Though Google+ launched this past June, they only just this week launched Google+ Pages for groups, nonprofits and businesses. You can find out a bit more below:

Google+ Pages is similar in functionality to what's already available to individual users, with features like circles, sharing links, status updates and posting photos and videos.  At the moment, the service is limited to one admin per page.

We were quick to set up a Sunlight page when the service opened up this week and I've had fun posting even in its current limited capacity.  At the moment I don't foresee our usage of Facebook Fan Pages diminishing, but rather Google+ Pages complementing our overall social media presence.

To see some example pages, take a look at these partners that were  available at launch:

Are you interested in creating your own page?

It's a fairly straight forward process; you'll need a personal Google+ account and then click through here.  Select the category of page you want to create, whether for a group, a business, a nonprofit or for something else.

Once you've selected the category, Google will ask you for some basic information related to your page, like the name, a related web site url, the page administrator and other info depending on the page type.  When you finish, your page is created and you can begin posting text, photos, videos, links or your location.

To access your page again, you'll need to go to your personal Google+ home screen and click on the drop-down next to your name:

You can also add Google+ Page buttons and badges to your website by going here.

How does Google+ Pages compare to Facebook Fan Pages? Do you find the interface easy to use? Any tips or tricks you've learned this week?

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?

Google Hangouts is an excellent free tool that lets you video chat anyone with an internet connection and a web cam.  You can connect with up to 12 different people to video chat, IM or watch YouTube videos together.

Two Hangout features I think are incredibly useful are the ability to make conversations public and to add various types of content to the conversation via Google Docs and screen sharing. This way, you can work on ideas collaboratively and review documents in sync with another person no matter where you are. You could even potentially run your own version of Sunlight Live.

So how would you do this?

When you start a Hangout, you can add additional content to your conversation by clicking Hangouts with extras:

Google will take you to the extras page where you can name your Hangout, see its URL and choose to add specific guests or make your conversation public. If you choose to make your Hangout public, you can still invite up to 11 individuals of your own choosing:

Once your Hangout has started, you can collaboratively edit documents...

Open documents and presentations from your Google Docs account...

Screen share other open applications or screens...

And chat with other participants...

You can see the potential for interacting, collaborating and communicating with small groups and large audiences. All you'd need to make your own Sunlight Live, for example, is a video stream. You could feed that into a Google Hangout, add prepared content and host a few people to answer questions and add facts and commentary.

What do you think? Have you used Google Hangouts? Do you have any ideas or tips on ways to use it?

Topsy is a real-time search engine that pulls links from Twitter and Google+ to help you gauge popular content and trending topics.

A quick search for tweets over the past 24 hours from the Sunlight Foundation reveals related posts and direct links to our content, as well as sites that mention Sunlight by name. Digging a little deeper, we see how related content is faring through the number of tweets, the influence of a link and its momentum, velocity and peak.

This Washington Examiner piece, which mentions a post by Sunlight's Bill Allison,  has garnered 60 tweets and, as you can tell in the screenshot of Topsy analytics below, appears to be picking up momentum.

Topsy also allows you to sort by time frame, content type, language, date and relevance. Although you can filter through Twitter or Google+, you can't do both simultaneously. The advanced search gives you a few more options -- like search by referencing site -- which I find to be highly useful. (To get a good sense of this feature, click to take a look at the results for Sunlight posts related specifically to Huffington Post.) Another useful feature of Topsy is the alert tool: You can subscribe to keyword alerts by email and RSS feed, which will help you stay on top of trending content.

Other uses?

• Monitor the popularity of a specific keyword over the past so many days.
• Track popular images and videos related to your terms of interest.
• Determine authoritative sources related to a hashtag or keyword.
• Push the conversation forward by sharing your search results.

What do you find useful about Topsy? Do you have any tips you can share?

While helping out on a recent campaign, I was handed a clipboard to gather sign-ins for an event. Little did I realize how messy the signatures would be when I went to go enter the names into a spreadsheet. It struck me that I could skip a couple of steps and keep the contact info legible by creating a simple Google Form, which automatically creates a corresponding spreadsheet. Once created, all I'd have to do is ask supporters to enter their names on any mobile phone with the link to the Form. Not only does this eliminate the need for paper sign-ins and manual entry, but it also allows us to recruit multiple helpers, to use the data as it's collected for outreach and to share the form link on social media for increased participation.

So how do you set up a Google Form?  It's pretty simple, actually.  Log in to your Google Docs account and click on the Create button in the top left corner. Then, click Form.

Fill out the fields you want to track and then save your form.  Once you've saved it, go back into Google Docs and open up your document. Head to Form and click on Go to live form.

Copy the url at the top of the live form and send it to everyone who will help sign-in/sign-up supporters at your event.  They'll be able to open up the form on the mobile phone or tablet.

Do you have any mobile tricks for use during a live event? I'd love to hear more ideas of what works!

Someone earlier today asked what are the benefits of Chartbeat, aside from the live analytics and site traffic reports it provides? This was about an hour before a Political Party Time link was posted to the front page of the Drudge Report.

Now, for the uninitiated, the best way to think about Chartbeat is to compare it to Google Analytics: where Google Analytics only aggregates data over time, Chartbeat shows you live stats on traffic to your site -- which is why it was particularly useful when we got picked up on Drudge.

Here's where Chartbeat's benefits kick in: a few hours ago, I received an alert notifying me that over 600 visitors where on Party Time right now, which is a bit unusual. I opened up Chartbeat and saw that the influx was coming from the Drudge Report and sure enough, we were on their front page.

We quickly posted a doormat alerting visitors that they could sign up for future open government news: We were also able to quickly make sure that all content was up to date and that the page the traffic was going to was displaying recent, relevant links. When this happens with other sites, like Boing Boing or Reddit, we head over to to their posts linking to us and answer questions and comments, contact the original poster or direct users to other useful information. Unfortunately, there's no easy way of engaging Drudge visitors on the Drudge Report, but we did tweet at their Twitter account other relevant Party Time updates.

Being able to quickly put up the doormat mentioned above is a huge asset for engagement. It allows us to direct visitors to certain pieces of content and other Sunlight properties that fit the demographic of the sites that they're coming from. For example, we can direct Slashdot visitors to one set of links and direct Fark visitors to an entirely different set.  Knowing how our visitors are and where they're coming from is key to making this happen and Chartbeat allows us to know who is who.

Have you used Chartbeat? Do you have an interesting uses for it?  What do you think of the service?

Rapportive is a browser plug-in for Firefox, Safari and Chrome that offers further context on the people emailing you by adding related links and information in a side panel in Gmail. The service adds contact links for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, other links to sites like YouTube, Flickr and Quora and recent emails. Rapportive also offers Raplets, plug-ins that add more specific types of content, like your contact's Klout score, Lanyrd info, related Crunchbase information. If you're a developer, you can even create your own Raplet.

You'll quickly see the value in the service when you're in need of a bit more information on one of your contacts and don't have the time or bandwith to search for, say, their the professional history (via LinkedIn) or their social media prominence (via Klout). For more info, check out this video from Raplet:

Google has a similar tool called People Widget, which I'm not overly familiar with. What about you? What do you think of Rapportive and other related tools? Have they proven useful in your work?

Need some help getting to the point? Topicsmarks is a summarizing service that analyzes large amounts of text and draws out the main points in a coherent format.  According to Techcrunch, the service "uses semantic text extraction and personalization technologies" to draw information from links, documents and other content types.  It currently works with desktop files, urls and your Evernote or Google Reader accounts.

I ran Sunlight reporter Ryan Sibley's post from last week (HAMP helps few homeowners, but program continues) through Topicmarks, and asked her to comment on how well it did on summarizing her piece. This is the Topicmarks summary:

Sibley's thoughts on the summarization:

The Topicsmarks service summarized the main points of the article, but it also misinterpreted some facts presented in the original piece. By moving sentences around after summarizing them, it incorrectly presented a contrast between facts that were not supposed to be considered that way. In short, the context for what I wrote was removed and the results it produced are misleading and just plain wrong. I'd suggest reading an original piece over using this service.

We haven't tested very many posts and wonder whether the piece is too complicated for the service or if Topicmarks has a hard time parsing the writing style.  Have any of you tried this service? What are your thoughts?

Ghostery is a free browser plug-in (available for Firefox and Google Chrome) that lets you watch who's watching you as you. By that, I mean Ghostery alerts you to scripts that are tracking you across the web while giving you the option to delete and block scripts from sites you don't know, offering you a better sense of your web privacy options.

Most sites track user interaction to some degree, whether it be for analytic purposes or for marketing.  The Wall Street Journal has a fantastic interactive presentation on the services that are tracking your clicks and the policies guiding their actions.

So what happens when you run SunlightFoundation.com through Ghostery? An unobtrusive pop-op will appear in the upper righthand corner of our webpage, showing you that we run Chartbeat, Google Analytics and Quantcast.

The first two measure raw traffic numbers to our site like visits, time-on-site, bounce rate and so on. Quantcast helps us figure out basic demographic information and the interests of our community.

What about governmental and political sites?

Democrats.org

GOP.com

U.S. Department of Treasury

Library of Congress

Crossroads GPS

Colbert SuperPAC

WhiteHouse.gov doesn't seem to work in Ghostery (we tried on multiple browsers) but they seem to be running Google Analytics and an AddThis social media sharing script. You can see for yourself if you look at the page source which is found under View in both Firefox and Google Chrome.

As the Wall Street Journal post shows you, many sites (if not most) across the internet track your behavior, including governmental and political websites.  It's in your best interest to know what they're tracking about you and what they do with that data.  Ghostery is a great tool to help you start.

Journalists often face a problem we at Sunlight run into -- dealing with huge piles of government documents sadly trapped in unsearchable, non-machine-readable PDFs. So in 2009, with a grant from the Knight News Challenge, DocumentCloud was born. DocumentCloud is a great service to help investigative reporters deal with those troublesome files, and it's become a vital tool in newsrooms all over the country.

While only approved journalists may upload to DocumentCloud, anyone can browse and search their large archive of public documents.

What else does it do?

• DocumentCloud will run every document through OpenCalais, a metadata service, to add more context to you uploads.
• It can take the dates within a document and plot them on a timeline.
• It can help you find documents related to your story.
• You can annotate and highlight important sections of your document. (Bonus: Every note you add will have its own unique URL.)
• You can share and embed public documents.
• And, you can research source documents such as court filings, hearing transcripts, testimony, legislation, reports, memos, meeting minutes and correspondence.

In recent months DocumentCloud gained a bit of traction by publishing both President Obama's birth certificate and former-Governor Palin's emails, and the Chicago Tribune has used the service to great effect, showcasing legal documents from the Rod Blagojevich trial.

Our own Daniel Schuman has created the New House Ethics Committee Report Search Tool:

The following search tool allows you to explore all of documents and statements published online by the House Ethics Committee between 12/24/1998 and 7/24/2011. The Committee publishes files in an impossible-to-search PDF format; the files also cannot be sorted. We've downloaded all the files, transformed the PDFs into text format, and made it so you can search the contents.

Need more convincing? The Washington Post, ProPublica, The LA Times, The Boston Globe, PBS Newshour and many others have used DocumentCloud to get their source documents online.

To read more about the service, check out the archives of Idea Lab or head right over to DocumentCloud.