Adrian Holovaty

Hi there! I’m a Web developer and musician in Chicago.

Writing / blog

Full archive | Greatest hits | RSS | Chicago gypsy jazz scene

Music

Latest video: "Sweet Talkin' Guy," Chiffons cover

YouTube | My album | More music

Around the Web

Other sites I update from time to time:

Soundslice

I'm currently building Soundslice, quite possibly the best guitar tablature software ever!

It does a ton of fancy HTML5 stuff, and you can find out more by watching this talk I gave at 37signals.

EveryBlock

I founded EveryBlock, a neighborhood news and discussion site, in 2007. It was sold to msnbc.com in 2009. I worked there until mid-2012. Unfortunately msnbc.com was later bought by NBC News, which decided to shut it down in early 2013.

Django Web framework

I’m co-creator and co-Benevolent Dictator For Life of the open-source Django Web framework, which is used by tens of thousands of people around the world!

I co-wrote a book about Web development with Django, available for free online.

Journalism

I have a degree in journalism and have worked at a number of news Web sites. Before starting EveryBlock, I worked at washingtonpost.com and LJWorld.com.

I’ve been thinking and writing about "journalism via computer programming" for a while now, and an essay I wrote about this in 2006 inspired the awesome, Pulitzer-Prize-winning site Politifact. I’ve been lucky enough to speak at conferences around the world about how journalists can be smarter about data.

Mashups

My 2005 site chicagocrime.org (now superceded by EveryBlock) was one of the original Google Maps mashups and influenced a bunch of stuff. It played a small part in influencing Google to release a mapping API; the New York Times named it one of the year's best ideas; it inspired the creation of the Mashable blog. Most importantly, it helped a lot of Chicagoans get a sense of neighborhood crime.

In the media

Contact me

To get in touch with me, you can either use this form or e-mail adrian [at] holovaty.com.