I can’t of course defend some actions by some companies like Microsoft that have engaged in anti-competitive and other dubious practices however the actions of these specific companies is not a reason to switch everything to open source.

Mr Stallman says “Gates didn’t invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It’s wrong, no matter who does it.”

It’s wrong? What a load of rubbish.

I’ve no issue with open source software - there is excellent software produced under GPL not least WordPress which this very blog is built on! However whether a piece of software is open source is up to the owner and therefore stating that it is wrong is none of Stallman’s business.

If I spent a large amount of my time on a software project I reserve the right to have the sole rights to the source code. If I choose to make it available to general community then again it is my choice.

I’ve got to say my personal belief depends entirely on what the project is. If it is a project that I’m interested in and would just like to share my ideas with others I may well make it open source. However if I felt that it had commercial value and there is a market for it then I’d make sure it was tied up like a kipper so I can maximize the potential of the product for sale.

Wrong? No just common sense for a lot of people.

So free software or proprietary software is a choice for developers and also the end user. The Free Software Foundation is a noble idea and if you are happy with it that’s fine but certainly don’t push it on people that don’t agree.

I understand the amount of information on the site is massive but surely it could be organised better? Public sector websites of course have strict targets to reach with regard to website accessibility but this is no excuse for a poor design. After all if Birmingham is, as I seem to remember, the largest council in Europe surely it should be able to throw the resource at the website. I’ve given up numerous times trying to find information I need - maybe I’m just lazy but I don’t think I’m the only one to have this problem. An extra bit of investment here might well see costs being reduced elsewhere as the website will be doing it job properly.

Just to prove this challenge isn’t unobtainable take a look at Woking Borough Council’s website which does a much better job of it mixing an excellent blend of simple design, accessibility with usability for visitors.

To be fair to Birmingham City Council they aren’t the only public sector website that fails in fact from my experience the successes are in the minority. However projecting Birmingham as a great city has got to be done across the board and I believe currently this is a bit of a let down.

Their mission statement is “Promoting a vision of the future that assumes accessible web design to be, relevant, obtainable, and not at odds with successful business practice or good visual and usable design.”

A noble aim but their website isn’t exactly inspiring design wise. As they are trying to dispel the false belief that an accessible website can’t be pleasing to the eye you might have thought they’d spend a little more time on their website design? There are even formatting issues in Internet Explorer 7.

It does however look like members know their stuff and I’m pleased to see membership is selective - you must prove your accessibility expertise before joining.

I understand when it comes to advertising there has to be small print saying people won’t always receive the top speed mentioned depending on time of day, quality of line, etc. but I’m not sure why it isn’t followed through to fair trading after you sign up.

There is a larger issue here altogether meaning that ISPs are misselling broadband entirely. If I get a 8Mb/sec line I expect to get close to that stated speed at some point in the day. If it never gets above 2Mb/sec surely I should be charged the cost of a 2Mb/sec line? OK there are various factors that effect this especially line quality when it comes to ADSL. However I believe that when you are setting up a new broadband connection the ISP should do a line test and provide you with a cost, a maximum speed and a minimum speed. This way it is totally transparent to the customer and if there are problems they have a point where they can complain they are not receiving an adequate service.

I’ve experienced speeds of 256Kb/sec on a 8Mb/sec connection, only 3% of the speed sold, and been told by BT nothing is wrong. Clearly they were under-performing here but I had no way of complaining as there was no technical fault to speak of. Does this sound right to you?

Yes there are many variable factors when providing broadband but these could be taken into account and the contract amended accordingly.

In addition this also brings up the subject of net neutrality - should broadband providers be able to limit bandwidth according to agreements they have with content providers? No! If I pay for 8Mb/sec I pay for 8Mb/sec to every location on the net I choose! Underinvestment in your infrastructure is not a reason to try and screw over your customers to try avoid needed upgrades.

It’s about time the whole issue of selling broadband should be tightened up.

I can’t say this with absolute certainty of course because Google keeps its cards very close to its chest at all times. However the nature of flash movies does give developers different ways of trying to manipulate the Googlebot.

Due to the non linear format of flash movies is it possible to add false frames into a movie containing keyword rich copy that the end user is not going to see? This of course is against the webmaster guidelines but people won’t be able to spot this kind of thing as easily as on a standard HTML page and therefore reporting offenders isn’t going to happen so often.

I’m sure Google have taken steps where they can to try and avoid this but people will always find a way around measures. I’ll be keeping a close eye on search results!

Also the lack of search engine indexing has always been a major reason not to have a flash only website and this might mean more flash only sites will spring up than before. I don’t have a problem with this as long as they are developed as websites with usability in mind rather than just having a splash movie that look pretty but does little else.

Ben Stewart from Greenpeace says “The time has come to move into the 21st century” but in some ways I have to agree with the hoarders. Moving in the 21st century should mean not taking a step backwards which unfortunately the energy saving bulbs do in one respect.

I’m gradually changing over to energy saving bulbs purely to save cash but they are sooooo dim in comparison to the old bulbs! Unless they come up with better replacement technology we’ll end up back in the dark ages!

Who noticed? I certainly didn’t!

All very good adding new functions into Facebook but what use if they are so subtle they aren’t noticed and you don’t highlight it anywhere how are people supposed to use them?

Perhaps something in the notification area Facebook?

Now you might be thinking it’s because I want to shout from the hilltops “Rip off!” however the thing that’s actually wound me up is the comments from various Apple fanboys after the post.

I agree that not all hardware comparisons are like for like however the ones that are clearly show Apple are charging more to upgrade components within a system than Dell. Do I have issue with this? No not really - businesses will make the most margin they see fit and Apple can charge extra as the type of people that buy Apple are generally able to afford it and won’t question it. If you can get away with it why not? Apple leaning on their brand to get some extra cash isn’t wrong in any way.

However the outrage from Apple fans that such a thing can be reported is unbelievable! Comparisons can now be made now that Macs are on effectively the same hardware platform so why try and deny it?

Apple is a top end manufacturer so why be so worried when someone says they are making a better margin than a competitor?

I can’t in this case say it’s just the Apple fans that have stooped to insults - the PC fans too have decided to bypass sense in some of the comments. Does it help the argument? What do you think?

In the end it seems Apple fans are looking for every single argument to stick back at the PC fans and the fact there is a pretty solid one on price stick in the gullet a bit (this is not to say it wouldn’t be the same if the other way around).

There are bound to be points where people will disagree however on some occasions there should be the ability for a party to accept a point? I thought so but clearly I’m wrong?

The BBC (because of the unique way it is funded) has for many decades provided fantastic programming. It’s one of the World’s most trusted brands and I for one use the BBC News website many times daily.

I’ve never quite understood some people’s negative opinion of the BBC expanding online - some seem to think they should be concentrating just on TV. This is a little short sighted as currently all media seems to be migrating to the web and I myself can’t see why this is much different that the BBC expanding from radio to TV. The BBC are as usual pushing into this area with excellent results - just look at iPlayer.

People also seem to forget that the BBC can actually make money from other sources than the license fee and the Internet opens up a lot of revenue streams for them.

So personally I want the BBC to keep spending my TV license fee as they are doing - I’m looking forward to all the innovation they create!

I’ve had a few comment exchanges with Jamie Morden who is Digital Media Manager for MyBrumTV and he asked for my opinion on the site. Well as I’m always bleating on about the social media phenomenon and I believe the MyBrumTV launch is very closely linked to this I thought why not write a blog critique of the site and allow Jamie a right to reply.

There are two aspects to the critique as I see it. Firstly the actual site, what it achieves and how it achieves it and secondly with regard to the online launch and methods used here.

The website itself it a pleasant design and is pretty simple to navigate. However the filmstrip style menu is going to be outgrown very quickly if this directory takes off – I can’t see people scrolling along 100’s of companies or categories. I’d love to see some kind of AJAX style navigation here to allow you traverse the directories quickly and easily (obviously with some non-AJAX fallback to ensure accessibility isn’t compromised). I feel it just needs some more excitement about it that draws you into the site. The introduction movie on the homepage I really don’t feel is going to be watched by people – if they are coming to a business directory they are just going to search. It’s the same thing for most homepage text people are looking for something specific and therefore don’t read what they just see as promotional blurb.

This brings me onto a search feature which is currently not available. As there aren’t a huge amount of companies online now I can perhaps understand why they haven’t rolled this out as yet but it will be essential in the future.

The company listings rely nearly entirely on the videos produced and although this is MyBrumTV’s selling point I don’t agree that videos should replace other textual content rather it should complement it.

Certainly the video can be used to sell a service but it you can’t impart all the important information about a product or service through a 5 minute video – I believe it’s more of a glossy finish – the final hard sell.

A contact form for each company listing is provided which is good however I’d group contact us (address and telephone) and more information (the actual online contact form) under the same tab “Contact us” as really the form is another way of contacting the company. I was expecting a text description or FAQs under the “More information” tab. I’m not sure how the comments tab is going to work as currently there is no way of posting comments yourself – obviously a function to follow.

Video quality I’ve found to be very good (although this certainly isn’t my speciality) and I’ve had no problem with streaming issues etc. From a brochure perspective I believe they do their job.
Code quality on the MyBrumTV isn’t bad although there are still areas to tighten up with the site currently failing a XHTML validator.

My main issue with the website is the lack of content. I’m talking here about text content which is of the upmost importance to the visitor and essential for accessibility. I don’t think you can assume visitors are going to play every video for every company listing in a category. Therefore the copy should work alongside to give the visitor a taster and entice them to watch the video. As the website is a business directory and therefore going to rely heavily on the World’s most important blind user - Google - this really is a trick they are missing. To this end, in addition to accompanying text copy, I believe the alternative content for the video is essential – each movie has a script so why not provide this in the alternative description for the flash?

Search engine optimisation is virtually nonexistent on the website save some hidden keyword spamming at the bottom of the page – tut tut. I really think a review is needed here as this is only going to get you penalised by Google! The most important element on the page (the page title) is consistently “MyBrumTV” throughout the website not describing the page content at all. The lack of content on the site is going to cause the search engines to see virtually blank pages everywhere.

I understand completely that the work on this website is ongoing and it’s not the finished article. Jamie himself said the site is launching in phases with the main launch in September so please don’t take this as a hatchet job on the website just some suggestions how I feel it could improve.

I’d also like to just mention the launch of the site as I believe this can be vital to building an initial visitor base.

I certainly can’t comment with regard to offline promotion of the MyBrumTV website other than the free newspaper that dropped through my door that alerted me to its existence (I don’t read much traditional press at all). However as this is an online project I was surprised to find that there is virtually nothing happening online at all.

Perhaps this initial launch of MyBrumTV is a beta version to be tested and built on? In which case I could perhaps understand the muted buzz online. However it’s not promoted as such and in any case I really think even websites in beta should try to promote themselves in some way to attract visitors to beta test or start laying the groundwork.

A good example of this Odadeo which is currently in private beta (ask for an invitation) – an excellent idea of a social media site for Dads! Even though in private beta the wheels are already moving with regard to making people aware of the site.

The MyBrumTV website certainly has many sources open to promote itself and improve its offer. Being a local website means it can lean on local community to promote it – it’s the only reason I posted about it in the first place. Having this local community means it makes it easier to promote to this restricted location. Also it’s going to take time to get the site visible online in the meantime why not lean on existing applications available such as YouTube?

Directories are ten a penny online so they need to distinguish themselves online be it with functions not available elsewhere (not sure videos are enough alone) or by attracting a website community.

I’m sure there are other things in the pipeline – Jamie mentions social networking in a way that suggests the site will feature social features in some way. However if this is the case why launch with a site that doesn’t have any of the more flashy features? Web users are fickle so if they don’t find anything on a site that excites them getting them to come back is more difficult than getting them in the first place.

Maybe I’m wrong and the slow burn is the effect they are after but I would try to create as much of a bang for the launch for a site like this…it’s been more of a pop. It feels premature if I’m honest.

Don’t get me wrong I really think if done well a local community business directory could work well (I’m not aware of any that do this well) especially with Google’s move to more and more local results.

At the end of the day there has to be a big carrot to get people to navigate away from their Google homepage to an alternative way of searching for businesses.

Perhaps another sign of a disjointed online and offline approach here is that there is no mention of how to get a business into the directory on the website. Obviously all approaches to businesses has been offline so far.

It’s an online project so why not embrace the many varied online tools to make your life easier and you website more popular? In addition online promotion is so much cheaper than offline – it’s a no brainer really.