We pointed long ago to FundRace.org and its excellent sets of data regarding political donations. One of the more interesting -- and, for some, alarming -- aspects of FundRace was its ability to let you type in an address and get back a list of nearby donors. Suddenly you could find out if your neighbors had the same political leanings you had without risking a punch in the nose.

Now a website called "Gravity Monkey" has crafted a tiny application called "red | blue". Written for your Java-enabled mobile device (phone, PDA, panoptiglasses, whatever), red | blue lets you find out whether you're in hostile or friendly territory with a quick web check. If your mobile device includes GPS, you can even track your surroundings as you move.

red | blue is available for free. Although the Gravity Monkey page describing the software claims that the work has a "creative commons" license, the app does not appear to be free/open source.

(Via Engadget)

This will really handy when the civil war breaks out.

Posted by: J on October 6, 2004 11:57 PM

Hey Jamais --

Yeah, I haven't posted source yet -- need to clean it up and remove anything that would hammer my server (it'll cost too much money for me to support if everyone extends it and uses my server and provider), but I will happily provide source (free) for the app itself and relevant server components as soon as the flurry of usage calms down (right now I mostly helping people install it and watching the server load).

FundRace is the source of the real magic, as you mentioned. They provided the data, which is the real fascinating part. The GPS/Phone stuff is all I added to it.

--j

Posted by: jason on October 7, 2004 7:32 AM

Thanks for the update, Jason. And cool app!

Posted by: Jamais Cascio on October 7, 2004 8:50 AM