InSourceCode developers work on "Madison" with volunteers.

There wasn't a great deal of hacking, at least in the traditional sense, at the "first congressional hackathon." Given the general shiver that the word still evokes in many a Washingtonian in 2011, that might be for the best. The attendees gathered together in the halls of the United States House of Representatives didn't create a more interactive visualization of how laws are made or a mobile health app. As open government advocate Carl Malamud observed, the "hack" felt like something even rarer in the "Age of the App for That:"

Impressed @MattLira pulled off a truly bipartisan tech event on the hill. …

Today, the United States Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) unveiled a new National Broadband Map, which can be viewed at BroadbandMap.gov.

The map includes more than 25 million searchable records and it incorporates crowdsourced reporting. Built entirely upon Wordpress, the map is also one of the largest implementations of open source and open data in government to date.

Importantly, the data behind the map shows that despite an increase in broadband adoption to 68%, a digital divide persists between citizens who have full access to the rich media of the 2011 Internet and those who are limited by geography or means.

The launch of a national map of broadband Internet access fulfills a Congressional mandate created by the 2009 federal stimulus, which …

You open the letterbox. Inside are four interesting links covering politics, mobile business, Javascript, and MySQL:

1. The Minimal Compact (Adam Greenfield) -- a manifesto on "open source constitutions for post-national entities". Sample: "Of interest are alternatives that are designed from the beginning to: Ensure the greatest freedom for the greatest number, without simultaneously abridging the freedoms of others; Permit individuals with common goals and beliefs to act in their own interest at the global level and with all the privileges afforded nation states, even when those individuals are separated by distance; Provide robust resistance to attempts to concentrate power, and other abuses of same."
2. …

Silona Bonewald, the lady always in a hat (she says that it’s just become an extension of her). Describe her, by her tags: open government, open data, open standards, and databases.

(watch the video if your feed reader strips it out)

Silona’s the founder of The League of Technical Voters, which allows technical people to be more involved in voting process. As part of this, she created the Transparent Federal Budget, with Bill Bradley and Jimmy Wales.

On top of all that, she’s also the open source evangelist for grid.org. The …