Get the Skinny on Zips

ZIPskinny is the best extraction of data from the 2000 U.S. Census that I've come across. If you know the zip code of a neighborhood you'd like to research, just plug it into the search box on the first page. Alternatively, you can select the state, then a city, and the program will pull up information for the zip code of the geographic center of the city, along with a Google map of the area. Note to Zipeople: it would be great if you could make the map a display the zip code for the other areas a visitor can maneuver to, and then with a click, get the data for that different neighborhood.

The information shown for a particular zip code includes demographics of race, age, and gender; a comparison chart with other nearby areas displaying several different socioeconomic factors (education, marital status, etc.); and the same for the single code with additional vertical bar charts showing six factors broken out by ranges. Two other features allow you to find the top 100 zips in the country and by state for several limited factors and a system to query for a comparison of up to 20 different codes.

I can see this working for both fiction and nonfiction writers and in two directions: either finding information about a geographic area you're writing about or finding a type of area to write about. It would take some time to search on several factors because the functionality is limited for now, but hey, it's free!