Kudos to Ft. Wane (Indiana) native. I read an article in the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette yesterday about his website, familywatchdog.us. As it turns out, I have used this site in the past when I moved and was impressed at it’s operation. While not the greatest design, I was able to easily search my area for sexual offenders and get back a lot of interesting data.
It’s a great service for parents or anyone else who is interested in being aware of any shady individuals in their area. I ran a search on downtown Indianapolis and was greeted by a nice mapquest-looking map and found about 600-900 offenders, depending on the zoom level. The map shows offenders’ locations, places of work, and even color codes the points by offender type. Clicking on a bullet gives you the offender’s Picture, aliases, and other information. You can also sign up for alerts, and for the real worrywarts out there, you’ve got an upgraded $24/year account with more features.
Although the map looks and operates like an old mapquest map, There’s a powered by Google watermark in it. I’d really like to see this used with the modern Google maps API.
Technorati Tags: google_maps, familywatchdog, ft_wayne_journal_gazette, mapquest, sexual_offenders, indiana
March 31st, 2007 at 8:51 am
I know both the guys that started Family Watchdog and they are fantastic guys. They really are making a difference!
I don’t know that they want that publicized, though, since they’ve had threats made. I think they work hard not to put their names out on the web.
March 31st, 2007 at 10:42 am
Ahh, thanks. I have removed his name from the article! Every little bit helps.