Gabriela sez, "Today, the Sunlight Foundation picked the winner of the Mashup Contest we announced two months ago as a way to honor Sunshine Week. We are announcing the winner is a mashup called 'Unfluence.' Unfluence was submitted as an entry by Greg Michalec and Skye Bender-deMoll. And while their mashup actually uses state campaign finance data (and the APIs developed by a Sunlight grantee – the Institute of on State Money and Politics), it is clear that the underlying code is directly applicable to federal politicians. In fact, the Center for Responsive Politics has been experimenting with similar network mapping. The more data that's available both from the government and the nonprofit sector in mashable forms, the more data can be examined from different perspectives and the more we know about Congress.
Unfluence uses campaign finance data compiled by the National Institute on Money and State Politics and made available through its powerful API which was written by NIMSP's Director of Technology Mike Krejci with funding from Sunlight. (Compiled campaign finance data for Congress is not yet available via API, but we expect that to change soon.)
(Thanks, Gabriela!)
