So you found the greatest advantage of free/opensource software while working your way out of its greatest disadvantage. You trade in corporate support for community support. It's the difference between having friends/neighbors/family take care of your kid and paying a baby sitter.
Most of this is already available; check out http://local.google.com and also a ton of other web sites that use Google APIs to map crime rates, taxi cab services and more. (http://www.chicagocrime.org, http://labs.google.com/ridefinder, etc)
Anton Takk, A Good Samaritan's Tale or Help All Mac Users
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