By now you may have read that EveryBlock, a Knight Foundation-funded project, has released its source code to the public (here's a browsable version). Getting a chance to look under the hood is a great opportunity to see how other folks tackle some of the tasks we all face, or are likely to.

I had the privilege of speaking on a panel with Sarah Cohen and Steve Doig last week in Baltimore about the future of computer-assisted reporting. Whoever thought I even belonged in the same room as those two gave me way more credit than I deserved.

But in preparing for that panel, I got to thinking: What skills and software tools are we going to be using in 10 years? What skills should we start learning now if we want to be prepared for the future? Or better yet: What types of problems in newsgathering and investigations could technology best help solve?

The process of geolocating information isn't new to journalists; producing maps has long been a key part of what we do. But when it comes to our stories, extracting mappable entities like cities from text is a relatively new concept.

There are commercial services that do this task, and researchers have created software for academic pursuits as well. Widespread free availability of geolocation services, however, has been mostly wishful thinking until last month.

The other day, I was talking to one of my colleagues about how I rarely use ArcView anymore. Since becoming a full-fledged Linux jockey, I've found so many tools that process GIS data better than Arc ever has. Sure, it still provides a pretty graphical interface, which definitely comes in handy, but most of the time I don't need it. The green and black of the Linux terminal window line suits me just fine.

One of the biggest hurdles we all face for trying new software or utilities is the lack of a sandbox, a machine we can just use when we want to without having to worry if something goes wrong.

This is particularly true for new open-source technologies, like the fast-growing field of open source GIS software. Sure, it would be great to try out OpenLayers or other mapping utilities, but it's not like we can just turn our main computer into a development box overnight.

So, a tipster has just shown you the document you need to nail a story.

Problem is, she can't give it to you, there's no copy machine in the diner where you met and you need to show it to your editor before the story runs.

What to do? What to do?

Enter Qipit, a free service that turns pictures from your cell phone into searchable PDFs.

Using Qipit is as simple as taking a picture of a document, white board or even handwritten notes with your

Everybody loves cleaning data, right?

Well, OK, it's probably one of the more onerous tasks that CAR people face, and for the most part it hasn't improved dramatically in its ease, even while other technologies have made things like online mapping simpler.

I have two problems. (Well, OK, I've got a lot more than that, but we'll discuss only two here.)

The first is that I'm terribly absent-minded, and when I'm at one computer the file I need is usually at another.

The second is that the university where I teach is so tight with money that I half expect they'll start charging me per credit. They're certainly never going to pay for remote desktop software and, besides, the firewalls wouldn't let it through.

Or so they think.

But a couple of free and secure Web-based applications --