(Mostly reviewing the site design here, because that concerned me the most.)<p>* What resolution are you designing for? I'm at a measly 1024X768 and still there's a _lot_ of screen real estate wasted.<p>* The logo at the top is quite dull - and the 'Be Heard' is near invisible. I think reading that tag line makes your site much more appealing, so make sure viewers see it.<p>* Much of the text there reads like full of weasel words. "Makes your content more powerful" sounds like utter marketing bullshit, which most people are tired of.<p>* The backdrop 'curtain' is beautiful. Good work there.<p>* Make it more obvious that the app is aimed at web publishers; the 'your readers' in the first paragraph hints at that, but it can be made more obvious.
I really like the site layout and colors. One thing: your css relies on Verdana; you should have a backup set of fonts, the last in the series being sans serif (something like font-family:Verdana,Arial,Luxi Sans,sans-serif;).<p>Cambria is pretty and popular now (vista font), but it is broke on my fedora 10 box. It doesn't get skipped, it displays badly.<p>I think the site is a cool idea. Do you intend to sell ads?
I work with mileszs on TellMyPolitician. We are trying to get feedback on how to better present this to publishers to entice them to place our button on their site. We eventually want to have our tool added to the likes of addthis and sharethis as well.<p>We would also love to here your opinion on the tool and how to make it better for users who are trying to contact their politician. Please let us know what you think. We are grateful for any feedback you have.<p>We originally submitted this to the apps for america contest with sunlight labs. We didn't do as well as we hoped, partly we feel, because we didn't do a very good job showing where our real value lies, which is as a button on news sites. We hoped our new design will better emphasis that goal.
I can see how this will result in politicians being flooded with a lot of emotionally-driven comments and rants and therefore be less productive than some coordinated effort which has a backbone of reasoning.<p>So you may want to consider a way to create something like <i>I just watched this video, I would like to hear more about the issues than this one video presented to me</i> and then contact their rep.
This reminds me of a UK site called WriteToThem.com (<a href="http://www.writetothem.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.writetothem.com</a>), formerly FaxYourMP.com, which provides an interface to contact your local MP automatically, either via e-mail or fax.<p>The people behind it later went on to form mySociety (<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/projects/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mysociety.org/projects/</a>) and sites such as TheyWorkForYou (<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/projects/theyworkforyou/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mysociety.org/projects/theyworkforyou/</a>), the official Government Petitions website (<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/projects/no10-petitions-website/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mysociety.org/projects/no10-petitions-website/</a>), among others.
TellMyPoliticianViaHandWrittenLetter.com would be more effective in my experience. Politicians might not feel guilty ignoring an email/e-communication, but a hand written letter, personally stamped is harder to ignore. A state of Maryland politician in a town hall meeting I went to made this point clear during our towns last NIMBY fight.
If I think about the pain points from the perspective of the person supporting whatever issue they are writing about a few ideas spring to mind.<p>If you could take your app one step further and actually connect the reader to their representative that would be great! Getting people to follow through is the toughest part when asking for this type of action. (I seem to recall a click to call service being reviewed here on HN a while back that could broker a two way connection like this.)<p>It would also be great to know how effective an article/person/web site/etc. was at getting people to contact their representatives. This information can be really important to smaller - grass roots - efforts.<p>An example: www.letcongressknowaboutlyme.com The site creator is trying to collect information via email.
I installed the plugin for wordpress, but it seems like the links it generates are redirecting incorrectly. Try
<a href="http://www.tellmypolitician.com/search/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.tellmypolitician.com/search/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.g...</a> - for me it redirects to <a href="http://tellmypolitician.comsearch/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com" rel="nofollow">http://tellmypolitician.comsearch/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google...</a>
Number of times I have contacted my politician since becoming of voting age: 4<p>Number of times I felt it did anything: 0<p>Number of times that I received a response which gave me the impression that at most, i gave them additional marketing information - how many people disagree with what's going on: 4<p>The last letter I sent, which was about Net Neutrality, went into a lot of detail on how their ideas for how to curb child pornography online would do nothing to actually deter it, how easily it is to get around their idea, how people involved in those markets make it around and aren't averse to using a little more tech, and how their ideas do threaten what does work on the net - it's openness. I made an item by item list of the perceived benefits of their change and why they won't work.<p>I received a generic response that my representative is working hard to get rid of child pornography on the net, and how this measure will help to do so, listing a number of the reasons that I had argued against while providing nothing more.<p>Conclusion: writing to politicians is as useful as writing to the mob with policy ideas.
The search functionality needs to be on the homepage, so I can immediately see the benefits of your product.<p>Also, I think you should be marketing the search functionality and not the button. Make it easy to find a politician's information and then make it easy to contact them and you will find more people will use your button.
getting people to traverse pages and fill out forms is tough. however there are so many politically relevant comments generated on the web yet they arent directed to politicians. tapping into this existing content production would be a great goal and integration would be the mantra to get you there. a button is not deep enough and doesnt meet the expectations of a modern web user.
A recommendation: consider state legislators as well. Perhaps in your next revision?<p>I only saw the 2 senators and 1 representative in DC. I didn't see any of my congresscritters in Denver (I live in Colorado).