June 23rd, 2009

Seattle East: A Comparison of New York City and Seattle

By John Paul Murphy, Content Services Manager

If you haven’t noticed, there is a new trend in New York and it’s not being set by hipsters. If you’re not too sure what it is, the puddles outside your apartment that have become permanent reservoirs are a dead give away.

However, if you’re still unclear, the new trend is rain. This new trend began to make me wonder: are we becoming Seattle? We have more coffee shops than employed people, I’ve been noticing more flannel then normal, and New Yorkers’ tans have subsided to a fine milky paste (although it seems to still be very sunny in Staten Island).

If we are becoming Seattle East, what are some other similarities we have to our soon-to-be conjoined twin Seattle?

Seattle, Washington

• Area: 83.87
• Population Density:  6,941
• Air Pollution Index: 108
• Violent Crime Index: 130
• Median Home Sale Value, Q1 2009: $359,825
• 2009 Fair Market Rent: $844 (1 bedroom)
• Median Household Income: $54,978
• Cost of Living Index: 104.9

New York City, New York

• Area: 303.31
• Population Density: 27,290
• Air Pollution Index: 112
• Violent Crime Index: 176
• Median Home Sale Value, Q1 2009: $446,808
• 2009 Fair Market Rent: $1,216 (1 bedroom)
• Median Household Income: $47,525
• Cost of Living Index: 149.2

New York, put down the coffee and return the flannel because it’s safe to say that New York is not becoming Seattle East. With their higher income, lower cost of living, better air, and less crowded city, they can only hope to be New York City.  But until summer weather actually decides to descend upon us, chase those rainy blues away with a good ole movie night; I suggest a classic,  ”When Harry Met Sally” cause everyone one knows “Sleepless in Seattle” will not stand the test of time.

Tags: community data, content, data, data comparison, Onboard Informatics.

March 18th, 2009

What the Experts Have to Say About Data

By Megan Murphy, Marketing Manager

If you’re in the any business backed by data then you realize that regardless how strong your sales team is or how much you spend on a top notch website you’re still only as good as the quality of information you represent.

I think my mother said it best, “garbage in, garbage out”.

One our our biggest struggles, being a provider of real estate information and solutions, is explaining what data even is and the opportunity cost of using  inacurate ’free’ data.   Over the past year various experts from our company ranging from Marc Siden, our CEO to Data Project Leads, Senior Relationship Managers to our CKO & CIO, Peter Goldey, one of the industries foremost experts on data collection, aggregation and integration have put together some pretty enlightening posts regarding what this data stuff is all about.

…in more technical terms than my mother of course (no offense momma

Chicken or the Egg: Information is Data or Data is Information?

The particular interesting evolution in data has been the advent of images being allowed to stand toe-to-toe with the more traditional quantifiable data (i.e., measurements). In the past images had been lucky to be classified merely as information, but does this mean that information is more important than data? Or had data changed, and in this digital age the fine line between data and information is blurred?

Data in Real Estate (Part 1): Creating Accessibility

Friday, July 25th, 2008 Posted in Informatics | Edit | 1 Comment »

The real estate industry has been affected by the nearly infinite amount of information available through the Internet in the same way that all industries have been. Consequently it is now more important than ever that the information clients receive …

Data in Real Estate (Part 2): Creating Quality

Friday, July 25th, 2008 Posted in Informatics | Edit | 1 Comment »

Having established a foundational knowledge of data and its application to the geographic sphere of real estate, the ability to determine what sort of data will be most valuable for a company’s business ventures is even more important. In the …

Measuring the Value of Information, Part 1 – The Content

Monday, July 21st, 2008 Posted in Geography and Mapping, Informatics | Edit | No Comments »

Whenever you spend money on anything you always should ask yourself a few questions, the first one being, “Is this worth the money?” I am sure many firms consider this and many other questions before making the decision to invest …

Tags: content, data, data comparison, data provider, free data, neighborhood data, quality data, real estate data.

July 21st, 2008

How a “Best Places to . . .” article is formulated: A data comparison

By Mike Demetriou, National Sales Executive

I would like to make something perfectly clear . . . I grew up on the uninhibited, care-free love of fun and adventure projected in the cinematic classic The Goonies! But we’ll come back to that . . .

Let’s say that you are interested in publishing a “Great Places to . . . whatever” article, but you’re coming up short on neo-engineers responsible for data standardization—the people who would know about articles and data. Well, Onboard Informatics has plenty of them, and we’ll be more than happy to have a passionate conversation about data with you. If I should be lucky enough to talk to you, I will explain that choosing data is very similar to choosing a spouse. You want attractive data but not stupid data; which means that the data should be impressive to look at, but not only momentarily significant—it should be annually critical. We want to avoid “one night stand” type of data (there is no integrity protection for that little indiscretion). Your data should have standards, respect, and be able to speak for itself. If you don’t hang up the phone after my spouse/data analogy, we would then discuss the weight of your data and how it helps to shape your article’s conclusion. (I’m sure someone is making a “data/spouse + weight=funny” joke . . . shame on you, not classy!!). Read More

Tags: best places article, best places to, data comparison, michael demetriou, Onboard Informatics.