I’ve added a couple of great new features to my General Assembly RSS Feed.
First, there are now per-chamber feeds, one for the Senate and one for the House.
Second, there are — dum dum da daaaa — custom feeds. Interested in following the status of all bills about transportation? Just open the page and enter “transportation” in the “Custom Feed” box in the upper right-hand corner, and hit “Go.” Boom — you’ve got a feed just for you, tracking transportation. Any topic that you can think of, just stick that in the Custom Feed box and you’ve got your very own RSS feed to follow bills only on that topic.
Go on, love me. I can handle it.
Waldo,
You da effin’ MAN!
When will this thing start washing my windows?
btw, wtf is up with Bob Marshall’s HR 187? Is this guy for real? Does your RSS have an “idiot psychopath” setting?
Where can I download the necessary software to use RSS … i’ve been reading blogs for a while but haven’t tried using RSS yet. Thanks!
Windows users, I’ve noticed, tend to use Bloglines. Mac users tend to use NewsFire or NetNewsWire.
Well done Waldo! This is a true gift to the Commwealth!
thank you for this – I set up a smart feed for transportation already in NetNewsWire … interesting stuff, no doubt, but I remain baffled as to what to do after I see an interesting bill.
This one for example is very interesting and could potentially (after a cursory reading just beyond the title) have an impact on our region.
Any thoughts?
The sheer volume of bills produced is phenomenal; almost enough to make me think our representatives need raises.
Waldo,
The RSS feeds are great. What a wonderful tool.
One quick thought/suggestion. Expand the ‘search’ tool to not only search bill description but also bill number. That way you could type HD300 and get the status. Just a thought
Thanks again, Waldo. Good stuff!
You just keep going and going ;-)
Jim Duncan wrote:
Well, one thing that you can do is blog about it. It might be a little off the beaten path for you, but I’ve found that helpful. I see what other people think about it, to find if my interpretation might be a little off. You can always call your Senator or Delegate to ask about the bill or, if you’ve made up your mind on it, ask him or her to support or oppose the bill.
That’s rather an oversimplification of the process, but you get the idea. :)
Jesse wrote:
You’re absolutely right, Jesse. I’ve seen a half dozen people have already tried doing that with the search function, and I can see how that would be really useful. I will add that to my to-do list, along with allowing people to track bills by committee.