Just looking at KildareStreet.com from John Handelaar . The site allows you to search through the archives of Dail debates and answers. Whats cool about this, is that you can keep a track of individual TDs and even of your own search terms.
So lets say, you are interested in political developments relating to 'child allowances' or 'property tax' for example, you can track these terms either by subsribing to email updates or subscribing to an RSS feed and get updated anytime this term gets discussed in the Dail.
You can also track the contributions of individual TDs and get alerted everytime they participate in dail sessions.
Each TD has a profile. You can view how often they have contributed to Dail sessions, even track the number of triple alliterative phrases they use, curiously.
According to John Handalaar
In the next few weeks you will also be able to inspect the past five and a half years of TD expenses, and the register of members' interests.
This is just a beta site at the moment. I'm not a usability/design expert, but would humbly suggest a few small design changes.
When I first started using the site, I went straight for the Dail debate links. Didn't actually notice the search box.
To my view, the search box should be the main focus of the home page.
I would give the search box more padding and remove all of the links below line 3 and replace with just 2 links to debates and answers, or possibly add extra tab on top for the latest debates and answers.
You could fill the empty space below with a video on how to get the most out of the site. This would not be necessary for bloggers, but would be useful for general public.
In the video, explain how to use search and how to sign up for email alerts or how to sub to rss feeds based on TD or search term.
Some might not agree with that, but I think that a lot of people don't get the subscription idea and also tend to be more comfortable with visual demonstration then textual demonstration.
A very timely application, I would say. Congrats to those involved.
