The current Harrisonburg City website.

The City Manager’s Office announced a call for feedback Tuesday morning:

The last major design effort for the site was done in 2005.

“The internet is a fast moving space,” said Public Information Officer Miriam Dickler.  “What was cutting edge and the height of usability six years ago is now dated and not intuitive.  The website we have is good, but we know it could be better.”

City staff is working internally to address issues that they have identified.  In order to ensure that the site is useful to the public, the city is seeking volunteers to join small meetings to provide feedback.

What do you want in a municipal website? Last year Fast Company reviewed the best and worst government site designs, highlighting some embarrassingly horrible federal sites. If there was a common element among the best sites, it was “user-friendly,” easy-to-find information (often involving colorful infographics).

Those interested in sharing their ideas for a redesign can sign up on the city website.

19-year old JMU IEEE Computer Society member Matt Jeanes first came to JMU from Fairfax, VA as a freshman Computer Science major in 2009. Jeanes and a friend started using the HDPT buses to get across campus to eat at the new East Campus Dining Hall daily. They became frustrated with the need to constantly refer to the paper schedule to determine when the bus would arrive at their stop, so Jeanes, who has been learning how to program computers since before he entered high school, decided to write a simple computer script that would quickly determine which inner-campus bus would be coming by the stops they regularly used next.

After using a Motorola Droid smartphone for a few months, Jeanes realized that he could carry his digital bus schedule program with him if he converted it into an Android application. Jeanes was already familiar with the computer language required to write the app, but he needed to learn the framework specific to the open-source Google Android platform. So, he downloaded a development kit over winter break and started using online documentation to learn the skills he would need to turn his computer application into a mobile phone app. Within a week, Jeanes had a working rough draft of the JMU Bus app on his Droid, and uploaded the first public version to the Android Market in March 2010 for other Android users to download for free. Jeanes said his decision to publish the app, which he initially developed for his own use, for others to download was a “spur of the moment” decision. “I thought it would be cool if I ever saw someone I didn’t know using the app,” he said.

In Fall 2010, Jeanes joined JMU’s IEEE Computer Society and introduced his app to the students in the club. The club members responded enthusiastically and offered for the club to partner with him to help test and market the app. Using feedback from the IEEE club members and user comments in the Android Market, Jeanes added functionality and more routes to the previously-developed free version and also released a premium version of the app that costs $2 in the Android Market.

The current version of the JMU Bus Schedule app allows a user to determine which routes can get them from their current location to their desired destination, and displays the arrival time of each bus based on the schedule published by HDPT. It also includes a simple interface for browsing routes and stop times, and the premium version allows the user to save common trips for quick reference. The app currently estimates actual bus locations by ‘crowdsourcing’ – making use of data contributed by users voluntarily – but once the HDPT buses are outfitted with GPS tracking systems later this year, Jeanes’ app will be able to track routes in real time, including late-night routes with no fixed schedules. The premium app has an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars in the Android Market.

With word about the app spreading due to the JMU IEEE Computer Society members distributing flyers as well asword-of-mouth advertising from club members, friends, and users of the app, the free version now has over 1600 downloads, and more than 100 copies of the premium version have been purchased. Jeanes now sees other students on campus using his bus app and asks whether they have any suggestions or feedback for improving it. Because of the positive feedback he has received about the Android app, Jeanes is currently developing an iPhone version, which he expects to release in April 2011. Jeanes explains he has bigger plans for the app now: “I’m thinking about expanding the bus app to other colleges in Virginia and seeing where it goes from there.”

In December, following a conflict between Netflix’s content delivery network and Comcast, the FCC voted for what some described as “toothless” net neutrality rules. The new rules forbid ISPs like Comcast from preventing access to certain web sites, such as Netflix. But the rules don’t block those telecom companies from charging customers more money for faster, better access to certain websites. Also, mobile “smartphone” 3G and 4G carriers are exempt from the new rules.

On Tuesday, at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Goodlatte asserted that trustbusting is Congress’ job, and should not be at the discretion of regulatory “bureaucrats.” Wendy Davis reported on MediaPost.com:

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chair of the House Judiciary Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet subcommittee, called Tuesday’s hearing the first step toward ensuring that Congress, and not the FCC, makes any rules regarding the Web. He added that the Internet “must be allowed to grow and innovate” without becoming mired in regulations.

Goodlatte advocated enforcing current laws governing telecom corporations, as opposed to allowing the FCC to decide what’s verboten. On TheHill.com, Sara Jerome reported:

Goodlatte did not see FCC regulations as a way to prevent anticompetitive behavior, criticizing the FCC’s order as “morass of bureaucratic rules.”

“I believe that the right approach is a light touch that focuses on punishing anticompetitive behavior, enforcing antitrust laws, and even potentially tweaking those laws to ensure that they still operate as intended in the digital age,” he said.

Testifying before the panel, Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said both antitrust and FCC rules are necessary to preserve the open Internet. She said net-neutrality proponents want to ensure “the next Google, the next Twitter, the next Netflix” are able to compete.

The industry Goodlatte spoke about regulating also happens to be one of his biggest campaign contributors. According to data on OpenSecrets.org, Comcast Corp was among the top five contributors to Goodlatte’s campaign committee during the 2010 cycle. The “Computers/Internet” and “TV/Movies/Music” industries gave generously to Goodlatte’s war chests during the same cycle, kicking in more than $145,000 combined.

Immerge announced Tuesday in a press release:

McClung Companies of Waynesboro has substantially acquired Harrisonburg-based Immerge Technologies as of August 2010.

William Roy, former Vice President of Immerge will now continue to develop and maintain websites and provide social media strategies under the name Immerge, now as a division of the McClung Companies.

Tom Trevillian, President of McClung Companies, said, “McClung is more than just a printing company. We have so much more to offer to our customers, and now our customers can receive all of their marketing services with one company they know and already trust for quality results.”

William Roy added, “This change will foster greater ability to serve all of our clients. Now we are better suited to provide the entire spectrum of marketing needs from traditional media like print brochures and direct mail to new media such as Websites and social media strategies.”

For more than 65 years, McClung has been a trusted name among associations, designers, corporations, and educational institutions for printing. Since the 1980s, McClung has been expanding its services to include direct marketing, fulfillment services and now a complete set of Web services.

Since its founding five years ago, Immerge has operated two divisions – one for software products for school systems and private corporations and one for website design services to the business community throughout the Shenandoah Valley. With this acquisition, the two divisions will officially split.

Justin Creasy, former President of Immerge, will continue the products division in new spinoff companies. He has established two new companies – CodeFluent and SpedWare. CodeFluent will continue to manage Immerge’s software products for mid-size corporations with clients including Houff Trucking of Weyer’s Cave. SpedWare will continue school system products with clients including Rockingham County Schools and Staunton City Schools.

McClung and Immerge would also like to thank Dick Halterman of Murphy Business Brokers & Appraisal for his services that led to the successful acquisition for McClung.

The bill, introduced in the House Thursday, addresses foreign governments such as China or Iran that “place onerous conditions on access to their markets” or make “demands for the transfer of intellectual property” in order to conduct business online. The bill threatens sanctions for violating nations, and includes the creation of a task force “that would review, prioritize, and act on attempts by foreign governments to degrade or disrupt the flow of goods, services, and/or content on the Internet.”

Declan McCullagh reports on CNET:

. . . Some U.S. politicians responded [to China's ongoing battle with Google] this week by announcing legislation that would try to pressure China and other nations with Internet restrictions into becoming better Net-citizens by invoking two very old techniques: public shame and trade sanctions.

A bill introduced Thursday, the One Global Internet Act (PDF), would require the federal government to identify “priority” Internet concerns overseas. Then the U.S. Trade Representative would be directed to begin an investigation under the 1974 Trade Act, which authorizes sanctions and retaliatory actions.

Harrisonburg’s congressional representative is quoted in a release on California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s website:

“American entrepreneurs and businesses will thrive abroad if we protect their intellectual property rights and tear down restrictive trade barriers,” said Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA), co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus and the International Anti-Piracy Caucus. “This legislation will help ensure that Americans are getting a fair shake by highlighting restrictive trade practices, and will help ensure that businesses and individuals alike have access to one Internet free of censorship.”

From the announcement released today:

“We Want Google” gives all K-12 schools in Virginia a chance to apply for a free deployment of Google Apps. Today more than 7 million students are using Google Apps Education Edition, which enables faculty, staff and students to work together more effectively.

Mike Vanderpool started ValleyApps and Vision Studios, a web design firm, after teaching technology education at Harrisonburg High School for three years. He knew that part of his success would include giving back to the community and his partnership with Google seemed like a natural vehicle. He knows that school systems who make the transition to the cloud will save money, while at the same time increasing collaboration and communication. The Oregon Department of Education, for example, is expected to save $1.5 million per year in e-mail across the state, thanks to their switch to Google.

Although licenses for schools are already provided for free by Google, the migration from a school’s existing platform to Google Apps involves costs, sometimes totaling upwards of $15,000. With the news that funding for schools in Virginia was cut by over $600 million, Mike wanted to offer schools the chance to go Google at no cost and knew that the selected school would realize substantial cost savings over the long term.

The system that ValleyApps is offering will help students, teachers and parents be more involved in their school’s educational activities. ValleyApps will set up all the licenses with Google and will undertake the deployment, migration, and provide training to the selected school, all for free.

The program bears a resemblance to Google’s own high-speed connection contest this past winter, but Vanderpool writes that the idea goes back to his days teaching at Harrisonburg High School.

The idea has been in the works prior to Google launching the fiber initiative. In starting both Vision Studios and ValleyApps, the idea was to give back when we made it to “THAT” point.

My students were the ones that encouraged me to start my own businesses. I struggled with leaving the kids behind but knew it had to be done. They hold a special place in my heart and I want them to still have the best technology at their fingertips, even if I am gone.

Vanderpool, a JMU alum, said his company hopes to select a school by July 1, 2010.

City officials want Harrisonburg to be the epicenter of those 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic network connections.

Mayor Kai Degner, several city departments, and some local tech companies are working to nominate Harrisonburg for Google’s experiment. There’s a link to the nomination form on the homepage of the city’s website, and a prompt for residents and business owners to join in the effort.

“Josh Baugher sent me an email about the [Google fiber trial],” writes Harrisonburg Mayor Kai Degner. “I checked it out, and was in the city offices 20 minutes later. Good example of a resident making an impact.” Degner continues:

Imagine having internet 100 times faster than anywhere else in the world. Sure, it benefits Google, but it benefits us, too. Not only would we benefits as users of faster internet and new not-yet-conceived-of applications that depend on that fast an internet, it would attract the technology industry we’re wanting to develop. The long-run benefit is having a front seat to the nuts and bolts of implementing the new technology and being the center for new innovation and spin-offs.

But it’s going to take a lot more than search engine optimization to catch Google’s eye in this case. The number one web service in the world is looking for a very specific kind of community — one that’s not too big to connect, but just big enough that it has a good number of tech companies that can experiment on the network.

According to a recent story in PCWorld, Google may be doing this to push their vision of what the internet could be in the U.S. — more like Korea’s or Japan’s ultra-high speed web:

. . . the Google network will be open access, meaning third-party service providers will be able to use it to deliver Internet to their customers. In this way, Google is trying to bring back discarded open-access rules that used to require incumbent telecom companies such as Verizon and AT&T to allow ISPs such as Earthlink to buy space on their DSL broadband networks at discount prices.

Ande Banks, Harrisonburg Director of Special Projects & Grant Management, is preparing the Google application for the city. Banks is working with various city departments to answer Google’s request for information. He writes:

Ultra-high speed broadband would offer a tremendous competitive advantage to Harrisonburg businesses. I envision firms wishing to perform pilot projects on this system, resulting in jobs and investment in Harrisonburg. This could be a great asset for the local colleges and universities to utilize. Ultimately, this is providing a needed level of infrastructure for the growth and innovation of the next generation of applications that interface our lives with on-line and other digital resources.

ValleyApps, a local Google-authorized app reseller, is the sort of company Banks is describing. I caught up with Mike Vanderpool, president of ValleyApps and Vision Studios, and asked him about the Google experiment.

What are Harrisonburg’s chances of beating out dozens (if not thousands) of other comparably-sized cities in the U.S.? As Vanderpool points out, there are some advantages. We are situated next to a major artery of fiber optic cable running down the I-81 corridor.

Banks notes that “our community is large enough to meet Google’s minimum requirements (approximately 50,000), but it is small enough to conceivably roll-out an entire fiber optic network within the time-frame they are hoping.”

Whether or not Google will ultimately choose Harrisonburg is anyone’s guess. But the implication is that the more community groups to nominate their community, the better the chances.

Mayor Degner writes, “Our application’s competitiveness can be influenced by individual nominations from city residents. We are urging all interested people to nominate us using the online form. You can also submit a short YouTube video – I’d love to see some!”

The telecom giant announced “the addition of nearly 70 cell sites and the upgrade of more than 200 additional cell sites to 3G.”

While there wasn’t a specific mention of Rockingham County, AT&T has already rolled out 3G coverage in the city, as well as parts of Massanetta Springs, the Massanutten Ski resort, Bridgewater and Hinton.

AT&T’s plans for expansion are contingent upon erecting cell towers. In some cases, those proposals have met with resistance. WSVA reports:

In December, Rockingham County’s Board of Supervisors denied an AT&T application for a new cell tower between Harrisonburg and Linville. The company is also proposing to replace an 80-foot electrical transmission tower with a 99-foot tall telecommunications tower off South East Side Highway in Port Republic.

According to a map generated by AT&T’s competitor, even Verizon’s “enhanced services” coverage is spotty in the western part of the county. Here’s Verizon’s map:

If you live in the county, do you have 3G coverage? Do you want it?

UPDATE: Here’s Sprint’s “mobile broadband network” map (per Ben’s comment below)

How do Harrisonburg and Rockingham County compare to other local governments when it comes to budgetary transparency?

The Jefferson Institute recently conducted a survey comparing the information available on local government websites. Their transparency grading scale [PDF] takes into account various factors, such as the level of detail in local budget information, and interface navigability.

Harrisonburg scored 40 out of 100 points (ranking 50th of 134), while Rockingham County scored 35.

The highest grade in the survey was 80 out of 100 points and only 20 localities scored more than 50 points. On the other side 22 localities scored zero points and another 13 scored fewer than 20 points . . .

Generally speaking, high population counties scored the best, with the Northern Virginia counties of Arlington, Fairfax and Prince William leading the way, while 23 counties and cities scored zero in this analysis. “Scoring zero means that the citizens have no online ability to see how their tax money is being spent. In this day and age that is really inexcusable,” said [Jeremy Beales, a Visiting Fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Institute].

Harrisonburg Public Information Officer Miriam Dickler responded to the release:

Our limitations for posting more information on the website is largely time and resources. While we probably already generate most of the information/reports that are being referenced in the report, it would take staff time and resources to properly post, update and maintain the on-line information, and we don’t currently have excess staffing capacity to do that.

While we now have a web editor again after a long spell without one, her primary job is overall maintenance and not updating departmental information. That responsibility falls to departments themselves and none of our departments have an individual who is tasked solely with web maintenance. We are happy to provide information to individuals who might contact us for something that they cannot find on our website.

Should we be directed to provide more information on the website by council, certainly we would do that.

Have you found (or tried to find) information about local budgets on the Harrisonburg or Rockingham County website? What has your experience been?

(Thanks, Karl)