I am a programmer who has spent the last three years prototyping, studying, and thinking about what software we need.
There is a lot of software that is just now becoming possible to build and I have been extremely excited to be exploring just some of those possibilities. One thing that has challenged me has been trying to determine which projects are the most important, so that I could focus my effort on them. Additionally, running at the scale required (~350 million people in the US and ~8 billion people worldwide [though only about half currently have Internet access]) presents many challenges that do not have many well-known solutions. Much of my last year-and-a-half has been spent searching, finding, researching, and creating tools that might allow the software I have been envisioning to be created and distributed.
At the top of my list of must have software is a publicly-owned, -built, -supported, and -maintained database of everything our leaders have ever said or done that has been recorded. The database will be web-accessible, so that anyone can quickly and easily access and search the entire known-history of a politician. Using technologies that have just become available to the web, anyone will be able to contribute live audio and/or video streams to the database as well.
There is a lot to think about with this project and I look forward to having many discussions about it. Ask me anything!
~~Edit: my comment votes and replies have been rate limited since starting this AMA. My apologies if I don't get a timely response to you, it is only because I can't :/~~
Edit2: I've been able to make some more responses ~~(though I cannot vote on comments for ~23 more hours apparently)~~. If I'm not responding to you, there is a good chance it is because I am rate limited and waiting to be able to submit my response.
~~Edit3: I'm going to try to get some sleep. I'll be back when I'm up!~~
Edit4: I'm back and responding~~, but rate-limited again~~. I will get to your question soon!
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[–] WhiteRonin 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago
Excellent idea!
Not your program but to come here for getting ideas on what to do!
This could have started out with a giant database of speaches that are already in text format. Throw a search library at and bingo.
The next step is to find videos to match the speaches for people who are on tape.
Then to get fancy for speaches that are not on tape find a library that either converts text to speach.
Storage? Text can be done even on DO droplet or a cheap Amazon account. Going Amazon would allow you to scale up.
I've had ideas over the years that sat format because I did what you did ... Nothing much on the project.
[–] jsprogrammer [S] 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
One issue is getting the text of the speeches. Do you know of a good source (I don't, but haven't really looked). Due to the approaching election, I have been feeling that the primary interest would be in the most recent, real-time information.
I don't think the database can be built completely automatically. I think it will need to be built collaboratively by users. I want anyone to be able to contribute (though, there are concerns with data quality/integrity that need to be addressed).
I'd love to hear your ideas.
[–] WhiteRonin ago
I agree in the crowd source concept but the crowd needs a place to take their collective dump ;-)