If one compares the websites of the 2006 Melbourne and 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, the gulf in professionalism in the design of the respective website is clearly apparent. While the Melbourne Games website is highly interactive and filled with great photo galleries and features of not just the 2006 Games but also the legacy of the Commonwealth Games, the Delhi Games website seems haphazard and requires effort to search for information required. Taking into account the enormity of the Games, it seems strange that the Organizing Committee hasn't invested more into using the website to generate interest.

The Commonwealth Games are expected to be a big boost for our tourism, which is all the more important now post the terror-ravaged year of 2008. Yet, strangely enough, the website has no information regarding the attractions of India and has no link to the Tourism Department of the Indian Government. If a foreigner visits the website one of these days, looking for additional reasons to visit India during the Games, he wouldn't be given any. Nothing is mentioned about the Taj Mahal or the Forts in Rajasthan or the Backwaters of Kerala. Of course there are millions of other sites where the information can be found, but there's no excuse for the lack of it on Games website. During the 2006 Games, Melbourne2006.com.au was the top sports website in Australia, a feat that the Delhi Games' website would fail to emulate here in India if it remains in its present condition.

Another massive disappointment regarding the website is its lack of information of the history of the games. You have to look around a little to find the little information they have given, and even that can be called a snippet at best. There's no section on the website providing all the facts regarding the previous editions of the Games. To be honest the Commonwealth Games don't command great respect outside, well, the Commonwealth. The level of competition can hardly be called world class when you have just three of the Top 10 medal winners of the Beijing Olympics taking part. A lot of work has to be done when it comes to building up the importance of the Games, and that responsibility falls to the hosts. Yet again, on comparing the Melbourne and Delhi Games' websites, it's tough to believe that they both represent the same global event. While the Melbourne Games' website makes it look like a spectacle, the Delhi Games' website seems to have been given such little attention that on the page of the Tradition of the Queen's Baton Relay, several grammatical and typographical errors exist including the presence of the same paragraph one after the other.

What I found extremely compelling on Cwgdelhi2010.org was that there was zero coverage of the Closing Ceremony of the 2006 Melbourne Games. The Closing Ceremony can be said to be the start of the journey for the 2010 Games, the moment the attention moves from one edition to the next. The likes of Aishwarya Rai, Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Isha Sharwani, Shiamak Davar and Sunidhi Chauhan performed at the Ceremony in an effort to get the buzz for Delhi 2010 started. And considering the fact that the Melbourne2006.com.au has a special on the Bollywood presence at the Ceremony only makes it even more startling that our website has no mention at all.

The last oversight that I noted was regarding the Official Video of the Games present on the website. The video, which commemorates the start of the Countdown to the Opening Ceremony at a time when there were a 1000 days left. Yet when you search for the video on YouTube you find it uploaded by some guy who spelt "Video" as "Vedio" and has less than 1500 hits. The Organizing Committee has clearly failed to realize the role YouTube can play by not spending a little money in making it a featured video on the popular website. Also, on the official website, there are no controls to the video on the Home page as a result of which it keeps going through a loop unless you navigate to another page. You can't pause it and neither can you mute it, unless of course you choose to turn off your speakers entirely, which makes it irritating once you have seen the entire thing. And another glitch regarding it is that, right at the end, it says "1000 days to go". Even though the video was meant to commemorate the start of the countdown, but shouldn't it be edited to keep it relavent if it's being broadcasted on the official website?

Source: sportscampus.com CWG Delhi not Net Savvy?

6 things the Organizing Committee can do to make better use of the Internet: