Just a quick post to keep those of of you interested in mySociety in the loop with our activities at the moment.

New Things You Can Use Now

1. Email or RSS alerts when people report problems in your ward or your council via FixMyStreet. Ideal for councillors, people on resident’s associations, or anyone just concerned about what’s breaking and being fixed in the area right near their home.

Have a go – it’s ace when the mail comes dropping in from just down your road.

2. The Queen on TheyWorkForYou

Is this the first monarch with her own RSS feed? Would anyone really care if she was?

New Projects Coming Up

We have three major projects under way at the moment, and unusually
only two of them involve us building websites.

1. The Freedom of Information Filer and Archive website is under construction. Aiming to make it easier to make freedom of information requests, and easier for people to find what other people have found out, this is being build mainly by Francis. We’re having lots of discussions about design and features right now, and if you have anything to contribute please either get in touch or leave your ideas on the wiki page.

2. Local Email Groups Near You – an attempt to record the location of hyper local email groups and local forums and websites and to share that information on lots of other sites. Why go blindly hunting for advice on a plumber if there’s already an email list that covers your street? This is going to be a rare international project for us, so if you’re outside the UK and interested in community Internet usage, please get in touch.

3. The 90 Day Project – mySociety’s first lobbying exercise, trying to encourage parliament to take some steps to improve the way it publishes information, and to improve the tools that MPs have to handle mail from their constituents.

There’s lots and lots more too, but we can’t blow all our surprises in one go, can we?