Election season is here, and with the US Presidential race heating up, there’s a lot to keep up with. A new web site, UniteBlue, aims to help progressives find each other on Twitter and organize themselves for political activism.
It’s just about two months until the next U.S. Presidential election. And regardless of who you plan to vote for, you probably have an opinion about which candidate you think will win. The new mash-up web site VoteNight gives you an opportunity to share your predictions with the slick use of the Google Maps API.
The Washington Post has launched its first APIs, all with a political usage. The Washington Post staff created applications over the years that collected a lot of data. Now it’s making the data available, via its Washington Post APIs, to civic hackers.
Governments across the world have made attempts to restrict usage of messaging technology by its citizens for various purposes. The latest is the ban on bulk SMS and MMS by mobile users in India by the Government of India. The 15-day restriction, which was put into effect on August 18, restricts mobile users from sending not more than 5 SMS and MMS and also other restrictions on message size. The Government directed telecom operators to implement these restrictions in the wake of recent disturbances in the country, where it was inferred that messaging mechanisms like SMS contributed to widespread rumors, which fueled the unrest.
The ubiquitous U.S. corner store 7-Eleven is helping with an unlikely type of convenience: polling in the upcoming U.S. election. For the last three elections, the store has made red and blue cups to represent the candidates. When customers come to get their coffee, they have the opportunity to “vote” for one of the two main parties. For the upcoming election, that data will be included in the 7-Eleven Election API, so developers can have ready access to the current entirely unscientific polling numbers.
The U.S. presidential race may be heating up thanks to the New York Times Campaign Finance API. The API lets you retrieve contribution and expenditure data from United States Federal Election Commission filings. The NY Times team have taken public campaign finance data and created a useful data set that answers the most frequently asked campaign finance questions. The New York Times Campaign Finance databases are updated twice daily (electronic filings are updated every 15 minutes).
The US Census Bureau has released its first-ever API to the public. The new US Census Bureau API allows “developers to design Web and mobile apps to explore or learn more about America’s changing population and economy,” according to the announcement.
The United States Presidential Election of 2012 is going to be held in less than six months. With this important election fast approaching, it is very important that voters in every state have access to accurate election information. The Voting Information Project is an organization that “offers cutting edge technology tools to provide voters with access to customized election information to help them navigate the voting process and cast an informed vote.” Cutting edge technology tools offered by the Voting Information Project include the Voting Information Project API, a Google “Find My Polling Place” Gadget as well as other various projects.
Californians have long had the ability to track lottery updates on their mobile phones, or get updates via the lottery’s Twitter account. However, with the release of the CA Lottery API, developers may have entered the scene as California’s latest player of the odds.
There’s still government hoops to jump through, but the US Census is making much of its recent data available by the slice, rather than the whole pie. The US Census Bureau API provides access to 2010 Census data, including demographics, income and how many women in New York take public transportation to work (and that’s excluding taxi cabs).
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