Super PAC App: Your Pocket Political Lie Detector

With Romney now the official Republican presidential nominee, and the election season in full steam, expect to see an ambush of political ads on television. How to cut through the noise and pull back the veil? The newly released "Super PAC App" aims to put fact-checking at your fingertips with "objective, third-party information"about who paid for the ad and at what price, and whether those claims are indeed based on facts.

Created by Jennifer Hollet and Dan Siegel as a class project at MIT's Media Lab, the free Super Pac App uses audio recognition technology similar to Shazam, enabling iPhone-users to identify the ad by funding organization and amount spent. It then directs them to nonpartisan sources like FactCheck.org and PolitiFact to see details about the veracity of the ad's claims.

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The app is particularly important this election cycle because it's the first time that Super PACs can spend an unlimited amount of money on a deluge of presidential campaign ads to sway your vote.