone numbers for city services (reporting graffitti, getting a street light repaired, etc). For example, it took me four calls to get the right person to tell me that the dumpster that showed up on my street for a month was in fact permitted. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could go on the SOSNA website and get the correct number right away? I'm happy to help compile the list if it's something people are interested in.

Maybe links to websites/phone numbers of neighborhood businesses would be nice to add too.

Originally Posted by dr_gingivitis

Thanks, I can't take much credit, we had a committee of four board members work really hard to get this done, I'll pass your regards on to them.

The next step is to fill in a few blanks, but also find out how people think the site can be best used, or specifically what will bring you back to it. We're going to work on getting a lot of the useful links and forms all on there in one place, we're putting the monthly crime reports up there under the safety committee, and obviously we'll be using it to share community related notices.

What else would you find useful from a community website?

Originally Posted by Coco

No link to the Community Calender at www.southwestcc.info

Originally Posted by Lolly

Those are both great ideas, Jilly. In fact for a start I think we can use a list of City contact numbers from a sample brochure from Ready, Willing, and Able that I picked up at the General Meeting the other night.

And it would definitely be cool to have a "directory" of sorts to all the local business phone numbers, email & web addresses we can gather. (With perhaps larger "ads" for those who want to pay for more than just a basic/standard listing. Could be a great way to raise funds for various neighborhood improvement initiatives.)

Originally Posted by adrianh

Hi all,

I run a site called EveryBlock.com that publishes a "newspaper for your block." I'm posting here to PhillyBlog because yesterday we just launched a version in Philadelphia!

http://philly.everyblock.com/

We compile public records (crime reports to the block level, restaurant inspections, etc.), news articles and all sorts of other local information and make it browsable at the block level, updated daily. You can enter any Philly address and see recent crimes, newspaper articles that mentioned places in your neighborhood, government meeting agendas that reference nearby locations, and anything else we can find that's locally relevant to you. We launched with a dozen-or-so types of local information yesterday but will be adding more soon.

One thing you might find especially interesting is the crime section -- http://philly.everyblock.com/crime/ -- and particularly the "Custom filter" link there, which lets you break down crime stats in various ways. (Since 2005 I've run a site called chicagocrime.org that does similar stuff for Chicago.)

Anyway, if this sounds interesting, please click around to see whether you find it useful. Let me know if you have any ideas on how to make the site better.

Adrian