This is a great video on YouTube by Michael Wesch of Kansas State University. I’ve seen it linked to in lots of places, but my main reason for repeating it here was to test the use of the WordPress Video Plugin, which seems excellent.

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Having added the various sets of new links to LGSearch, aside from keeping the list of links up-to-date, I think LGSearch is pretty much fully developed with what’s available from Google Coop right now.

I still wonder, though, whether there should be a further way of presenting information found on the web with a human element of quality control, whether by rating web pages or documents as to their usefulness or some other means.

I don’t think I could build this sort of functionality into LGSearch itself, but it could be stored in a subsite off there easily enough.

I had a go previously with an open source package called (I think) Scuttle which was in effect a de.icio.us clone but which lacked robust user accounts and spam filtering, with disastrous results. Another option might be to use Pligg, which is a digg clone, which features accounts and voting on links and might be the better option.

I’d like to know whether people here can see the value in having a human-determined list of good quality web based material that could be searched, and what ideas people have with regard to how it might work, whether using Pligg or not.

Also, would people in any great numbers use such a service? I think the benefits are significant, but you need people in early to make that obvious.

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The BBC points out a new site the Liberal Democrats have set up to discuss their manifesto for the next election.

MP Steve Webb, running the web-based project, said it would help frame “detailed policy”, but that the party would retain its core principles.

Subjects discussed so far include whether to scrap short prison sentences and how to reform inheritance tax.

Members of all parties were “fed up with being taken for granted”, said Mr Webb, who is writing the manifesto.

The Liberal Democrat Manifesto Consultation site is open to the 67,000 party members, with 20,000 being emailed this week.

The aim is to produce an online manifesto at least several months before the next general election, which has to take place by 2010.

Even better - the site is running WordPress!

Technorati Tags: liberal democrats, manifesto, steve webb, wordpress

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Yep, a stackload of more sites have been added to LGSearch, making it a very useful thing indeed. The sites added come under the labels:

• Police and Fire
• Health
• LG Related

And as with the Councils and Central Government sites, you can specify which ones you want to appear in your search.

As always the list of sites is on the wiki. Please check for yours and let me know any corrections, or any I have missed.

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The first major update has been made to LGSearch, the now-inaccurately described local government search engine.

The sites for central government departments have now been added. You can find a list of the sites included on the LGSearch project page on the wiki.

You can still just search for local government stuff though, if you want to. When you run your search, you’ll notice a couple of extra links at the top of the page:

Just click which type of sites are the ones you want to appear, and hey presto!

Soon I’ll get round to added police, health and fire authorities too.

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I’ve changed things around quite a bit on this blog, partly in an attempt to force myself to update it a little more often.

I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, 2.1, which does various things in a much nicer way for me, though readers don’t get a great deal more out of it. I’ve put a new theme in place to make the site look a bit nicer, and installed some quite cool plugins which add some extra functionality.

At some point I’ll do a post on setting up a WordPress blog, with information on what all of this stuff does.

I have killed LGKnowledge for now - the open source project behind the platform I was using seems to have stalled. I’ll keep my eye on it, because I think this could be a really useful tool in the future, once the spamming problems are sorted out.

In the interests of saving diskspace, I’ve also deleted the forum on here. I was never going to have the time to really make it work well, and there is never anything more depressing on a site than to see a forum with no posts in it! So, I will concentrate my efforts on this blog and LGSearch. I’ll keep the wiki in place as it’s a useful way of storing documentation.

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