Sam Smith of Disruptive Proactivity, mySociety and other projects has launched a new site this week that provides a comparison of what the UN, the WhiteHouse and No. 10 say on any particular subject. A fine example of how official information is being chopped up and re-presented in ways that Read more
MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between money and politics. We shine a light on campaign contributions and show their related legislative outcomes, which leads to a more informed public and election reform. This site uses a rich (please excuse the pun) database of campaign contributions and voting records in the California Read more
There already has been much said about the news that MPs have awarded themselves £10,000 to spend improving the public understanding of parliament. MySociety have added to the noise with a very sound request for MPs to sign a pledge on Pledgebank saying they will give £2,000 of the allowance Read more
MySpace are the latest web 2.0 giant to, errr, jump on the politics bandwagon. They’ve introduced a channel for 2008 US presidential hopefuls, called Impact. It’s not bad, although Rudy Guiliani needs to re-think his page as his profile is set to private. Only people who he’s added as a Read more
YouTube have launched You Choose ’08, a centralised hub for videos by US presidential hopefuls. There’s lot’s of interesting stuff on it. I was particularly struck by the fact that there have been over 1 million views of Barack Obama’s videos, and the next highest is Hillary Clinton with just Read more
Online community netmums has a very active forum. It also featuring all sorts of useful information and brings Mums together to reduce the isolation that full-time parenthood can cause. They have local groups and info as well as nationwide stuff. In many ways it’s a textbook example of a successful Read more
I’ve never been to Helions Bumpstead, but the small village of 400 souls in Essex managed to scoop the National Association of Local Councils Website of the Year Award 2006. Their site is here. It is fantastic. And it seems to be a very nice village too.
Tom Watson MP has given a great illustration of why politicians should blog. A constituent of his was having problems with a utility company. Tom used his blog to ask his network for information about the company. Unsurprisingly that post featured quite highly in Google searches for the company. The Read more
Leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, spoke at an NLGN meeting yesterday. His speech is reproduced in full here. I’d skip the first third where he talks history and skip to the parts where he outlines a refreshing apolitical view of the interaction between the governed and the Read more
Mary Reid has written a clear and simple post over at Headstar on how local e-Petitions differ from the worthy and headline grabbing Number 10 e-Petition site. "The main difference between our petitions (whether online or on paper) and those delivered to No 10 is that any petition placed before Read more