JKGA reminds us of the free Emory Cliff bus in response to my recent “In case you didn’t know, Atlanta traffic sux” post.  My issue with actually using the Cliff bus has always been its limited range.  Other than to commute daily to Emory, I have to be honest in saying that I don’t think I would ever use it.

However, for those of you that do make frequent trips to Emory and up North Decatur, did you know that you can track the position of every Cliff Bus live online (each bus is a little moving blob) and on your mobile phone (text only)?  It’s a pretty great feature.

But be careful, I quickly found myself wishing that MARTA had a similar service.  It might actually make riding the buses a viable (a.ka. smarta) option once again!

Have you ever wanted your entire life generalized by a cute little icon and what you purchase?  Then do I have the website for you!

Actually, I’ve been sitting on this post for a few months now and finally have a free moment to write it. And due to my procrastination…the AJC kinda beat me to it.  They wrote an article a few days back about “hip” zip codes and referenced the cool resource I was going to point out.  There’s a division of Nielsen called “Claritas”, which has an online tool called “Prizm” that lets advertisers pinpoint market segments by zip code for sales/marketing initiatives.  The cool thing is that there is a free version that anyone can play with.  Check it out here.

After entering your zip, the site will spit back a list of five market segments that dominate your area.  The real interesting part is clicking on these cleverly named market segments and seeing which group you belong to.  It not only gives a median HH income, age range and education level, but also gives a list of “life style traits”.  These are places you’re likely to eat, magazines you read, and TV shows you’re most likely to watch based on the segment.  While its obviously not perfect, I remember the first time I tried this out and it pinpointed the exact car I drove.  Was I that predictable?  Probably.

Anyway, it’s a fun distraction if you’re looking for one.

So, what’s Decatur?  According to the software, the city is dominated by the very rich that are likely to own their own business, the pretty rich that like to live in town, families with few kids, young yuppies, and middle-age suburbanites.  Hmm…not sure I really needed a software to tell me that…but its still kinda cool/freaky as to how accurate it can be.