MakeMac last night reported that Indonesian app Harpoen has been chosen as one of the five winners at the World Summit Award Mobile 2012 for the mobile tourism and culture category. Overall, there were over 400 apps submitted for the awards and 40 winners were selected across eight categories. WSA Mobile 2012 is an event that aims to highlight and promote the best and most innovative mobile apps and online content.
Harpoen was among a host of Indonesian apps that was submitted to the competition alongside Yotomo, Akzara, Rob n Roll, Movreak, and Bango. Winners were selected based on quality of content and comprehensiveness, ease of use, quality of design, range of functionalities, and technical quality.
The win qualifies Harpoen to proceed to the awarding event in Abu Dhabi in February 2013, an event in which a single primary winner from each category will be announced.
In an email to DailySocial, co-founder J.P Ellis said that Harpoen is currently working on a number of partnerships to bring more content into the app, “including distributing old photographs from around Indonesia in their modern locations, passages from ancient and modern literature that reference a particular place; and also with travel and tourism stakeholders to share interesting and unique information from around the archipelago in situ.”
He added that they are working on similar deals around the world to bring the past to the present through the app. “We hope to provide an interesting and culturally relevant experience around the world, but our partnerships in Indonesia are of course are top priority now.”
This would certainly bring an interesting angle to the app and is something that the team at Harpoen has been aiming to do since the very beginning. In our previous coverage of Harpoen, we made a point that content is certainly one way the app can get people interested to use the app as currently there’s no strong incentive for that. This would definitely go some way to cross that item off the list.
Harpoen is currently working on releasing an Android app with a possibility of a Windows Phone app being added into the collection some time next year. Looking at the design of the app, it certainly would feel right at home on Windows Phone.
A new website and blog are coming and Harpoen 2.0 both for iOS and Android, which will bring cross posting of content to Facebook and Twitter, are scheduled to be released very soon.
