We rolled out some design changes this afternoon, in preparation for our soft launch tomorrow. Folks who got comfortable with the hemmed-in headers and logo might find the blue sky a bit jarring, but we think you’ll come to like it. If you feel the urge, let us know what you think about it all – font and layout tweaks, as well – in the comments.
In preparation for next week’s beta launch, we’re moving our site to a new home over the next few days. There most likely will be a few hours of downtime Friday or Saturday, and it will take a while for the new site location to be updated across the interwebs. Please bear with us!
Last winter Kevin and I were just beginning to look for funding to grow Little Sister — as the project was then named — from a raggedy prototype to a sophisticated, fast, and reliable public resource. I was living at my parents’ house and Kevin was getting by writing about the (amazingly) still-obscure subprime housing meltdown and its relation to Wall Street.
Much has happened since then. The Sunlight Foundation recognized the potential — and the urgency — of our project and moved quickly to support six months of intensive web development. We’re now putting the finishing touches on a beta that we’re proud of and excited to unveil to the watchdogging world.
These finishing touches include:
Once these are complete, which should happen within the next week or so, the beta launch is official. Expect a post about it from us and Sunlight soon.
For the past two months we’ve been rebuilding this site with more data, better data, a more flexible architecture, version tracking, and other goodies. Eddie Tejeda has joined the team and progress is swift.
Though in some ways unsurprising, recent events on Wall Street and in Washington are stunning and deeply troubling. It’s made us work harder. We hope to get the new (beta) site up soon. Expect more frequent updates as the launch approaches.
Littlesis is currently in active development. For the time being, please note that user contributions and edits will not last longer than a day or so, and some features may not work all the time. If all goes well, we hope to have the beta site ready for public use by November 2008.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, and our development team needs your help. If you are a data scraper or web developer and would like to tackle a fun and interesting small project, drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.
