We mentioned on Monday that we have been hard at work strategizing to find the best ways to enrich your experience at Politics4All.  So today, we are excited to let you know that we have added a new feature to make things a little more social and extend your community. We want you to be able to share your other social networks with the community at Politics4All, so we have created a place on your profile for you to do just that.

So let’s get started….when you login into Politics4All you will notice under settings we have added a new tab: Social Web.

Click on that tab and you will see you can add one or all of the services listed.  It’s really simple: just enter the link to your profile in the space provided, click add the link, and your profile will be shared.

We would love to hear from you.  Are there other features you would like to see us add to make things more social?  Have we left off any social networks you’d like to share?  This is your community and your input is important, so drop us a line and let us know what you think.

Technorati Tags: candidates, citizens, community, political groups, social media

Discussions

In addition to publishing a blog on Politics4All, groups can now enable the new Discussions feature which allows all group members to post items for discussion. While only group members may post topics in a group’s discussions area, any logged-in member of Politics4All can participate in the discussion. An option also exists for group admins to restrict topic posting to admins only.

Discussions settings can be managed on the Account tab in the group’s Settings area:

Group Blogs

With the addition of Discussions to allow for discussions and debates, the group blog is now free to serve as the official communications channel of the group, for posting articles and announcements, or providing more information about the group itself.

Blog Post Import

Another addition is the ability for groups to import blog posts from an external blog into the group’s Politics4All blog. This has been available to individual member accounts since March 2009. This post on Blog Post Import contains instructions for activating and using this feature.

Rich Text in Group Positions
We added a rich text editor to the Group Positions entry form. Groups can now include links to articles, stories, or other online text advocating positions they support.

Technorati Tags: political groups

This week, legislation from 10 U.S. States join our Bill Tracker. Legislation from Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington can now be tracked, discussed, and voted on.

We will be adding more States and non-U.S. Countries in the coming weeks and months.

Technorati Tags: bill tracking, state legislation

Today we’re launching our Political Feed Reader, a custom, web-based RSS reader (similar to Bloglines or Google Reader) for the personal, non-commercial use of our site members on their MyP4A home pages.

Located in the right sidebar of the MyP4A home page, the Feed Reader allows site members to select a variety of political news feeds from an initial list of over 20 feeds.

Selecting Feeds
Selecting feeds is as simple as clicking the checkboxes beside the feed descriptions you want to receive, then clicking the “Update Subscriptions” button at the bottom of the list to save your choices:

Reading and Sharing News
Headlines for stories from selected feed “channels” (online news, political parties, etc.) will be displayed with a short summary of the article, and the feed will refresh automatically while the site member’s MyP4A page is open in a web browser.

Clicking the story headline will take site members to the full story on the original site, and clicking the “Blog This” link will allow users to share links to the original stories through their Politics4All Blogs.

In addition to automatically refreshing these external news feed lists, site members’ “Recent Activity” and “Latest” tab content will also be refreshed automatically.

Site members are invited to submit requests for news feed sources not currently offered, and we will do our best to accommodate them as we continue offering resources to help our members build and manage their political lifestreams on Politics4All.

Technorati Tags: news feeds, RSS

 

This week we rolled out our first U.S. state bill tracker: Georgia. As with Congressional legislation, State bills can be searched or browsed by anyone.  Additionally, site members can track, vote, comment and use the advanced bill searching and filtering tools.

Over the next few months we will continue to push out state legislation through our legislative platform. In addition to U.S. States, we’re also working on adding more countries to the platform starting with Canada and Australia.

With all of the above, we hope to do more than simply provide a means to look at a bill. Our broader concern is to provide site members with helpful and interesting ways to discover how lawmakers around the globe address common issues through legislation, and combine that knowledge with our site tools for information sharing and mobilization.

Some political leaders say they want transparency in government. Some are actually sincere about this statement. We want to take transparency a step further. We want to provide transparency with communication, and connection. Seeing what is being done in government is one thing. Seeing what is going on and being able to express your thoughts with others about it is a much different ballgame.

View bills from the Georgia State Legislature

Technorati Tags: bill tracking, legislation

Today we’re launching the beta version of our new Blog Post Import feature which enables any Politics4All site member who maintains a standalone blog site to republish political posts through his or her Politics4All blog. Benefits for our members include the following:

• write once, publish twice
• imported posts are open to voting & commenting
• post announcements will appear in your followers’ MyP4A activity feeds
• each imported post includes a link back to the original post on your blog site

Contact us to request a beta invitation.

How It Works

Requirements

• Politics4All account
• original blog post content with political relevance (see Blog Import Terms of Service)
• ownership or permission to republish original posts (see Blog Import Terms of Service)
• valid RSS or ATOM feed of original posts

Even if your original blog site contains a mixture of political and non-political posts, you can use your blogging software’s tagging or categories feature to create a politics-only feed (see instructions below under “Creating a Politics-Only Feed”).

Getting Started

Note: currently requires beta invitation

Go to your Politics4All blog and click your blog’s Settings link. From the Blog Settings page select the Import Feed tab:

From the Import Feed tab, enter a valid RSS or ATOM feed URL and Blog Homepage URL in the fields provided:

Next, accept the Terms of Service and click the button to import your feed:

We will then validate and the feed and import your posts going back one month and up to 20 posts.

After the initial import, we check the source blog periodically throughout the day and automatically import your new posts. Imported content includes the following:

• post title
• content (either the entire post, a summary, or a link…whatever is included in  your feed)
• timestamp of original post
• tags
• link to original post

Supported Blog Software

Thus far this has been successfully tested with feeds from Wordpress, Blogger/Blogspot, LiveJournal, Newsvine, and Textpattern. However, most valid RSS or ATOM feeds from any blog software should work.

Write Once, Publish Twice…Distribute (Almost) Everywhere!

Because we already provide “share-out” links for members to share content through Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Buzz!, etc., bloggers can use our platform to more easily share their published content through other social networks.

Creating a Politics-Only Feed

This is only necessary if you publish non-political posts on your standalone blog.

Most popular blogging software supports tagging and/or categories and allow people to produce feeds featuring only content with a specific label, tag, or category. Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, and Textpattern have all been tested successfully in this area. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1

Create a tag that you only use for posts that contain political content. The obvious choice for this tag would be “politics” , but it really doesn’t matter so long as that tag is used only for posts that contain political content.

Step 2

Determine what the web address to your politics RSS or ATOM feed should be. If you’re not sure, find your blog software below for political feed url examples that should work for you in most cases. If your software isn’t listed below, check with your blog software’s support site, or contact us for help.

NOTE: The following RSS and ATOM feed url examples assume your political tag, label, or category is “politics.” The “<bloghomepageurl>” should be replaced (in most cases) with whatever the web address of your blog’s homepage is.

WordPress ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feed/atom?tag=politics

WordPress RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feed?tag=politics

Blogger ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feeds/posts/default/-/politics

Blogger RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feeds/posts/default/-/politics?alt=rss

LiveJournal ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/data/atom?tag=politics

LiveJournal RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/data/rss?tag=politics

Textpattern ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/atom?category=politics

Textpattern RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/rss?category=politics

Technorati Tags: blogging

One of the things we like to see is people discussing, debating, and working with and against each other to figure things out, so we’ve enabled commenting on polls in order to provide more opportunities for sharing thoughts and opinions. Many great debates over the last few months have centered around blog posts and Congressional bills, and we hope that commenting on polls adds an interesting dimension to participating in polls and to the free exchange of ideas that we all believe in and enjoy.

Technorati Tags: polls

Polls

Need to gather a little bit of feedback on an issue, or just find a new way to bring attention to it? Create a poll. Now, individual site members can create custom polls linked from their profile pages. This feature was previously only available to groups and campaigns.

To create a Poll, Just choose the Polls link in the Citizen Links box on your MyP4A page

click the New Poll link

and you’ll be taken to a page that allows you to set up a poll:

“Blog On P4A” Bookmarklet

Another new feature, the “Blog on P4A” Bookmarklet, makes sharing relevant political content on the web much easier. The bookmarklet allows those with Politics4All accounts to easily clip a portion of a story on another website and blog about it on Politics4All.

First, ADD the bookmarklet

The bookmarklet can be added by going to Your Settings > Tools and following the instructions under Bookmarklet:

Next, USE the bookmarklet to share news and other content

To use the bookmarklet while you’re reading an article on another website, use your mouse to highlight a small portion of text you wish to quote

click the Blog On P4A button in your toolbar or in your Favorites

and you’ll be taken to a new entry in your Politics4All blog, with the quote, link, and title already filled-in:

If you’re not currently signed into Politics4All, you’ll be prompted to sign-in before the process can be completed. Once on the new blog post page, you can edit the title or quote if you wish, and add your own comments before posting. Please follow all copyright and fair-use requirements when quoting from other websites.

Congressional Roll Call Votes

Roll Call Votes for the Congress are now being fed into Politics4All. We’ve currently got the votes for the 110th Congress, and will be aggregating the 111th Congress on a daily basis when it convenes in January 2009. For bills that have been voted on, the vote information is linked from the Recent Votes section on the bill’s Status tab:

In this case, following the House Roll Call Vote #681 link will bring you to the vote results page for #681:

Check it out and let us know if you have any problems using these features.

Technorati Tags: bill tracking, polls

In addition to searching for Senate and House bills using the main site search tool, we have added Bill Finder to the Bill Tracking pages that allow you to browse by bill topic, search by keyword or bill number, and limit your results to a particular chamber (House or Senate). 

There is also a “tag cloud” (an unordered list of the subjects of the more popular bills search/viewed) beneath the bill finder. The larger the text, the more popular that subject is in our Bill Tracker.

All site visitors can use this search and browse tool. However, joining the site as a member adds a few extra advantages.

As a site member, you have several additional options to vote on, make comments on, or join discussions on bills. You can also follow (track) the bill. When new comments are made on bills you’re following, updates appear in your activity feed and, when the 111th Congress is called to session in 2009, changes in a bill’s progress through the legislature will also be tracked and you will be notified when such changes occur.

As always, all site members who have entered their state and Congressional district information in their Account Settings will be able to link directly from their MyP4A home page to the sponsored/cosponsored bills and legislative activity of their elected officials.

So check out the improved Bill Finder today and let us know if we can improve the experience in any way.

Technorati Tags: bill tracking, legislation

One of our primary goals here at Politics4All is to greatly simplify the effort required by citizens to remain up-to-date on the activities of their elected officials. This week we gave Politics4All site members the ability to follow, vote on, and discuss Congressional legislation in a way we hope is simple, helpful, and informative.

Bills in our system can now be followed just as other site members, groups, and campaigns. Members following bills will receive new comment updates in their activity feeds on their MyP4A home page. When the 111th Congress convenes in January, Politics4All will track the progress of new bills through Congress and update their status (on the bill display pages and activity feeds of members following them).

As an added benefit, members who have entered their political district information in their user accounts will automatically be informed when their senators and representatives introduce or cosponsor new legislation.

The initial version of this feature includes House and Senate bills aggregated from the Library of Congress, with resolutions, amendments, and much, much more to come in the weeks and months ahead.

Please check out these new features and let us know what you think!

Take me to Bill Tracking>

Technorati Tags: bill tracking, legislation