Category Archives: Projects

A better Right To Know on your phone

By Luke Bacon | Published: April 2, 2015

One in four people who visit Right To Know use a mobile device to do so. Unfortunately the site hasn’t been designed for them. They’ve been forced to zoom in on the page designed for desktop users. This made it hard to navigate, quickly understand what a page is about, and request information. When traffic […]

Also posted in Announcement, Development, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Scraping javascript sites with morph.io

By Matthew Landauer | Published: March 17, 2015

Just a quick post to let you know that it’s now possible to scrape javascript heavy sites easily using our scraping platform morph.io. This is really useful with Microsoft .NET web sites that often use complicated states stored in javascript with links simulated via javascript posts. Also, we recently discovered another more worrying example. The […]

Also posted in Announcement, Morph | Leave a comment

PlanningAlerts API changes

By Matthew Landauer | Published: March 2, 2015

Starting today, we’re beginning to roll out a change to the way the PlanningAlerts API works. We’re introducing API keys for all users of the API from low-volume non-commercial users to high-volume commercial users. We are making this change so that we can better measure and understand the way people are using the API as […]

Also posted in Announcement, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 ways to keep They Vote For You tickety boo

By Mackay Ash | Published: January 30, 2015

Keeping They Vote For You up to date can seem a little challenging. So, I’ve prioritised the three most important jobs to make it easier for people to get involved. If these three tasks are done regularly by enough people, the site will remain tickety boo (which is urban slang for ‘useful and current’). 1. […]

Also posted in They Vote For You | 1 Response

How to find what you’re looking for on Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: January 20, 2015

Following on from some recent queries on Twitter, I thought it was a good idea to sit down and provide a guide on some of the ways you can keep in touch with a request on Right to Know. Right to Know is a simple, free service provided by the OpenAustralia Foundation that takes the […]

Also posted in Presentation, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | 1 Response

Luke and Henare talk They Vote For You on FBi’s Backchat

By Henare Degan | Published: December 16, 2014

On Saturday Luke and I were really glad to be invited on FBi radio’s excellent Backchat programme. You can listen to the podcast here: Thanks for having us, FBi!

Also posted in Media, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Designing They Vote For You

By Luke Bacon | Published: December 8, 2014

For the last three and a half months I’ve been working with the OpenAustralia Foundation to design their latest project, They Vote For You. For me, as always, this was a broad interpretation of the role “designer”: digging into functionality, language, information architecture, appearance, feeling, right down to the purpose and direction of the site. […]

Also posted in Development, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How your MP votes, now on OpenAustralia.org

By Henare Degan | Published: December 3, 2014

OpenAustralia.org is ancient by internet standards. When it was created 7 years ago Twitter had just launched. There was no Instagram. Or GitHub. After all this time it keeps chugging along, still making our Parliament more accessible and understandable. Today is a rare and happy day when we add something new to the venerable site. […]

Also posted in Development, OpenAustralia.org, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How do you edit division summaries?

By Mackay Ash | Published: December 2, 2014

There are many ways to edit division summaries. Here, I’m going to explain an approach that’s worked well for me. Choose a division First, I choose a division to summarise. I like to choose divisions that are relevant to policies that I’ve created, such as For decreasing availability of welfare payments. This means I often […]

Also posted in They Vote For You | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Keep an eye on the policies that matter to you

By Henare Degan | Published: December 1, 2014

Believe it or not there is no easy to understand explanation of every vote in our Federal Parliament. That’s why They Vote For You relies on the hard work of people like you to summarise votes and research Policies so that we can all better understand how our MPs are voting on our behalf. Largely […]

Also posted in Development, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment