This image shows crimes in Center City over the past 24 hours

This new crime map called Spotcrime uses video game style icons to show you where evil lurks. For instance, the fist icon shows you where a violent crime such as an assault has happened. When I clicked on the Philadelphia map on Friday afternoon it showed that a murder occurred within the last 24 hours near Temple University.

Be forewarned that when you first click on Philadelphia it shows you all the reported crimes from the past two-months. The map makes Philly look like a war zone. Things are not that bad.

I decided to alert you to this map, because it’s a major improvement on the Philadelphia Police crime map. In fact, SpotCrime gets its data for Philly from that awful map. The problem with the Philadelphia P.D. map is that it only allows you limited information. It requires you to put in an address, time period, and category of crime. So, it’s most useful if you were the perpetrator of the crime.  It prevents you from browsing to see the crime hot spots.

I’m sure there are other crime maps, but I liked how intuitive this was. If any of you, know of any similar maps please leave a comment.