Saturday, April 23, 2011

FCC Launches New "Beta" Website


The FCC has opened access to its new "Beta" website, the first major overhaul of the agency's website in a decade. Once you get past all the buzzwords in the announcement about it ("architected with a more intuitive user experience … the reimagined FCC.gov is proof that … dot-govs can look, feel and run like dot-coms."), you'll find some interesting features, including blogs by Commission staffers and a very cool "spectrum dashboard" that lets you search for the allocations of various services or "browse" by frequency.
Unfortunately, the architects of the new site appear to believe the radio spectrum begins at 225 MHz and we haven't been able to figure out how to search for amateur allocations, even though they're listed on the chart. Check it out yourself at <http://beta.fcc.gov/>.