congress - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/congress en Copyright 2009 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:12:49 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss YouTube.gov: U.S. Congress Comes to YouTube youtubelogo.jpgJust in time for the the opening of the 111th U.S Congress, YouTube today announced that is is now hosting two new channels that will make it easier to find video updates from U.S. Senators and Representatives. YouTube's Steve Grove promises that these channels will feature both floor speeches and behind-the-scenes footage.

Many Senators and Representatives already have their own YouTube channels, and these two new sites aggregate the content from these. Over time, we hope to see more elected officials on YouTube, though we also hope to see more than just clips from local TV news shows.

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youtube_house_jan09.jpgOne trend we noticed on a lot of these pages, however, was that quite a few Senators and Representatives decided not to allow comments on their videos. We would hope that more of our elected officials would value comments from their constituents.

Senate and House in HD

We do, however, commend Congress for using YouTube's new HD capabilities (even though some of the material in the intro video looks like it was shot with substandard cameras).

House vs. Househub

On a lighter note, the announcement on YouTube's blog links to this page, instead of the new page for the U.S. House of Representatives. You decide which one you find more interesting.

OpenCongress

If you don't want video, but hard facts about Congress, we recommend OpenCongress, which aggregates information about the details of business on Capitol Hills.

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/congress_comes_to_youtube.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/congress_comes_to_youtube.php News Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:21:20 -0800 Frederic Lardinois Capitol Words: What Your Congress Person Really Talks About congresspic2.jpgThe Sunlight Foundation's mashup site Capitol Words relaunched this week and now offers a very handy way to see what keywords are being used in the US Congress in general and by particular congress members. If you pay only passing attention to politics, Capitol Words is a great way to familiarize yourself with politicians in a hurry. It's a mashup of several different ways to search the Congressional Record and it's fun to use.

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]]> There's also a lot of interesting little tidbits that can be discovered using the site. Did you know that Republicans talk about Google far more often in Congress than Democrats do? That Oregon Republican Gordon Smith uses the word "hate" more than almost any other word?

As you can see from the images below, there are some shortcomings to the system. It only parses single words (hate is presumably connected to crime, for example) and you can't click on those words to see the context they were used in. For a much more full-featured service regarding congress, see our coverage of the Sunlight Foundation's fantastic site OpenCongress. See also Sunlight's lab project, Capitol Tweets (embedded, right), which consultant to the Foundation Nancy Watzman wrote about here. Check out the new CapitalWords.org.

Capitol WordsDefazio.jpg
Capitol Words GordonSmith.jpg

Cute old guy photo CC via Flickr user aflcio2008.

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/capitol_words_what_your_congre.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/capitol_words_what_your_congre.php Mashups Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:06:25 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick