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You might have noticed a new little critter gnawing at your web server:

Mozilla/5.0 compatible; DotBot/1.1; http://www.dotnetdotcom.org/crawler@dotnetdotcom.org)

The few Seattle based guys (pseudonym on their web site) promise an index of the web available to everybody. They intent to release as much information about the web’s structure (linking) and content as possible. For a fee to cover their costs, though.

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The main occupations for tabloid newspapers around the world are quite likely reports on gossip and reports on crime. So the tabloid reporters are experts on these matters. The german tabloid “Berliner Kurier” (Berlin’s courier) is demonstrating their skills with a brand new google maps mashup, the “blaulicht-kurier” (flashing blue light courier).

5000 crime incidents of the last months and years

The blaulicht-kurier is showing the location of crimes in Berlin and the region of Brandenburg. By default you will see descriptive icons over the crime locations of the last two weeks. If you click on an icon you get to see a crime report.

If you want to see older crimes or if you are looking for crimes at a particular location, you can do so by specifying the times or whereabouts. The database consists of about 5000 incidents from the last years. The latest entries are a few weeks in the past, though.

Icon legend

• Black icons: crime
• fist for violence
• hammer for vandalism
• mask for robbery
• thief with flashlight for theft
• Red icons: fire
• Blue icons: traffic
• Green icons: other
• Target icon: more details available when clicking on it

WebLinks

• Blaulicht-Kurier (the mashup)
• Berliner Kurier (one of two Berlin local major tabloid papers)
• Article from the Search Cowboys