With our London Presence hat on we recently posted on a rather well known business forum a thread asking, “What do you love about London?” The answers were going to make up a (rather lazy) blog in regards to what is great about our capital.

Ten minutes after starting the thread I hesitantly checked up on the forum expecting a few cynical replies centring around “do your own blog”. Instead I’d received a deluge of posts from forum members letting me know in no uncertain terms exactly what they thought of London. Let’s just say the response was far from positive. Fortunately the thread became rather entertaining as Londoners came on to defend their fair city.

Perhaps it is an obvious question, but why do Internet users, or more specifically forum users feel they can act in a manner totally not suited to everyday “real” life? I took no offence at London being judged so scathingly; it’s a city, not a person. But why did people see fit to tell me why they hated London so much?

This unpleasant attitude is consistent with every active forum out there. If you visit a rock bands website and ask for an album recommendation you’ll first be lambasted for your ignorance and then shoved towards the search function. If you go to a technology forum and ask for some advice on what TV to buy you’ll be told to buy a toaster instead.

You wouldn’t tell someone to use a map if they ask for directions or ridicule someone for requesting a piece of advice, why then is common courtesy abandoned once online? Forum members use their total number of posts (proudly displayed next to their witty avatar) as a badge of honour belittling “newbies” and anyone else who has not exceeded the 4000 post mark.

Surely if you can’t write something nice, then don’t write anything at all.

If technology had a mantra surely it would be “advance”. Odd then that so many of us get stuck in a technological rut when it comes to updating software on our computers. Let’s take internet browsers for example. A recent article states “IE6 started off 2010 with about one-fifth of the browser market share”.  Amazing considering it was launched in 2001.

Concerns have mounted in recent weeks over Internet Explorer 6 after it was revealed security flaws within the browser were to blame for the “cyber attacks” on Google that apparently originated from China. These security issues have led to calls for the UK government to make a move away from IE6 to a modern browser. The NHS for example has been urged by The Department of Health to update as soon as possible.

A petition set up by web-firm Inigo tasked with speeding up this move states “Most creative and software development companies are forced by government department clients to build websites for IE6 when most of the industry has moved on. Upgrading would be a massive task for government but if the public is encouraged to lead the way and the government follows, that would create the momentum needed”.

The continued use of the browser is adding extra pressure upon web-designers as they are being forced to work with a system that is approaching its tenth birthday (IE6 is in fact older than the first Ipod and how many times have you updated that?). If the security threat is not enough to prompt a change then perhaps the stunted growth of the web may be.

As a web based company we have our own in house development team – and of course, they always have to make sure that our sites work effectively in all browsers.  In fact, in October 2009 we updated our company formation site www.companiesmadesimple.com – and because our company formation system has to talk directly with Companies House, it was a particularly complex process.  However, whilst our savvy developers rose to the challenge elsewhere – they were considerably hampered by ensuring all processes worked in IE6.  Any developer will tell you that IE6 is a real headache (to put it politely).  So come on all you IE6 users – move with the times.