EveryBlock is a grant project created by a co-founder of Django namely Adrian Holovaty. It is a site that allowed users to keep track of the data on every block of Chicago, New York and San Francisco, three cities initially upon launched in January 23 this year. Now if you go to the site, more cities are covered at this moment since they’ve included Charlotte and Philadelphia (June 30, 2008), Boston, Seattle, Washington, DC (August 18) and the latest addition is Los Angeles (August 27).

EveryBlock is one of the early leaders in local news aggregation. In a motto, “A news feed for your block,” this site offers the latest news feed of what is happening in the neighborhood in the cities aforesaid. So far, EveryBlock is particularly useful when users want to know the latest photos taken, real-estate listings, geographic cataloging of local media or blogs in the cities concerned. Though all these data are pull from some third-party applications such as Flickr, Panaramio (photo), Trulia (real-estate listings), Yelp (business reviews), Craigslist (lost-and-found), media, mainly local relevant newspapers or blogs, EveryBlock seemed to offer a broader assortment of local news, with much greater functionality than those offered by the local newspapers. This make sense with the almost-instant updates of crime, fire alerts, restaurant food closures and inspections that are freely available on the site. Those data are obviously important for users who live in dense areas such as New York with lots of stuff going on in every second.

Undoubtedly, the present success of EveryBlock should be attributed by its smart partnerships with Government bodies such as New York State Liquor Authority, Chicago Tribune, the Mecklenburg County Health Department, just to name a few. With the help of these bodies, all the public records and information can be passed to the public instantly with a ZIP code search in the search bar. If you can’t think of anything to search on this EveryBlock, you can test it out by simply browse to the latest news feed by type, such as graffiti cleaned in New York, liquor licenses, and etc.

Meanwhile, EveryBlock is up against a bigger competition, in viewed of its recent move to the private transport sector by launching a EveryBlock DashApp that enable drivers to view the latest EveryBlock data in their cars.

Finally, to know the latest development of EveryBlock, you can subscribe to its official blog here.

Update: September 8, 2008