Andrew Hoppin, the New York State's Senate's Chief Information Officer has had his team pretty busy. I got an email from their Director of Onine Communications, Phillip Anderson (one of the first bloggers here at The Daily Gotham and formerly of The Albany Project) describing the project:

The new site is extremely simple, with a Google-esque single search field. One can enter a bill number, a keyword, a Senator, just about anything and it find reams of information as well as comments on ALL Senate legislation. That's not all though.

The site and search are also available by phone by simply speaking a term and even by SMS text.

Sounds not just awesome but about what the state has needed for eons. If we could only get something like this for New York City. Oh right! It took a DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR to put money into updating the state's digital infrastructure. With REPUBLICAN MAYOR BLOOMBERG? Unless that's money his company and media cronies get to pocket, keep hoping.

Read the press release after the jump:  read more »

more animals

We have a new server.

We're working out the kinks with it's configuration and more importantly pageload speed.

No, the path to the FILES folder still needs fixing. Images will still be broken for a few more hours.

We should be done with this mutha tonight.

Enjoy the LOLCat.

Yesterday I had a bit of fun at the expense of the Republican noise machines and their efforts to paint themselves already as a loud and marginalized minority in Capitol Hill. I was so caught up on the moment that I didn't blog about it until this morning but Kenneth Quinnell described it as a "Twitter Bomb" and has happy to spread the word :

Twitter Bomb

This wasn't my idea (although I came up with the cool name), I think Liza Sabater was the one who started it, but it's too brilliant to pass up.

Those of you who are on Twitter, send as many tweets as you can over the next few days with #dontgo in them. The conservatives are using this hash mark (like a tag) to spread misinformation about offshore drilling and their latest publicity stunt. What Liza and a few others started doing was to flood that hash with counter-commentary or irrelevant posts. Sort of like a google bomb, this can either disrupt what they're doing or, at the very least, annoy the crap out of them. We can all do this.

Whatever you're posting on twitter, try to fit #dontgo into it. And make sure you include the # sign, which is key.

If you aren't on Twitter, this might be the type of thing to get you into it.

And before I even start to explain, let me break down the lingo for you.  read more »

NowPublic is one of the fastest growing participatory news networks in the world. Time Magazine voted it last year one of the top 50 websites and The Guardian UK declared it's one of the top 5 most resourceful news sites in the world.

They have come up with a way to measure "news influence" on the web. They insinuated that traffic to one's site and/or blog is not one of the lead indicators, but how the people listed are connected to others (especially other influencers) through social media like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and others.

I honestly don't know what to makeof this list. I am at the same time amused and disturbed.

For one, Arianna Huffington comes in at #2 but I thought she lived in California, not New York City. Then there's the grand daddy of the New York blogeratti, Nick Denton, coming in at #34. Yet the most disturbing data point of this list is that I come in at #9.

Yup.

I am, as per NowPublic, one of the "top ten" news influencers in the New York new media market.  read more »

A "crowdsource" request is more than a request for help. I am asking all of you who read this blog to put in a little bit of your knowledge of this situation in the comments as part of my research for this story.

What I need from all of you is to give me whatever information you have about the Taxi Alliance strike that is going on right now and that will continue until Friday morning (that's when the scheduled 48 hours of the strike will end).

I could actually write off-the-bat a littany of reasons why the GPS system that is being rammed down the throats of taxi drivers is a really bad idea --not just from an ethical standpoint but also from a legal one; especially if we are talking about how this would impact not just the civil rights of drivers but of passengers as well.

But the one sticking poing in this situation is the division between the two unions. On one end is the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, led by a woman called Bharavi Desai. On the other end is the opposing union, New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, led by a Fernando Mateo.

I have spoken to Ms. Desai and have gotten background on their grievances. I have tried contacting Mr. Mateo to no avail.

This is what I am missing in this story :  read more »