The Social Explorer Talk provided a useful introduction to what will be an important tool in our initial research of the area’s we will be examining for our final projects.  For most students, an introduction to such a website will probably not even be necessary as the software and platform essentially mirror that of Google Earth.  The heavy visual component of the website makes the information accessible and easy to analyze.  The website contains a plethora of information regarding age, ethnicity, sex, and family structure.  We will see how important each of these categories was in determining how the communities responded to Hurricane Sandy.  My only initial complaint about the website layout is the color scale used to distinguish each area.  The white/ yellow/ and light orange hues tend to blend together to the unfocused eye; blurring the data they represent.  But this is a minor flaw.  The data will be essential in framing our understanding of what makes the neighborhoods we are studying unique, and which aspects of the community we should focus on while conducting our research.

{Edit} –   You can actually change the color scale.  i forgot she had shown us this feature during the presentation.  Unfortunately, none of the other available color scales are much better.

-Victor Rerick