Mash-up makes sense of White House visitors log

Sunlight Labs, and arm of tranparency advocate Sunlight Foundation, has created a mash-up to let people get a better idea of who is actually visiting the White House.

The White House has promised to release its visitors logs--although with a lag of 3 to 4 months. The October log is expected this month.

With the mash-up, you can automatically look up an name on Google, Wikipedia and find out whether they've made campaign contributions with data from the Center for Responsive Politics on OpenSecrets.org. You can also look them up on LittleSis.org, which profiles powerful Americans.

You can find some pretty interesting tid-bits in the visitors log. For example, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowki made several dozen visits in August alone, including one to the White House bowling alley.

Sunlight Labs warns that the visitors logs may not be complete. The White House has the right to withold names for security, privacy or political sensitivity reasons.

Here's what the mash-up looks like.