The Big Picture

Very handy in case you've been falling asleep too easily...

Outstanding site.

Fun - Mass is said to have found another ad gone bad - though I haven't heard about it yet.

Also seems strange - nothing in Africa?

There's one report from Algeria, another from Somalia.

The Algeria one must be new - a did see Somalia - but that was the only one.

Then I guess I simply missed it.

Even so - I thought the Africa had many "training" areas for terrorist - that is why I thought it would have much more than a stray couple.

Remember the default time span shown is seven days. You can adjust the time frame, though 7 days works for me. I like the site's categorization of incident by type, and the ability to focus down onto more detailed data. For analysts this is a great tool, and even goes further in demonstrating the problem of information overload ... and this has already been culled. If you use this data correctly even a common citizen has a rare opportunity to see the scope of events in, as they say, "The Big Picture". I'm not sure how precise zooming in is to the actual location of the event reported. If its even close, we can get a much better feel for the event backdrop. We can measure the distance to roads, farmhouses and local villages. All these and more lets the layman have a shot at finding a pattern, or some clue that will help us understand the event just a little bit better.

another site of interest --

World Clock
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf