The federal government launched Data.gov a little less than a month ago with raw databases, data extraction tools and widgets and pledged to bring "unprecedented access to government information." The White House said the site would allow "unfiltered access to government data streams in machine-readable formats."

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.

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.

On Feb. 20, a group of my colleagues at The New York Times gathered for a daylong series of presentations on a set of APIs that we've been releasing during the past few months. TimesOpen, as it was called, gathered about 140 developers and other folks interested in working with Times data.

Folks doing CAR are blessed with a wealth of tools, which is both a blessing and a curse. For example, I frequently use two database programs, MySQL and PostgreSQL, at work. While similar in most respects, they have slightly different syntax for some common tasks such as string functions.

You see this situation played out on the NICAR-L listserv all the time, when someone asks a question that usually starts with, "I know I've done this before, but I can't seem to remember the right syntax."

I’ve spent the past year slowly making the transition from classic Active Server Pages (ASP) programming to ASP.NET. Yes, yes I know this is not Django or any of the other "hot" frameworks out there right now. But we are a Microsoft shop and I have no support for non-Microsoft products; and more importantly, no time or energy to tackle it myself. Learning a new tool is hard enough.
So I thought I’d write a bit about my experience so far.

The 2008 Republican National Convention, which was held four blocks from our office in downtown St. Paul, was the biggest event this newspaper has covered in a good number of years. We knew that organization would be a key to making sure everything went smoothly.

We ended up harnessing some CAR power to make that a bit easier.