F YOU. That's all I could say when I come across "truelocal.com.au.":http://truelocal.com.au This site is going toe-to-toe with sensis' "Whereis.com.au":http://whereis.com.au which are both local search directories. At these sites you can, for example, search for a doctor in your suburb and it comes back with a list of doctors. Click on a doctor and you follow through to road maps etc.
The rant begins...
First of all, News Limited is owned by News Corporation who is owned by Rupert Murdoch. So with these wads of cash you think they could get it right yeh? but no. So what's my issue with truelocal?
Well, at a glance this site is a clone of whereis.com with a nicer interface. Where's the innovation? I thought for a second that I was going to see Web 2.0 ushered in to the mainstream in Australia, but no. No doubt the site forms part of News Limited's strategy to stick their stake in the local search market. So strategy wise that seems fine, and now people can use truelocal instead of whereis if they want to do local search in Australia. But, contrast these sites with "Google Maps.":http://maps.google.com At Google Maps they employ cutting edge technology that actually kicked off a mini bubble called "Web 2.0". There's advanced use of technology in Google Maps that leaves whereis and truelocal for dead. Why couldn't truelocal come out with their own version of Google Maps? It's not _that_ hard.
The way I see it is that Google is run by nerds with business skill, but News Ltd is run by business people who have hired nerds to get some work done. Google are up with technology and technology is "their thing", while News Ltd is bubbling with "business" people who understand business better than they do technology. Hence why I think truelocal lacks any technological innovation that would add to it's strategic play. Imaging if they came out with a Google Maps clone for Australia - they would get far more press, people would have good reasons to prefer their site over whereis, plus a bunch of other stuff.
Out of curiousity I opened up the source code and saw this:
This is bad! For the majority of people they will not care, but this stuff defines a company. If you're producing bad code, what else are you doing wrong? This is like code that was dug up from the 1990's. Something better (though not the best) would be:
Local news
Now people with certain disabilities can use the site - shucks, that was nice of me! But watch this chain of events!
# Programmer is not aware of bad code.
# Their manager either doesn't know the code is bad, or doesn't care.
# If the manager doesn't care or know then no one above them will ever know.
So what? Well, who has the ultimate say in what goes in our out of the product... well it's the business guy at the top of the chain right? But a programmer has put in crap code which was probably not part of the overall plan. Therefore the programmer has some power. But the business guy said, "thou shalt make me a powerful local search application and thou shalt not question thy authoritar!" so he has all the corporate power yeh? BUT the business guy doesn't know what he is doing! Or maybe there's some CTO that said, "Lets make a Google Maps clone and allow web sites around Australia to mash it up!" and his second in charge came back with, "You think these weenies can build a Google Maps clone? They can't even code for disabled viewers". Whether the head dude didn't know about Google Maps or didn't think his team could carry out those orders - there is something wrong here. There are other possibilities here but I meant to illustrate the conflicts between business and technology.
I'll finish with a big F YOU to corporations around the globe. I slave away doing god awful work 40 hours a week while these corporations create crap like this for profit. I'm personally going to put an end to this.
(no, I'm not going postal)