website branded as DirectgovKids was designed to help children aged 5 to 11 find out about the world around them, by exploring the places and people in their local community. The Flash animated site was based around a cartoon globe, with interactive buildings including a police station, a town hall and a school. A version of Directgov for mobile phones was available by typing direct.gov.uk/mobile into the phone's browser. Directgov was also available through analogue teletext pages as well as digital interactive television on Freeview channel 106 until 1 July 2010, Sky until 22 December 2010 and Virgin Media until 31 March 2011. Directgov also provided a service that covered country-wide customised maps for blue badge holders, In addition to council policies, this service also would pinpoint the location of features specific to the disabled community. Social media and article comments Directgov was active on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In April 2010 Directgov launched a "Comment on this Article" feature on each page allowing users to give articles one of five ratings ranging from "Very useful" to "Not at all useful". Users could also leave comments of up to 500 characters about how a page could be improved, but were asked not to include any personally identifiable information. Directgov collected the data from the comments feature for use in customer insight and product improvement, and published an overview of monthly ratings online. Criticism In 2005, several internet activists affiliated with mySociety wrote Directionlessgov.com to demonstrate that they could build something better in under an hour, by using a simple web page that linked to the Google search engine. Directionlessgov was later upgraded to compare the results of Directgov's own search engine with the Google results side by side. In discussion, one of the authors wrote: In an interview with The Guardian newspaper in August 2007, the Chief Executive of Directgov, Jayne Nickalls, responded: References External links Archived website at the National Archives, October 2012 DirectgovKids, archived in October 2007 2004 establishments in the United Kingdom Government services web portals in the United Kingdom Internet properties established in 2004 2012 disestablishments in the United Kingdom