When it comes to monitoring the workings of democracy, there's no such thing as too much information. Helping involved citizens stay well-informed, LegiStalker filters US legislative news 24 hours a day.

Created as an entry for the Apps for America contest, LegiStalker allows users to search for legislators by name or location, and view live streams of their votes, Twitter posts, YouTube videos, favourite words and more. The website's database is updated every 20 seconds using Yahoo Search, GovTrack.us and other services. Plans are in place for additional features like voting histories and grouping politicians mentioned in the same news articles.

As LegiStalker says: “an accountable government requires an informed citizenry.” One to duplicate for dedicated citizens in other nations? (Related: Tweets from parliament seats — Crowds make parliament videos searchable.)

Website: www.legistalker.org
Contact: legistalker@forumone.com

Spotted by: Judy McRae

Posting a Twitter address is easy to do online, but until now there have been few offline opportunities for consumers and businesses to recruit new Twitter followers. Jumping at the entrepreneurial opportunity, StickyTwits (@stickytwits) designs stickers featuring Twitter addresses for easy distribution in the analogue world.

The idea for StickyTwits came from a signage designer and a marketing expert who wanted to stick their Twitter URLs on their cars, computers, office windows, etc. The Australian venture now sells customized stickers made from professional grade vinyl and durable ink, for AUD 14.95 per set. Each sticker pack contains 30 multicoloured customized stickers—15 large (292x50 mm) and 15 small (145x25 mm)—which come in four seasonal colour schemes: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Obviously, StickyTwits is a niche business and depends on Twitter's continued popularity. But it's a fun example of entrepreneurs latching on to the latest buzz to launch a side business on the fly.

Website: www.stickytwits.com
Contact: www.stickytwits.com/contact-us

Spotted by: Doug Garske (@dhgarske)

With all the uses organizations are finding for Twitter—whether it's keeping political constituents up-to-date or alerting customers to fresh bread—there's no doubt the platform is becoming increasingly prominent in the corporate world. Little surprise, then, that Pizza Hut has created an internship position to focus specifically on Twitter and other social media.

Pizza Hut's new "twinternship" is a full-time, 10- to 12-week paid assignment to work with the PR team at the company's Dallas headquarters this summer. The intern will focus on new and emerging social media, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others, and will be given "unprecedented access" to marketing meetings, brainstorming sessions, ad shoots and special events, the company says. He or she will be expected to collect and share the insights and experiences that result, as well as any pop culture news or notable stories they come across in the social media. Creating and posting videos, conducting media outreach and assisting with national PR programs will also be part of the job, as will managing the company's new Twitter page and watching for mentions of the company in the social media. Candidates are expected to be a junior or senior in college, with fluency in social media. The deadline for application is May 3rd, and the job will begin June 1st.

Besides focusing Pizza Hut's digital strategy, the twinternship position is intended to help the company connect with college students, one of its key demographics, senior PR manager Chris Fuller told PR Week. It's also apparently a sort of trial run to help Pizza Hut determine if the job warrants a full-time position. And although Pizza Hut's internship was reportedly already in the works before the Domino's YouTube disaster hit, that prank underscores the need for corporate vigilance, if nothing else. How long before every company has a dedicated twintern, tweetmaster or social-media maven...?

Website: www.pizzahut.com
Contact: www.pizzahut.com/contactus/contactlanding.aspx

Spotted by: Raymond Kollau

Back in 2007 we wrote about Flattenme, a company that makes personalized storybooks for kids by incorporating in each a photo and the name of the child who will read them. Now from Argentina comes StickieStory, which takes an interactive, sticker-based approach to much the same theme.

Customers of StickieStory begin by choosing which story they'd like their book to be about—current options include "Space Adventure" and "Super Super," a superhero tale. They then upload photos of one main character and as many as three secondary characters, along with their names. From there, StickieStory creates a glossy and full-colour, 8.5-by-11-inch storybook with 12 pages, along with 3 sheets of stickers: one bearing the characters for the story, each customized with the appropriate face and name, and the other two with stickers for the contents of the story. Using the resulting StickieStory book is a combination of reading and play whereby kids place their stickers in the designated spots in the book as they follow along with the story. Pricing for each book is USD 19, and worldwide shipping is available.

Our sister site trendwatching.com first wrote about gravanity back in 2003, but there's still no end in sight to consumers' love for products of any kind that feature them—their face, their family or at least their name. Vanity, thy name is everyconsumer; entrepreneurs, that sound you hear is opportunity knocking! ;-)

Website: www.stickiestory.com
Contact: contact@stickiestory.com

Video instruction is something we've recently seen applied to music, golf and cricket. Now, through Academic Earth, it's being brought—for free—to virtually every scholarly topic under the sun.

New York-based Academic Earth aims to make a world-class education available to everyone on the planet. Toward that end, it is building a user-friendly ecosystem that gives internet users around the globe the ability to find, interact with and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. More than 1,500 video lectures are currently available on the site, covering economics, entrepreneurship, history, law, medicine, religion and the sciences, among many other topics. A series of thematic collections, meanwhile, combine lectures to create courses such as "Understanding the Financial Crisis" and "Social Entrepreneurship 101." Faculty for Academic Earth's lectures are drawn from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, and courses are offered under a Creative Commons license through open course programs at the universities. Associated materials include lecture transcripts, handouts, reading assignments, tests and problem sets; some classes are also available as podcasts.

Academic Earth's courses cannot be used to get real academic credit, but they can be saved, rated and shared as favourites; they can also be used to gain status skills aplenty. The next step, it seems to us, will be to provide translations or variations that open it up to non-English speakers around the planet—and indeed, the site is actively seeking additional partners to expand its offerings. Educators, academic representatives and experts around the globe: one to get involved in?

Website: www.academicearth.org
Contact: hello@academicearth.org

Spotted by: Judy McRae