Imagine a website where you can learn how your car rates in crash tests. What if there was an on-line community where thousands of vehicle owners shared their pet peeves? Imagine if all the government's automobile recalls, and investigations were available at the tip of your fingertips. This resource is very real and New Media Mill rolled it out on the home page of the Center for Auto Safety in November at www.autosafety.org.
Known during its development as "Dossier," this powerful tool mines information at lightning speed from at least four different government and non profit databases. It is backd by an impressive administrative interface that allows the staff at the Center for Auto Safety to edit and illuminate imported from disparate sources.
As always, New Media Mill constructed the tool with open source tools including MYSQL and PHP. That means in the future, CAS can turn to any competent programmer to modify and add to this module. No one is locked into a proprietary solution. None of that will matter to the use of Dossier; all they need is a make, model and year for a car or light truck.