Help save Sitegeist with our first Kickstarter campaign
Today, the Sunlight Foundation is launching our first Kickstarter campaign in hopes that you can help us save and upgrade Sitegeist, one of our most popular apps. Sitegeist is a way to easily learn about your surroundings through a series of scrolling data visualizations.
We hoped it would showcase the possibilities of open data and it was a huge success! More than 100,000 people downloaded the app, it won a number of awards and there are still regular users. It was named the App of the Month by both the Harvard Law School Library and the Champions School of Real Estate as well as App of the Week by Gizmodo. Most impressively, it saw steady downloads and usage long after our initial launch.
Unfortunately, Sitegeist is not in good shape anymore and needs to be retired. It was built in 2012 and designed for iOS 6. The data displayed in the app is outdated (if it shows up at all) and there are a number of critical bugs making the user experience quite poor. It’s in dire need of a refresh — so we’re turning to the fans to help us save it. If the funding comes through, we’re going to completely rebuild the app for the current operating system, update the existing information and explore new data sources to add.
