Dublin Core

We attach Dublin Core metadata to our pages: view source on the Hansard prototype – it’s there at the top.
Is this metadata useful? Are we doing it right? Could we do it better?

Table formatting

We currently style tables in a slightly smaller font size than the main text on the Hansard prototype site. We’d really like to know if this is working.
Have you spotted a table that was incorrectly formatted? Do you find them readable and accessible? We’d be grateful if you could take the time to make us [...]

No more GeoNames, no more KML

We’re no longer recognising geonames in the Hansard text, nor are we producing KML files from sitting days.
Although it was an interesting experiment, it wasn’t useful enough in real world usage to enough people. Removing these experimental features means reparsing the source files is quicker.
We’re still working out what to roll out in terms of [...]

Generic Phusion Passenger Server

As part of the Find Your MP project, a member of our team created a Generic Phusion Passenger Server VMWare virtual machine instance at Elastic Server. Don’t worry if none of that made sense.
What this means is: we use Elastic Server’s – er – service to create servers for local and cloud deployment. We use [...]

CloudCamp London

The Find Your MP service is being built using ElasticServer’s tools for creating virtual machines. CohesiveFT, the people who run ElasticServer, will be appearing – along with others – at CloudCamp London this Thursday 13th November.
I’ll be there – please say hello if you know me!

Problems sorting search results?

I recently wrote about how you can sort search results on the Hansard prototype site.
We’re still getting reports of the functions not working as people expect them to. If you have a problem sorting search results, please let us know – we’d be particularly interested in what browser and operating system you’re using.

3rd November Deployment

We’ve just deployed the most recent build of the Hansard application code. We’ve also reparsed the source files and added some additional content, improved the parsing of some earlier pages and added in some previously missing volumes.
In addition to the usual collection of minor alterations and typos, publicly visible improvements continue, including:
* an extended and [...]

Workshop on Finding and Re-using Public Information

I and another member of the development team recently attended a ‘Workshop on Finding and Re-using Public Information‘, held at the London Knowledge Lab: “This informal, hands-on workshop will bring government information experts together with those who are interested in finding and re-using government information.”
The event was compered very ably by Rufus Pollock, with Jonathan [...]