Google announced google.org today. Dot org, as it's already being donned, will be the philanthropic arm of the commercial giant.
The seeclickfix team is more than excited to note that "improving the flow of information to hold governments accountable in community services" is one of their five main goals.
Check out http://google.org/inform.html to learn more about google's vision.

On Friday 1.11.07 we felt confident enough in seeclickfix to don it an alpha title and email our nearest and dearest to give it a whirl.
The core features to seeclickfix alpha are
1)The ability to search the map and create a ticket.
2)The ability to search the map and view an existing ticket.
3)The ability to add a comment to an existing ticket or close an open ticket.
4) The map zooms to your approximate physical location on load.

We are looking for all the feedback we can get, so please play with the site and let us know what you would like to see in Beta.

On Sunday 1.13.07 we discussed some of the feedback we received and the typically positive nature of the feedback led us to the decision that we should move towards beta.
What does seeclickfix Beta mean to us? For the most part it means that we will be putting Kam's coding ability to the test with lots of nifty new features.
What are these nifty new features? In alpha we feel that we adequately addressed the "seeing" and the "clicking", but the "fixing" has lots of room for growth.
What is "Fixing"? To us it is features such as:
1.Email notification to those concerned about a ticket(a ticket creator, editor or anyone who wants to sign-up).
2.Detailed reports that make it easy for an individual to view tickets that they are interested in.

On day 1 "Post Alpha" beyond the talk of what's to come we created a test environment to run our nifty new features and then we created one: email on creation of a ticket.

What's next?
We'll let you know.

Ben, Kam and I happen to live in New Haven and have a certain interest in our town for that reason. We were excited to hear that New Haven has launched a "web311" system.

From New Haven's website: "Effective Immediately New Haven residents can submit concerns, questions and requests directly to the appropriate department through our interactive Web 311 system. Follow the link to the Web 311 page where you can select from pre-populated options or submit your own original question, work request or concern. All residents who provide an email address will receive an immediate response with a tracking number to follow the progress of your request. A new innovation for a new year, make sure to utilize Web 311 for all your municipal (non-Police emergency) needs."

We were working on SeeClickFix before the New Haven site was announced so we're not doing this in response. In fact, it's great that New Haven is on the forefront here. Ben told me about using the system himself and said he was pleasantly surprised at the level of functionality. Kudos to who ever whoever put this together!

In the research I've done the vast majority of municipal website don't have any functionality like this. The overwhelming majority of people out there have no easy web-based service for drawing attention to local issues. At SeeClickFix, we're excited about changing the relationship between citizens, their governments and their neighboorhoods. We want to reach everyone in the US and ultimately beyond that. We're looking for massive scale. Come join us.

Here's an email we just sent out to some of our friends and the folks at MySociety. Let the Seeing, Clicking and Fixing begin. Hat's off to Kam and Ben for all the work in getting to this point.

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Welcome to the future of democracy. No this isn't an ad for a Presidential candidate. Rather, this email is to invite you to a preview of our new project.

SeeClickFix encourages residents to become citizens by participating in taking care of and improving their neighborhoods. We allow anyone to:

• See - see a non-emergency issue in your neighborhood
• Click - open a ticket describing the issue and what can be done to resolve it
• Fix - publicly report the issue to everyone for resolution

Please check out the website, open a ticket and give us your feedback on this early version. We know there are probably a million things we can do to improve it. You're getting a first look at our preview site so let us know what you think.

Then tell all your friends.

http://www.seeclickfix.com

Thanks,

Ben, Kam & Miles
seeclickfix@gmail.com