One of the exciting aspects of this project is that the primary visionaries, architects and developers committed early on to opening up the data they are collecting, providing a variety of feeds to access the incoming reports:

Here are the various ways that you can access the data collected by Twitter Vote Report, as detailed by our Andrew Turner:

* OpenSearch – http://votereport.us/opensearch.xml
This is the OpenSearch description document that outlines all of the feeds and various filters that you can use when getting to the data.
* KML – http://votereport.us/reports.kml
Getting the reports.kml will give a Network Link – this is useful for GoogleEarth and other KML clients to automatically update every 60 seconds with new reports.
* GeoRSS-Atom – http://votereport.us/reports.atom
Just want to subscribe to the feed in your RSS reader, this feed is useful for getting updates.
* GeoJSON – http://votereport.us/reports.json
JSON is super nice for doing client-side mashups and visualization. This is what the Vote Report Map itself is using. It includes a lot of information for each report, including reporter, icon, location

I haven’t been involved in the backend development of the TVR system because a) I couldn’t fully commit to the herculean effort they’ve made and b) much of it is implemented in Ruby on Rails, a platform which I am not that familiar with. However, I had a few hours today and decided to become a consumer of the data feeds (specifically GeoJSON) they have provided to implement a service using Java/JSP. My aim was to provide an alternate system for browsing the reports and visualizing them, as well, and perhaps just act as a backup repository.

Thus, I’ve created TVR on OpenIdeals – the same data as what you’ll get on the main twittervotereport site, but with some different tools for looking through it and for sharing it on your blog.

I also wanted to provide some other options for creating widgets out of the data. Here’s an example of a dynamically updating widget you can create that displays the last 25 reports from Virginia:

Here’s a view of anyone having a bad experience at the pools:

That’s about it. Check out the site and please tomorrow make sure you 1) VOTE and 2) report how your vote went using the TVR Reporting Tools.

the bird and the bee player

visit inara and greg on myspace or get this player

Brought to you by cruxy.com

Below are screenshots of various blogs and social network profiles which distributed the player through the simple “copy and paste” sharing mechanism.

Listening Party Photos

Promotional Trailer Video

Learn more at http://cruxy.com/tbatb

But this isn’t your average listening party. Cruxy Consulting and Second Life have built a virtual drive-in for their members to listen to the album called the “Lost Highway” Lounge. The lounge features an interactive media player, a large movie theatre featuring The Long Blondes videos, virtual apparel giveaways, and links to purchase their music. There are even portable music players available for visitors to take with them once they leave the lounge.

Learn more at http://cruxy.com/thelongblondes

For more information, here are some helpful links.
http://cruxy.com/features/thelongblondes/sl/

Teaser video for the Lost Highway Lounge:
http://cruxy.com/features/thelongblondes/sl/video.html

The Long Blondes’ album, Someone To Drive You Home, was released in the UK last November and in the US on June 5th on Beggars Group via an exlusive agreement with Rough Trade. It’s since gained widespread critical acclaim. The band is currently in the middle of a successful US tour, including a sold out show at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom.

“Most so-called “cinematic” records earn that distinction due to some quirk of reverb or their use of space, but the Long Blondes only have modern England’s typically confined, 17-year-old-from-Doncaster guitar-dudish sound. Instead, it’s the songs themselves, their narratives and their characters that speak to the band’s widescreen ambitions.” Pitchfork 8.2

“Filled with more hits than Doherty’s arm, this record flashed with more deliciously faded glamour than a crumbling Cuban city … this is a record – and a band – which many people will fall in love with …” NME

“Sheffield quintet impress with a rough diamond of a debut’

Mojo 4 of 4 star review

“Someone to Drive You Home was that peculiar paradox: an instant slow-burner. I knew immediately that this was a record which would grow and grow … ” The Independent

“On their excellent full-length debut…the Blondes spolit the difference between those two Britpop biggies [Pulp and Arctic Monkeys], holding forth on fame, sex and movies over slashing disco-flecked guitar pop.” Time Out NY

“If my hunch is right …The Long Blondes are en route to becoming one of the most important British bands of our time” The Independent

“… An indie ace pop record” Time Out London

www.thelongblondes.co.uk

www.myspace.com/thelongblondes

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