Indonesia has some service related to location with various concepts. For those with LBS there are Yahoo! Koprol, Bouncity, Tasterous, and some directory service such as BandungReview.com, Urbanesia and many more. For Yogyakarta there are PersonaFlag and T4nya.
Now in Surabaya there is a directory service focusing on data and location map with location reviews. iSurabaya, the Surabaya’s directory service that not only provides location information but also allow users to give reviews about the location. From my first experience, this service has a quite unique and appealing UI but the UX needs more improvement in order to support first time user.
You can search for many places in Surabaya by typing the keyword or viewing the available categories. The search result will be displayed in form of map that will explain the location you are looking for. Registered user only can search places in Surabaya and its surrounding areas and give reviews but not able to add their own important places.
“Adding-place feature can only be accessed by the shop owner, not a user. It is ‘suggest place’ to be precise. We are going to conduct a survey since many shops in Surabaya opens and closes quickly. We need surveyor to gain a detail data such as opening hour, payment method, price, whether it is a halal food or not, etc (for a restaurant)”, the co-founder of iSurabaya, Johan Sugiono explained to DailySocial via YM.
Adding-places feature in iSurabaya by using the surveyor is the same with Kurator from Koprol but it has some T4nya.com elements for supporting location search in Surabaya. On their homepage, iSurabaya gives you the information that this application will be available for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS. Johan also points that the application for Android, Blackberry and iOS has just finished their development and now is on their bug-fixing stage. From its official blog, iSurabaya explain that they has release the mobile web version that can be accessed through featured phone.
iSurabaya is really helpful in locating places when you are living or just visiting this city. But I still found some bugs while trying it. Actually it is a common thing since iSurabaya has not officially launched and still on its beta version. iSurabaya obviously needs input from DailySocial reader who has tried this service. Therefore you may post your command about iSurabaya on this article.
You may visit iSurabaya official blog or Facebook Page or follow their official twitter @isurabayadotnet to observe the upcoming progress of this application.
