I’ve posted about this earlier at my home blog, but I thought it was worth a revisit and fuller entry because it did not get the attention it deserved. The Sunlight Foundation, the group that has fostered Congresspedia , the Open House Project, & OpenCongress.org, held a government “mashup” competition in April. In May, the winner, Uninfluence , was announced and won $2000. What follows is a list of the winner and the top 5 finalists. The ‘project descriptions’ are copied from the Sunlight project page. Additional entries can also be found there.
Winner
Uninfluence
Developed by Skye Bender-deMoll and Greg Michalec.
Project Description: Uninfluence, is an interactive information visualization of state level political contribution data.
Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/unfluence/unfluence.html
Mashup: http://unfluence.primate.net/index.html
The Finalists
CityCon (First Runner Up)
Project Description: CityCon allows you to find detailed information about any member of the current 110th U.S. Congress.
Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/citycon/CityCon%20FInal.html
Mashup: http://www.tetonpost.com/citycon
OpenHearings Live (Second Runner Up)
Project Description: A mini-site of schedules for current and future Senate committee hearings. Includes links to live audio and video of hearings in progress, anRSS feed of live hearings, iCalendar schedules for all committees and hearings, and the ability to import the “Live Hearing” view into your personalized Google homepage.
Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/openhearingslive/OpenHearings.org%20-%20final.html
Mashup: http://openhearings.org/live
EchoDitto’s Congressional Similarity Visualizer
Project Description: Java applet that lets users explore which legislators vote most similarly to one another. (Detailed explanation on the site provides background on the statistical analysis the visualization represents.)
Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/Echoditto3/Echoditto3.html
Mashup: http://labs.echoditto.com/projects/sunlight/
Second Life Congressional Info
Project Description: A mashup of the Sunlight APIs with Second Life, creating an interactive info center (kiosk) at the virtual Capitol Hill – a pro-bono educational area – in Second Life. Visitors can (and do!) access the information in a venue where they can discuss the information in the context of politics, policy and place.
Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/secondlife4/Second%20Life4.html
Writeup: http://clearnightsky.com/node/288
State-Machine
Project Description: Data Visualization showing the relationship between members of Congress and political access committees. (Watchingscreencast and reading description highly recommended.)
Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/statemachine/State%20Machine%20-%20final.html
Mashup: http://state-machine.org/
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