The Philly 311 Mobile App is an endeavor by the City of Philadelphia. It empowers Philadelphia’s citizens with the ability to report neighborhood issues directly into city government work-order systems from their smartphones.

Local musician and sound designer Michael Kiley of The Mural and The Mint combined music, environmental sound and mobile technology to create a location-based composition and iOS app, The Empty Air. Kiley spent months exploring Rittenhouse Square with a microphone and recording the sounds of the park for an immersive experience. He plans to explore other neighborhoods as well. Kiley says (and we agree) it’s “an app that allows people to experience the city through music and become more connected and invested to it as a result.”

BizVizz is an iOS app originally created as a transmedia component of the documentary As Goes Janesville, but it has grown to be much more. The idea is simple, but powerful. Just snap a picture of any major corporate logo or punch in a company name, and the system uses image recognition to find the company and provide campaign-spending data, subsidy data, the company’s effective tax rate and more. The team at Faculty Creative has now expanded the app with an open API to allow other socially conscious developers to expand upon the work that has already been done.