links for 2010-01-23

The mySociety chaps must be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of a double whammy election year.

And in preparation, they have already launched Democracy Club where they are calling on volunteers to make the forthcoming elections "the most transparent ever".

I started this list when I spoke to students at a high school journalism conference on how it is possible to do everything you need as a journalist by using free products. Since then, this list continues to grow! It can be helpful for anyone trying to do good journalism on a tight budget.

Strategic positioning of volunteering widgets. Where you display a volunteering widget can help make the connection between volunteering and civic engagement. On web pages where you cover local civic news (such as school board meetings or city council meetings), experiment with placing a volunteering widget in the sidebar, or in a box positioned mid-story. It’s easy to treat it as a kind of public service ad, since widget code often comes in (or can be customized to fit) standard online ad dimensions.

Positioning a volunteering widget alongside your explicitly civic content (not just near stories about local volunteer efforts) implies the “you can take action” connection.

you can’t knock the collaborative effort behind Animal Finders, the service based out of Oxford that helps people to report lost and found animals. There’s even, of course, a Google Map.