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As a Web developer, I build custom, easy-to-use Web sites for clients using principles of user-centered design. Over the past 15 years, I've worked on complicated e-commerce Web sites for large corporations, helped small organizations launch their first Web sites, and built Web-site prototypes for use in academic research on how people use computers. Some of my recent projects help users to organize and visualize large amounts of data—for example, political contribution data from federal and state governments and online content in a Web archiving system.

As an author, I write books that teach people how to make sense of complicated software such as Photoshop, build their own Web sites, and use popular online services. I also teach elementary students how to create Web pages by writing HTML and communicate using social-networking tools such as blogs.

Want to discuss what I can do for you? Get in touch.

MAPLight.org's Web site lets you explore how money from special interests influences which laws get passed by connecting three sets of data:

• Political contribution data (who gives money to whom)
• Legislative voting records (who votes for what)
• Supporting and opposing interests for each bill (who stands to win or lose)

You can examine where the money lines up with respect to who votes for and against legislation. For example, you can view a summary of the contributions by insurance interests and others that had a stake in the 2010 Senate bill on health care:

MAPLight.org is a great example of an organization leveraging the Internet and public records to make the government more transparent. I'm currently helping them build out their tools and databases to work for diferent U.S. state legislatures.