More IRE Tips

There was a lot of emphasis at IRE on knowing programming languages to help you scrape the Web. Perl, Ruby, Python.
Pardon? If they are not fashion trends, then I can't be bothered.
What I did find helpful are Web sites that help you find people through social networking and white pages. One woman said she backgrounded a date using the Web. Did he have a criminal record? Who are his friends? What kind of music does he download?

www.pipl.com
www.123people.com
www.spokeo.com
search.twitter.com

When Googling, don't just Google. There are search engine aggregators like.

www.jux2.com

Search blogs.

www.icerocket.com

For the truly nerdy, Openkapow.com allows you to build your own services (called robots) and run them for free. The robots access Web sites and let you use or mash up data from various sites in any way you like.

The government wants you to think Recovery.gov has everything you need to know about stimulus spending. It doesn't. Contracts are starting to be posted online through the Federal Procurement Data System and USA Spending.
Even the Census Bureau has a single audit database that's supposed to have more later on.

Another broad place to search is earmarks. Essentially, 535 people in Congress are passing billions of dollars around. Taxpayers for Common Sense is a D.C. group that has worked with reporters. They have a database of all earmarks for 2008 and 2009.
A prime example is Rep. Charlie Taylor of North Carolina who was building all the roads around property he owns.
David Heath of the Seattle Times tracked a company that gave generously to members of Congress, who forced the Navy and Coast Guard to buy the company's useless boats. The boats have since been donated, including one to the sheriff's in Oakland.

Finally, a little bit about math. Numbers can be meaningless. Numbers can be powerful. What comes to mind when I say 308? Nothing. How about 308 million? Population of the United States.
We know that California's deficit is $24.3 billion but how much is that? It's bigger than the size of North Carolina's budget. It's a quarter of the California's budget.