Five things I learned this week (innaugural Windy City edition)

Convention Crowd, Chicago. 1912. Library of Congress via Flickr Commons

1. Kuler (via Liz Gerber) – Adobe-owned site for user-uploaded color combinations. Elegant color combinations can be wonderful tools for data visualization, graphic design, and more. In this case, the names provided for the combinations are more colorful than the combinations.
2. Metro Chicago Data – A handy repository of public datasets from various government agencies and other public sources.
3. Chicago Crime Map – Crime statistics with a friendly interface. Provided by the Chicago Tribune.
4. Bewtween the Bars – Brilliant prison blogging project initiated (as I understand it) by Charlie de Tar at the MIT Center for Civic Media. Best of all, you can help transcribe posts!
5. Bikenapped (via Mako) – A site mapping bicycle theft data around the Boston area. This should exist for every city.