The tech team has been busy working on improvements to both our FOIA filing platform as well as DocumentCloud, our document analysis and hosting tool. For MuckRock, we gave a nice graphical bump to our article images — doubling the resolution — and fixed a bug that prevented sharing cloned request links with logged-out users. With DocumentCloud, the incorrectly labeled “rotate” button now does what it says on the tin. Plus: More localized versions coming soon!

Alguna vez ¿has tenido una pila de documentos y has querido comenzar a concentrarte rápidamente en una parte determinada de material? ¿Te gustaría contar con ayuda para trabajar solamente en los contratos, o quizás, los informes policiales que detallan un determinado tipo de encuentro, o bien, poder dividir rápidamente las cartas de respaldo de aquellas negativas dirigidas a un político sobre un tema clave?

Ever get a pile of documents and want to start quickly honing in on a certain segment of material? Wish you had a little help pulling out just contracts, or maybe police reports that detail a certain type of encounter? With MuckRock’s DocumentCloud platform, that’s a challenge we know all too well — and we have a new solution to help.

In late August, we pushed out a major upgrade bringing MuckRock from Django 1.11 to Django 2.1 and from Python 2 to 3. While these updates didn’t offer much new functionality, they were important to help us continue keeping MuckRock secure and giving us an updated, modern platform to build on.

Get up to speed faster with the DocumentCloud Beta with our updated Python wrapper for using the API.

Over the coming months, we’re migrating newsrooms to the new version of DocumentCloud (don’t worry — you’ll get a notification before anything changes!). Along with the updated version of the site, we’re also moving to a new API. Anything you can do through the web interface you’ll also be able to do through the API, so we’re excited to see what kinds of new integrations you build.

The last few weeks we’ve been heads down on DocumentCloud work, so no new user-facing features this past week. Want to work on transparency tools of your own? Join us Tuesday nights in Cambridge as we work on our Code for Boston project, GovLens.

Ever notice a typo in an Assignments question? Get some feedback from folks helping you crowdsource analysis and wish you could incorporate it right away? You finally can: Assignment questions are now fully editable, with lots of backups in place.

On December 17, MuckRock, Code for Boston, and Hacks/Hackers are putting together a demo night to highlight a number of open source projects, including MuckRock’s newest government transparency tool, GovLens. Registration is free!

Last week the MuckRock team took a short week to celebrate Thanksgiving, so there are no new features. This week, we’ll be back at it, including at our weekly volunteer night Tuesday evening.