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.

Since we launched Ad Hawk a few weeks ago it's been downloaded thousands of times, featured as an Essential App by Gizmodo and praised by many media outlets. We're most excited to see users actively using it to learn more about congressional and presidential ads as they air - download the app here if you haven't already. To keep building on this early success we're constantly scouring the web for new ads for our database and improving the project.

If you visit adhawk.sunlightfoundation.com you'll see a number of new features that make it the go-to resource for learning about and searching for political ads. In the upper right corner you can now take advantage of ElasticSearch that allows you to find ads by the title name or sponsor. You can also narrow your search results by sponsor name, type of funder or party affiliation. This is especially helpful when you browse the database of more than 2,300 ads when searching for a commonly used term like "freedom" or "Obama."

Another exciting addition is a glossary of terms commonly seen throughout the app and used when discussing campaigns. Little question mark buttons appear next to defined terms whenever they appear throughout the app for quick reference. From 501(c) Organizations to Dark Money and Independent Expenditures to Super PACs, our new glossary gives an at-a-glance reminder on the players and tactics attempting to influence your vote this election.

Other minor additions include improvements to social sharing and honing the technology for pairing audio with ads. We've received great feedback from the community and are always looking for more, get in touch with us here. Thanks for checking out Ad Hawk and we look forward to adding more features and ads as the campaign season heats up.

Ad Hawk is our new iPhone and Android app that empowers you to identify political ads as they air and immediately learn about the secretive groups spending money to influence your vote. Simply activate the app on your phone when you hear a political ad on TV or radio and we'll return results within seconds. We paired powerful open-source audio fingerprinting technology to work in concert with our comprehensive data on campaign finance to bring you the best way to stay informed while you endure the onslaught of ads throughout the 2012 election season.

Ad Hawk listens to arbitrary audio coming into your mobile phone when you touch "Identify this Ad" and creates a short digital fingerprint to compare against the database of hundreds of political ads we collect. If the audio fingerprint finds a match, we send you the information about the sponsor of the ad and other details such as:

• money received or spent
• where the ad is on the air
• media reports on the political group or ad
• places to learn more information

As the 2012 election season heats up, we'll be tirelessly expanding our database and incorporating more contextual information to give you the best tool to illuminate those clouding the airwaves.

Sunlight identifies new ads by monitoring media reports and the YouTube channels of political groups and campaigns. We research and pair these new ads with Federal Communications Commission data on ad spending, Federal Election Commission data on political contributions, press releases about ad buys and relevant news articles. We collect anonymized location data if users authorize us and hope to better map where ads are appearing around the country.

The idea behind Ad Hawk started at a Philadelphia’s Hacks/Hackers meetup, and the project began at the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon in December 2011. After a few months of follow-up work, the technology eventually found a home at the Sunlight Foundation for further development and publication. Part of the audio technology is powered by Echoprint, an open source music fingerprint and resolving framework, created and made available by the good folks at The Echo Nest.

We will update the database every day and deliver improvements to the app on an ad hoc basis so please let us know what you think!

We're excited to announce Upwardly Mobile, Sunlight's new webapp funded by the Knight Foundation that allows you to research where in the country you could enjoy financial security and an improved quality of life. Upwardly Mobile is an easy-to-use relocation research tool backed by powerful economic data, allowing granular comparisons without digging through arcane government reports for each indicator. We sifted through all this data so you don't have to, and this information is now presented seamlessly on any mobile or tablet platform.

Just enter your zipcode, career information and cost-of-living importance and then Upwardly Mobile gets to work generating a list of ideal places for you to move. Alternatively, you can browse individual cities to compare them to national averages. Through charts and graphs, you can explore how metropolitan areas of similar size compare to where you live now, including:

• Occupation: Both the average salary for the selected occupation over time and income data for the entire metropolitan area.

• Housing costs: Rents, as well as maintenance services and goods such as furniture and appliances.

• Cost of living: Apparel, education, food and childcare.

• Quality of life costs: Recreation, transportation and health care.

Part of putting this responsively designed app together included deciding which economic factors make the greatest difference in people’s lives. For instance, we decided that salary and housing costs are more important than other economic indicators such as the cost of recreation services. These weights impact the base ranking, but the importance attached to each economic category can be changed by your selections in the survey. For more information on this methodology and the technical background, check out my colleague Jeremy's blog post here.

The Upwardly Mobile app utilizes data comes from many sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and the U.S. Census.

Upwardly Mobile is the second in a series of National Data Apps, developed with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The first was Sunlight Health, which helps people make more informed decisions about medical care. Sunlight also created mobile apps for monitoring lawmakers: Congress for Android and Windows phones and Real Time Congress for iPhone. The recently launched OpenStates app for iPhone and iPad tracks the inner-workings of all 50 state legislatures.

Note: 4/3/12, 5:25 p.m. This post has been updated to clarify the weighting of salary and housing costs against other economic indicators.

Today the Sunlight Foundation launches our Open States iPhone and iPad app that puts the inner-workings of state legislatures in the palm of your hand. The free mobile app provides up to the minute information on your state representative's profile, legislation being considered, voting records, campaign finance totals and much more. The app launches with legislative data from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

In the past, this public information was often hard to find thanks to antiquated state websites, but with a community of volunteers, the Open States Project has built the only completely free and open resource for accessing legislative information in a uniform format across all states.

Whether your Capitol is just across town, over the river or 500 miles down the highway, the Open States app allows you to:

• Identify your state representatives, find their contact information and explore district geography with Google Maps.
• See voting records, bill sponsorships, committee assignments and campaign finance information for all elected representatives.
• Follow any state bill on its way to becoming a law, from introduction through committee hearings, floor votes, passage and signing by the governor.
• Read the latest policy news affecting your state from Stateline.org, an online publication of the Pew Center on the States.
• Schedules and maps of the state house, in the few states that publicize this information

Sunlight Labs developed the app with support from the Minnesota Historical Society, and it runs on Sunlight Labs’ Open States API. Supported in part by the work of volunteers, the Open States Project collects and scrapes legislative data from state legislatures across the country and makes it available online in a unified, reliable, developer-friendly format. Learn more online at the Sunlight Labs blog, start contributing to the project here or follow @openstates on twitter for the latest news. Next steps include working on an Android version, building out bill text search, creating a public website for the data and continuing to adapt to changes in each legislature.

Like the app, the Open States API is open source. NPR’s StateImpact project is already using the API to add legislative information to their online reporting, including in Ohio  and Idaho. Recently, The Chicago Tribune used it to analyze the Illinois Pension Code as part of an in-depth investigation. Sunlight previously developed other mobile apps for monitoring lawmakers: Congress for Android and Windows phones and Real Time Congress for iPhone, as well as Sunlight Health which helps people make more informed decisions about medical care.

I don't usually write non-social media related Tools for Transparency posts, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to write about Square, a simple mobile app and hardware accessory that turns your mobile device into a credit card reader.

This simple app allows anyone with an iPhone, iPad or Android phone to take credit card payments, bypassing much of the hassle required with traditional credit card readers and transactions. The app makes it simple to collect payments, and donations, on the go, sending funds directly to your bank account.  The process for ordering the device and setting up the application was simple and Square takes a small 2.75% fee from each transaction.

A small nonprofit that I volunteer with recently held a fundraiser and as most supporters are accustomed to, they arrived with cash in hand for event tickets and donations.  A few came with less cash than they had realized but we were able to accommodate them because I had downloaded the Square app for my iPod and ran their credit card through the attached reader. An elegant solution for people that don't walk around with much cash.

Here's how it works.

Once you've received the card reader, plug it into the audio jack of your mobile device.  Open up the Square app (make sure that you're connected to the web) and you will be shown a screen asking for the amount and type of transaction:

Next you'll need to swipe the credit card:

Sign for the card using your finger:

Once the card clears, the receipt can either be sent to a cell phone or an email address:

The potential for fundraising, as in my example, is obvious and of course, can be applied to any transparency project and cause. I think it's important to note, when you're accepting donations, where the money is going and whether or not the donation is tax deductible.

What are your experiences with Square? Have you used it in the past?

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.