Are you into data? Here’s a funny story, Techlife covered Nick Douglas’s Look Shiny and his first show. Then we covered Taylor McKnight and Chirag Mehta’s awesome mashup Chime.TV. (We have our own channel, Techlife TV - check it out sometime.) So why are these two things related? Good question. In a recent post Nick posted about really cool site, ZipSkinny, a site that provides extensive demographic information by zipcode compiled form the US Census from 2000. Nick in his usual humor filled manner, was commenting at how poor some of the neighborhoods he knows happen to be. And to make this a small world, he mentions Taylor. So in reading all of this I learned about ZipSkinny (thanks Nick) and I learned Taylor and Nick are friends (thanks both of you.)

While ZipSkinny.com has the typical disclaimer that the site should not be used for serious decision making, such as moving or opening a business, and how some data is incomplete or has such a small sample size it can not be considered reliable, this site is a goldmine. It really has taken data exploration to new levels. If you are in real estate, a realtor, or looking to buy a home it is at least a place to start.

With data points such as:

• Population
• Density
• Educational Achievement
• Marital Status
• Household Income with brackets
• Occupation
• Unemployment/Poverty
• Age
• Racial Diversity
• Male/Female with age brackets
• Map of the zip code

And features such as:

• Zip code to US comparison
• Zip code to nearyb Zip code comparison
• Zip code to state to US comparison
• Top 100 zip codes in the state or US by any of the data points
• Ability to compare up to 20 codes side by side data

I think the most interesting thing about ZipSkinny, the lack of credit. Who built it? Anyone know?