Winners of Sunlight's Apps for America Competition

Just spotted this today - the announcement of the winners of the Sunlight Foundation's Apps for America competition. There are some great apps in here - the overall winner Filibusted seemed a bit partisan to me, but I liked Legistalker that lets you track what US politicians are up to online. A really witty and interesting one is Hello Congress which offers every US legislator (Senator or representative) a new service - citizen-sourced research and views on priorities. Its a fantastic idea and it would be great if it really caught on, but I am not absolutely convinced it will. My fear is that the payback for the citizens is too weak to deliver sustained involvement from enough people in each constituency for it to be really meaningful, but who knows? It is certainly well worth trying and even if it does not quite work out, the principle is inspiring.

Interesting to see that this great idea comes from whitehouse2.org - great work, Jim!