Metavid has been archiving congressional video, searchable using closed caption stream text, for 2 1/2 years in free and open formats and are using semantic mediawiki to handle rich metadata (eg spoken by). You can do simple searches by spoken text, speaker name, and complex semantic searches based on data we've scraped from govtrack, maplight and other related projects (show me speeches by people who have received more than x dollars from the sugar lobby...). All searches export as (Miro compatible) RDF and you can do dynamic requests of CMML metadata.
Speaking of Byron Dorgan, a friend of mine found this gem by searching for etch-a-sketch. He also turns up for other toys, radio flyer wagons, huffy bicycles, etc... http://metavid.ucsc.edu/wiki/index.php/Stream:Senate_11-14-05/0:42:09/1:02:09 We're in the process of implementing some new features and skin and should be launching the new site later this month. We could use some testers for the new interface, if any of you feel like helping out drop me a line or say hi in #metavid on freenode. Peace, A ps - looking forward to see more fc.students' thesis projects :^D. iirc causecaller was fred's, metavid was a collaborative thesis between michael dale and myself (we also started the now defunct ucsc fc chapter) that's grown into something else. Fred Benenson wrote: > Also important to note is GovTrack.us which is where OpenCongress and > other people (including parts of my data) get stuff from. They also > have a SPARQL query engine for their RDF store as well. > > > > On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Fred Benenson > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Yes, Cause Caller's db is "open" as its a Semantic Media wiki that > allows people to add politicians and all their relevant info. > There is also a built in API because it stores all the data as RDF > triples in XML that is accessible via Special:ExportRDF. > > Or in other words, you can have machine-readable access to the > database as doing stuff like: > > http://www.causecaller.com/wiki/Byron_L._Dorgan > > is: > > http://www.causecaller.com/wiki/Special:ExportRDF/Byron_L._Dorgan > > > Good luck! > > F > > > On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Kevin Driscoll > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Hey Herbert, > > This is excellent stuff. Perhaps we should do a blog post > collecting > participatory politics web tools like Nelson did for video. > > Some more useful sites along these lines, > > Open Congress (the grand poobah of this ish) > http://www.opencongress.org/ > > Cause Caller (Fred's project!) > http://www.causecaller.com/ > > Kevin > > > > > On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Samantha (Herbert) Tanzer > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Hopefully this is within the FC purview.... > > > > So, election season is coming up, which brings ones of my > favorite > > topics to the forefront - open-democracy/e-government. > > > > Anyway. A nifty, nifty set of government web services is > from the UK > > based MySociety.org, which has a bunch of open-source databases, > > including WriteToThem.com which is a comprehensive listing > of all your > > government, from township to parliament, sorted by zip-code. > There is > > no comparable US data source, despite the creator (whom I've > met) > > encouraging us to steal his stuff. > > > > There might be soon. I met a David from America Solutions > (yes, it's > > Newt Gingrich's 527 with that "Drill Here, Drill Now" > program, but > > that doesn't mean they can't otherwise be useful) at my > internship, > > who is organizing a similar project. He plans to create a > similar > > database, not by amassing the data themselves, but by > creating a wiki > > for people to fill in and turning that into a zip-code > searchable > > database. I don't know if the framework will be open > source, but I > > hope so. I plan to ask him about that. > > > > I'm going to be communicating with him about this and to see > what > > about e-government projects they're working on. Is there > any interest > > here for involvement? What other e-democracy projects do > you know of > > or want to see? > > > > The full list of MySociety projects is here: > http://www.mysociety.org/projects > > FixMySteet.com is probably the niftyest, in my opinion. > > > > Love, > > Herbert. > > _______________________________________________ > > Discuss mailing list > > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > > > > > > -- > )_)_)_)_)_)_ > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
