Horses update and Google Buzz

Since last night almost 500 mails were sent in total from the 'Horse Ride' app.

According to the group's tweets at one point there were only 35 MEPs more left to convince, which is good progress, but there is less than a day until deadline. Too bad they do not update the list of signatories in real time.

Feel free to be skeptical about any such initiative but if only laziness prevents you from contacting MEPs try the app yourself and tell your friends who have Gmail :)

Among the positive replies from MEP's assistants I got a negative but very well written one from a UKIP member. It was quoted in the previous blog post's comments by another user if you are curious. I thought the UK only had the traditional Tory and Labour plus that crazy far right party as seen in the documentary 'All white in Barking' , but this UKIP looks nice (as political parties go) after a quick visit to Wikipedia. I did not look further as I am not living or voting in the UK.

I used Google Buzz a few minutes ago 'buzzing' this app's URL and had an immediate effect - one more user contacting MEPs. Looks much more useful to me personally than Twitter, I mostly want to share things with people I already know rather than build up a following of strangers as Twitter encourages.

Help ponies and unicorns!

Here's a request for some armchair activism that takes about 2 minutes.

The World Horse Welfare international charity is trying to get at least half of the members of the European Parliament to sign a written declaration that would be a step towards eliminating the long distance transportation of horses before slaughter. You can read more about it on their website linked above.

Using Google App Engine and with my Web 2.0 design skills cranked up to eleven I made an app that helps a Google Account owner quickly send an email to each representative of her/his country, because asking MEPs to sign is the most effective way of making them aware of Declaration 54/2009.

http://horse-ride.appspot.com/

The usual copy pasting of email bodies and Cc: lists from .doc and .xls documents takes a bit more time and likely constitutes a too high barrier for many except those really into a certain cause. There is a time and place for opportunistic activism as well, and it is nice to have tools automating the boring parts.

The deadline is tomorrow and a few dozens of MEPs still need to sign.