Exactly one week ago we launched Sitegeist, an app to learn more about your surroundings through visualizations of publicly available data. We are immensely proud of Sitegeist and thrilled by the response! As of yesterday afternoon, we have more than 20,000 downloads from both the iPhone and Android versions. Most exciting of all is that there have been more than 300,000 paneviews, which are individuals loading different categories of data. It's the metric we're watching to see how much people interact with and explore the data. It's a big beautiful number and we hope you keep coming back for more!

Media coverage of the launch of Sitegeist was stellar with everything from the Washington Post's Wonkblog to Boing Boing. Gizmodo's review proclaimed that Sitegeist will "scrub a mountain of publicly available data, chew it up for you, and spit easy-to-read infographics right into your mouth like a loving mama bird." Indeed. They even named it one of their Apps of the Week! Android Police said "Not only does the app provide some really useful information, but it looks damn good doing it" and FlowingData summed it up nicely as "Data just a flick and a scroll away."

We're tickled pink with these write-ups but it's also great to hear directly from the users. Hundreds of folks have shared their thoughts on Sitegeist and many come armed with helpful suggestions for new data they'd like to see or bug reports we're rushing to squash. We've updated the inaccurate hazard icon and greased the stubborn "Political Contributions" see-saw! We are hoping to add more features soon and will let you know as we incorporate more improvements (and data!).

I will assume those of you who have not downloaded Sitegeist yet are clamoring to download it now, but for all of you that already have: thank you. Be sure to open the app up when you're home for the holidays and have a happy new year!

Today the Sunlight Foundation unveils our latest app to reinforce the power of the data around you. It's called Sitegeist, a simple iPhone and Android app that presents a huge amount of information from disparate sources in straight-forward infographics. Just scroll and swipe your way through rich statistics about your location from demographics to popular local venues.

Sitegeist is a mobile application that helps you to learn more about your surroundings in seconds. Drawing on publicly available information, the app presents solid data in a simple at-a-glance format to help you tap into the pulse of your location. From statistical data on the people and housing to the latest popular spots or weather, Sitegeist presents localized information visually so you can get back to enjoying the neighborhood.

The app is intuitively designed such that location-specific information that would be normally difficult to track down is now all together in one place on your smartphone. As you user, just launch the app, plug in your location or a spot you're curious about and then swipe between the categories of data. Age distributions, political contributions, median home values, record temperatures and much more will appear instantly. We will continue to add new data and bolster the app as we get public feedback so please let us know with your tweets, email and comments.

Behind the scenes we dug up publicly available data and brought thousands of records together just to display one fact about your location. For example, when you drop a pin on the map and see the age distributions, we are pulling age data from the 2010 U.S. census based on the specific census tract the pin you dropped on the map is in. You don't need to know where to find the census data or even know what census tract you're in, just drop the pin and learn. Sitegeist presents a fresh perspective on a location and lets you consume complex information immediately taking on Herbert Simon's famous observation, "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." If you happen to have a wealth of attention, tap on much of data to get more information from the source. Find a contaminated site nearby? Tap to be taken to the EPA's site with a longer description of the issue.

Sitegeist was created by the Sunlight Foundation with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is the third in a series of National Data Apps. The first two National Data Apps are Sunlight Health, that brings healthcare ratings data and prescription drug safety information to your pocket, and Upwardly Mobile, a web app that helps users find a better place to live by comparing salary, living and employment data and ranking it based on their preferences. Sitegeist was created by the Sunlight Foundation, in consultation with design firm IDEO.

Last year I asked the internet gods for a URL shortener that created permanent links to legislation on THOMAS. Lo and behold, several months later TinyThom.as was revealed, and it is awesome. So once again I cast bread upon the water with three wishes for apps for THOMAS.

1. Compare bills

Bills often undergo a number of transformation before they become law. Understanding the legislative process requires seeing how bill language changes over time – that way you can see when legislators insert unobtrusive but important provisions. When the legislation is made available on THOMAS in XML, it is possible to download the two iterations, paste them into a word processor, and run a text comparison to see what has changed. That's what I did here.

What I would like is an online tool that allows me to avoid all the hard work. It should let me select any two bills on THOMAS and generate a redline document viewable online and available for download. Because some bills are only available in PDF and not XML (or are made available in XML long after the PDF version is online), extra credit would be awarded for anyone who makes it possible to redline PDFs and export the redlined version.

2. Identify related legislation

Sibling bills: In any given congress, multiple versions of identical (or nearly identical) bills are introduced. CRS identifies some of them, but inconsistently, and there is no systematic way to see all bills that contain 97% or 98% + identical language. What would be wonderful is an app that either identifies all related bills in a particular congress, or allows you (when you're looking at a particular bill) to press a button that then lists all other bills that have essentially the same text.

Generational bills: Bonus points would be awarded if you can identify similar bills (or amendments) introduced over multiple congresses.

Kissing Cousins: Mega bonus points would be awarded if you can identify when a section of a bill is identical to another bill (or section of a bill). The same holds true if you can identify when an amendment to a bill is really an existing bill in disguise.

3. Real time redline of U.S. code and legislation

More amendments are introduced for any particular bill than are adopted. What's not always clear is how the amendment will change the text of the bill. This is probably very hard, but what would be great is if there were a way to parse the legislative language to show how a particular amendment would change the language of the bill.

If this isn't hard enough, even more useful would be to see how a bill would modify the US code. (I think this may be impossible with the way bills currently are drafted, which is one reason why the Office of Law Revision Counsel exists, but I would enjoy being surprised.)

As a former Capitol Hill Communications Director, I can tell you that access to real-time information on what is happening on the Hill can make or break a successful advocacy campaign. Information is power, and the Sunlight Labs new Real Time Congress App for the iPhone gives users access to instantaneous in-the-know information in the palm of your hand. By pulling together RSS and XML feeds from the party policy committees, leadership offices, news outlets, bill texts and the alphabet soup of analysts (Think CBO, OMB, CRS et al.), the coders at the Labs have created a rich and valuable user experience for anyone who is interested in what is happening in Congress.

Forgive my enthusiasm for this new app, but it really is something special and elegant. Forget the fact that the platform will be expanded and new data sources will be added and the app will be expanded. I know that I am channeling my inner Don Draper here when I say that this new app brings me home again, and by home, I mean the Longworth House Office Building.

The Real Time Congress application for iPhone will keep journalists, Hill staffers, bloggers and interested citizens up to date on what is happening in Congress, in real-time. Its ease of use and sleek design promise that end users will continue to go back to the app for unfiltered information on Congress so they can make their own informed decisions on what is happening in the Capitol.

Our goal at the Sunlight Foundation is to change the way that citizens collect information about their government, and then help them to use that information to change the way they interact with their government. This new app shows how powerful new programs and smart phones can accomplish that goal. I’m just a little jealous of my former colleagues on the hill—I kind of wish I had this when I was working over there.

We're pretty proud of the app and it's free to you as the user. It is worth noting, however, that it wasn't free for us to create. It did take weeks of development, and so any contribution toward this application and all the others we hope to create in the future on your behalf is greatly appreciated.