UPDATE: This app has left beta, and is now live on the Android Market. The QRcode below has been updated, and the link to the beta APK removed. Please download this application from the Android Market.

I want to invite all of you with Android phones to try out a public beta of an Android app that I’ve been working on inside the Labs. It’s called “Congress”, and it’s a pocket Congressional directory. It takes full advantage of the Sunlight Labs API to show you up-to-date info about members of Congress, and to pull in updates from members’ Twitter and YouTube accounts.

It’s a small app, really. Some other features, in bullet form:

• Find members of Congress by using your phone’s location, a zipcode, a last name, or a state.
• Read the latest news mentions about them, using the Yahoo News API.
• Reply to a member of Congress on Twitter from within the app, using your own account.
• Create desktop shortcuts to individual members of Congress.

You can install the app by scanning the QRcode to the left (by using the Barcode Scanner app from the Market, for instance). Make sure you have the “Unknown sources” box checked in the Application Settings screen, and you should be able to install it directly. Any updates to the beta prior to the (free) Market release will always be at the same URL.

This is Sunlight’s first mobile app, and we want your feedback about what works and what doesn’t, ahead of a full Market release. What would be the most helpful is for beta testers to answer any of these questions:

• See any bugs? What kind of bugs? Are you calling me a bad programmer?
• Anything obviously missing that should be there?
• Any cool feature ideas? For example: an option to receive notifications upon new news mentions of a legislator.

There’s a feedback option inside the app that will let you email us from your phone, but if you’re at a computer and want to file a formal bug report or feature request, we’re using Github Issues for issue tracking. And of course, we also would absolutely love contributions to the app itself – the code is open source, so please fork away.

Thanks for your help in making this an awesome app!