麻豆约拍

Hi I鈥檓 Jonathan Austin, product manager for 麻豆约拍鈥檚 elections coverage on .

The 麻豆约拍 is investing in its online political coverage to meet the challenges of the next four years. We took the first step on this journey in May, with this year鈥檚 local elections service called .

We overhauled our technology, introduced responsive design and, for the first time, . Together this provides the core set of new features that will change how 麻豆约拍 News covers politics online.

The 麻豆约拍鈥檚 specifically mandates us to promote understanding of the UK political system and the next four years will bring unprecedented political activity.

There will be elections in Europe, the UK, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Scotland will decide on independence and the UK could also vote on EU membership.

In a period of potentially massive change the 麻豆约拍鈥檚 role is more important than ever, which is why we are laying the foundations now, starting with our coverage of the local elections.

At first glance the results service looks similar to previous elections. But under the bonnet, everything was different.

• Our results data system was completely overhauled. Hosted on the cloud it was quicker, more reliable, able to handle more data and could publish to multiple platforms.
• Vote 2013 was the 麻豆约拍鈥檚 first responsive UK election result service. Just one election map and result table served all mobile, tablet and desktop users. Tom Maslen (technical lead, visual journalism) discusses the details in his Responsive News .
• For the first time we embedded semantic linked data on 麻豆约拍 News. Each result page contains 听pinpointing the location of the result. (data architect) discusses this in his .

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Looking to the future, our new results system will allow us to publish yet more data, exposing the behind the scenes buzz of the 麻豆约拍 election war room that you see on TV. We will also push responsive design further to develop visualisations even better suited to mobile viewing.

The application of Linked data in News is perhaps the most important innovation.

Politics today is complicated. The challenge is to create an online service that unpicks this complexity and elegantly displays the facts to voters wherever they may be.

Linked data will help us do that by enabling us to bring content together into what we are calling .

It builds directly on . You鈥檒l hear much more about that from our team in the months to come. Vote 2013 was the first step on this journey.

Jonathan Austin is product manager for Vote 2013.