Web 2.0 and Mitt Romney

What Mitt Romney is doing with Jumpcut is phenomenal and started me thinking of how we might present applications in the future by letting citizens create their own. If we could just provide the building blocks with services that can be connected and customized in whatever way the user wanted to put them together could be extremely powerful. For example, what if rather than continually searching for a campground, the service could be linked (along with other services, public or private) to the users calendar along with preferences and when there was availability that matched between the users calendar and availability a hold is put on for a limited time when the citizen could confirm. What if services and applications could be pieced together for a citizen the same way video clips, text, and audio are remixed in Jumpcut? I don't know if this is the best example of what I'm trying to portray, but I think there are probably countless others.

Online Town Meeting in Utah

The State of Utah Legislature set up a blog to conduct an "online town meeting" for the traditional August visits. Over the years, the legislature has used the month of August to visit different places and functions. We are in day two of their 3-day visits which is supported by an online meeting where citizens can direct questions to the legislators. Not all questions are answered on the site itself, some are responded to in individual legislator blogs, such as that of Steve Urquhart, one of the leaders of the movement toward more open government. I am impressed by their efforts to do this and the number of legislators that have participated.

Geographic Hazards

The Utah Geological Service has done a great job putting new services and information on the web. I just discovered that you can query a historical landslides database. More current information and reports can be found here. I was over in Cedar Hills last night and it looks like they are building even higher on the hills where the 2005 slide occurred. Governor Huntsman commissioned a geologic hazards working group following those slides and it looks like they are ready to present their final recommendations.

It's Official

Secretary Leavitt made his initial post today to his new blog. I'm hoping that he can keep it up. He qualifies it as an experiment right now because of potential "time management" issues. I've had a few of those myself over the years since I started blogging (May 2002) and have had a few prolonged periods of absence during that time, so I can imagine how challenging it will be for the Secretary to keep it up. I hope he can, because he has so many great insights to share.

Secretary Leavitt to start a new blog

The Department of Health and Human Services put up a new web design this week. I wish they had RSS feeds with their news items. The site announces that Secretary Leavitt will start a new blog next week.

The FDA, on the other hand, which is part of HHS does a pretty good job with podcasts and RSS.

The latest issue of import is that being worked on by the Working Group on Import Safety which is looking at the safety issues associated with importing food and other goods.

Latest News about the Collapse of the Crandall Mine in Central Utah