So everyone in Washington is planning on throwing a party to celebrate Mr. Obama’s Inauguration. We decided to do it differently. As two companies that help people and organizations navigate the complexities of our nation’s capital (public affairs, legal services, issue advocacy, media and public relations, etc.), we thought we’d office this service on a different level: actually help you navigate the city. And the 2009 Presidential Inauguration App was born.

Qorvis designed the app and worked with our partner PointAbout to develop it. (As a fully-integrated communications firm, Qorvis has in-house capabilities to do this efficiently and effectively…) The application has evolving content—which will include RSS feeds on inauguration events and services and other related information, closer to the event date. Plans also include a polling component to gauge real-time user sentiment about the Inauguration. FortiusOne will be analyzing and visualizing the results through their GeoCommons platform.

Current services include:

• Zagat Restaurant Guide
• Walking directions to the Inauguration
• Metro train and bus schedules
• News and alerts
• Free Wi-Fi zone locations
• Local weather, traffic, and news
• Starbucks locations
• ATM-bank search

The Washingtonian blog covered the news first, and you can read our press release here.

The first iteration of the app is now available in the iTunes App Store. A Blackberry version will soon follow. Development of a version for the Google phone “Android” is slated for early January 2009. More news to follow, please check here for updates.

To all of you who read the Qorvis blog I want to invite you to take another look. I’ll be including here an increasing number of updates about the events and goings-on at the Q.

Please note: I won’t be doing this to fill space; rather, it will be more of an exercise in telling the Qorvis story. There is a lot happening at Qorvis, and in my estimation it is worth sharing.

So to begin, I want to thank everyone who joined Qorvis and Beam Global Spirits & Wine for our Election Night party (see pics), which featured an appearance by now President-elect Barack Obama (courtesy of Madame Tussauds, of course). We welcomed more than 500 friends and colleagues to Qorvis’ new office space.

And, it seems many from the party stayed on for the Qorvis Morning-After Webinar with Patton Boggs. More than 300 attendees chose Qorvis for the first word on the impact of the elections. We look forward to holding another one soon to discuss policy issues during the First 100 Days of the Obama Administration.

In other Qorvis/election news, at about 5:30 p.m. on Election Night the Qorvis-led Wireless Innovation Alliance of tech innovators and public advocacy groups secured government approval of a revolutionary broadband technology called “white spaces.” This victory, the latest public affairs success for Qorvis, represents one of the biggest breakthroughs ever for wireless communications in the U.S.

On an additional note, we have a some new clients to announce, including the Society for Human Resource Management, YMCA, and Vitol, plus, a new hire: Karen Hanretty, Communications Director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, to strengthen our bipartisan team.