The team from OpenCongress has done it again: added another really useful new feature “My Political Notebook” (MyPN) where, as their tagline says, you can save and share your favorite political content from around the web. MyPN gives you a new way to easily grab news articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, and more and save them to your personal page in seconds. By building your own unique notebook you can easily follow all the things you’re interested in the world of politics. As David Moore, OpenCongress’ executive director, writes in an email announcing their new feature, “My Political Notebook gives you a new place to save and share what’s really happening in Congress.”  (I was so obsessed with adding items there late yesterday that I ran out of time to write this post!)

You have to be registered with OpenCongress to get started. Once there, check the upper right-hand corner of the screen to find the link for “My Political Notebook.”

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(cross posted from OHP)

OpenCongress has just released a votes comparison tool.

This strikes me as a big step forward. Several elements of well-coordinated data have been combined to produce something much more useful than the sum of its parts.

A well structured database of bills, votes, Members of Congress, and notable bills (see the “Hot” icon?) allows for a quick and dirty comparison of voting records on bills that are easier to evaluate. The comparison also highlights the differences between selected Members’ votes, allowing for a quick evaluation of differences.

While legislative intent is still hard to boil down to individual votes, tools like this one from OpenCongress go a long way toward turning a jumble of legislative information (and mis-information) into something comprehensible.

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A large contingent of Sunlighters are heading to Austin this week for Netroots Nation, the 3rd annual gathering of Kos bloggers and others in the progressive blogosphere (that used to be called Yearly Kos). (Get ready for all of the #nn08 hashtag tweets!)

Try to connect with us if you are there. You can find us in the exhibit hall (along with folks from the Center for Responsive Politics,  National Institute on Money in State Politics and OpenCongress.org. We’ll be right up front, across from MAPLight.org’s booth, so you can’t miss us.

Sunlight colleagues are on a number of panels. Start your Friday morning off with one that is chaired by Sunlight consultant Micah Sifry, as he and his panelists discuss how the next administration can leverage the Web and the participatory transparent culture that goes along with it, to make our government work better.

That panel should inspire you to help improve our government. Join Sunlight’s John Wonderlich to find out how. He and OpenLeft blogger Matt Stoller will give you the scoop on the future of advocacy and what political influence should look like in a networked social environment. Their panel, “Lobbying Congress: Advocacy and Digital Empowerment” will be held on Saturday@ 1:30 p.m.

Right after that panel, come learn more about how to use the sites created by our ‘transparency posse’ during our workshop, “Insanely Useful Tools You Can Use to Keep Track of Congress and State Lawmakers” on Saturday @ 3pm. This will be moderated by Sunlighter, Paul Blumenthal.

While you’re in Austin, you might want to test how your political trivia smarts compare to Paul’s during a “Pub Quiz” organized by Dkos front pager AdamB to be held during Happy Hour on Friday at the local Champions Sports Bar. (Stop by our booth for more details.) Make sure to “study” beforehand by playing our new PoliQuiz game. We’ll release all of our answers in API format so they can be mashed up with relevant data. What else would you expect?!

See you in Austin!

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PDF on Day Two is great. Great morning presentations by Lessig and Zittrain (two folks whose work I already know) and two excellent ones from folks who are new to me – Doug Rushkoff and Morley Winograd.

We had a great press briefing yesterday, showing off our Lawmaker Profiler and the work of OpenCongress.org and Metavid. Several good stories resulted (Links coming) Today, Speechology.org, a Sunlight mini-grantee, is launching their site.  Founders Dan and Matt created Speechology as a community-based fact checker for campaign season television. They’re archiving every debate and campaign TV ad, and inviting the public to cut through the candidates’ rhetoric and call them out when they fudge facts. Their aim is to create a viewer’s guide for this election year and beyond.

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