Where should I live - a clever mashup

I am on the search for where to live in London and I wanted to get a rough idea which areas in London are more crime ridden than the next! I typed into Google, “crime maps London” and I came across this little beauty which was exactly what I was after.

A clever mashup example, which uses Yahoo maps, data from Upmystreet.com and Jibble.org. Load up “Where should I live” which shows you a map of London. Choose what you’re interested in seeing from the right hand menu and watch a colour overlay load over the map, illustrating high and low densities of what you chose!

I thought it was pretty fast considering how much information it had to pull in. My only comment here would be to add a loading message somewhere. Because I did not have my browser open fully and I was not sure if anything was happening at first, and I missed the appearance of the High and Low legend bar at the bottom of the page.

I really do hope you guys continue the project. I can see much more being done with this; it’s very useful.

Some things to consider:

1. Adding a location search box for quickly finding places in London. I would have liked to type “Highgate” and then the map would zoom to this area and I can then choose what I want to see in this area, crime or population etc.
2. A clear/toggle button. Once an overlay is on, I can’t turn it off without reloading the page.
3. More detailed crime list, Types of crimes with the date of which year the figures are coming from. Maybe even choose from the past 3 years to see how/if the rate has changed.
4. Put a loading bar or alert somewhere and don’t rely on the appearance of the bar at the bottom as not everyone will see it.

Has anyone else seen anything like this for the London area? This has already been a big help for me, as looking through a chart of numbers and trying to figure out which place is better or worse… well it’s no fun.

Thanks for this neat innovation.