An app that uses Instagram to find lobbyists.

An app that uses Instagram to find lobbyists.

This week, Justin Elliott wrote about new House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) attending a weekend getaway with banking industry officials.

One of the ways he found out who was at the getaway was by using the Instagram photo sharing service, which turned up a snowy snapshot taken by Len Wolfson, a lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association (which had contributed to Hensarling’s PAC). Wolfson has since set his account to private.

The Instagram site has no search function, so finding shots like this can take a lot of digging. However, Instagram has an API with a “Media Search” endpoint that returns data both by timeframe and distance from a certain latitude and longitude — a perfect way to see who’s at a certain place at a certain time.

Talk-o-Meter shows, how much everybody is talking.

Talk-o-Meter shows, how much everybody is talking.

There are friends, colleagues or even partners who do not notice it, when they dominate others in a conversation. They just talk too much. A little iPhone app helps. The iPhone is placed between two people having a conversation and learns to separate the two voices. At intervals of 1, 2 or 5 minutes you see different lengths of red and blue bars that show what percentage of time each speaker was talking. Nobody has to be unpleasantly exhorted – from time to time everyone will have a cursory glance at the Talk-o-Meter and adapt if he is talking too much. Gentle biofeedback works.