America Online Launches GovernmentGuide 2.0

America Online has launched "GovernmentGuide 2.0" (as opposed to the 1.0 version, which came out in 1999) at http://www.governmentguide.com

Turn your cookies on and be prepared for some confusion. When you get to the site you're invited to enter a zip code or a city and state. Once you enter them, you're taken to an intermediate page that says:

"You have entered [ whatever you enter] as your preferred location for federal, state and local resources for all categories of Government Guide."

Below that is a pre-ticked checkbox that says "Remember this location for ALL future visits to Government Guide."

Well, when I read that I thought I was being asked to permanently save the location, so I clicked cancel, thinking I would be taken to the information without the information being saved. That didn't work; the page just reloaded. What you're supposed to do, assuming you don't want to location to be permanently saved so it appears every time you visit the site, is untick the box and click Save. 

Anyway, once you get through that, you're taken back to the front page. Check the blue box on the right side of the page. You're invited to get information on federal and state elected officials and local information. The state and federal official pages are good; they include pictures of the elected officials. (Click on the picture for a page of information about the official, including e-mail, Web site, and background information.) There's also a table of recent Senate and House votes with information on how your representatives voted. 

The local information page is a bevy of state information, including license and tax information, "My State A-Z" (a link list for the state I looked at), and tax information (another link list.) Be sure to click on the "more topics" for additional information. The topics I browsed appeared mostly to be link lists and not all of them had locally-relevant information. 

I like this idea and I really like the way the officials page was presented. The rest of the site could be better. That first transition page asking if the location should be kept on the site permanently is confusing. The text is too small. The page on my monitor is jammed up in the first third of the screen. Give my eyes a break. 

Posted to Government