Adrian Holovaty's EveryBlock revolutionized the way hyperlocal news online worked. The aggregator of local data, produced for geographic regions as small as a city block, really astounded people when it arrived only a couple of years ago.
Now his code has been released as part of his original deal with the Knight Foundation and it's bound to offer opportunities galore to newsrooms with programming and developing savvy.
The key will be in determining how best to use aspects of the EveryBlock matrix. Simply regenerating EveryBlock won't work because markets each produce data differently and need their own treatment.
But it's a great step forward for the organizations that choose to roll up their sleeves --- indeed, it does a lot of the hard work for them. The overall impact could be significant for location-based journalsm.
