A youth who described himself as far from being a seasoned traveler has created, with his friends, a travel guide application lauded by the country’s officials.

Sidiq Permana, Taufan Arfianto and a number of their colleagues from UIN Syarief Hidayatullah University launched earlier this month the second version of their Nusantara Beta application, described as a location-based mobile application for national tourism.

The application’s main function is to inform its users of the nearest tourist attractions in the archipelago and how to get there. However, Taufan, who is Nusantara Beta’s chief executive officer, said the application’s second version tries to move beyond that function.

“We want to feature Indonesia, in terms of its history, culture, language and so on … so it is a must-have application for those who want an introduction to Indonesia,” he said during the launching event.  

Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry director for image-building, Esthy Reko Astuty, said the application is in line with the ministry’s strategy of promoting Indonesia through online social media and smartphone usage, which is said to be on the rise.

A study by Frost and Sullivan predicts a sharp increase of Internet users in the country, from 40 million in 2011 to 175 million in 2016.

Data connection subscriber numbers are expected to rise from 52 million to 167 million during the same timeframe, with 109 million out of the 167 million being on smartphones and 22 million on tablets and large screen devices.

Nusantara Beta began as a final project that Sidiq, the working team’s chief technical officer, was working on in Taufan’s rented room.

“I am not a traveler but I love Indonesia. I want to travel around Indonesia when I am 45,” Sidiq said of his choice for the application’s theme.

He added that he was at first inspired by the location-based social networking website foursquare, but wanted to transform it into an Indonesian tourism directory.

“So [Sidiq’s] assignment was finished… But we didn’t want it to end there. We introduced a newer version of the application. Some people might have applications that are similar, but we dare to claim that this is the first one to represent all of Indonesia without being money oriented,” Taufan said.

The first version was launched in May 2011. As of the end of 2011, Taufan said that there had been around 4,000 downloads for the application.

Nusantara Beta came first in the Alpha Innovation (ALVION) with MobaFone contest last year and it recently won the Bubu Award Competiton under the category of mobile application version developer.

It is a free application and Taufan said the team wishes to maintain it as such.

He said that Nusantara Beta is currently aiming to run on seven platforms: Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian and Mobile Web and web.

 As of Sunday, the platform logos displayed on Nusantara Beta’s website mostly still had a padlock logo. Taufan said the team is still in the process of making them available to be downloaded for platforms such as iOS and Windows Phone.

According to Taufan, the Nusantara Beta team currently has data for 600 tourist sites, displayed in “an organized manner”. The data is derived from the team’s own sources as well as from the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry, he said.

The Jakarta Post’s Nusantara Beta downloading process for a tablet android device took around five minutes when using a Wi-Fi network available in a restaurant in Central Jakarta. The application takes up 4.62 megabytes of storage space.

Responses took around three to five seconds when accessed using a wireless network with 54 Mbps in South Jakarta. A tap on the application’s “Wisata Indonesia” icon revealed a number of nearby destinations arranged according to proximity, such as the National Monument (Monas) in Central Jakarta and the Taman Ismail Marzuki art gallery and venue.

Further taps revealed facilities such as Google Maps directions, short details about a site’s history and qualities and sharing for Facebook and Twitter.

Other facilities available in the application include an event calendar and links to other articles in other websites, as well as information on various provinces in the archipelago.  

Users can also post their photos, videos and stories about travel using the “Ceritakan Negerimu” option available through tapping the “Options” icon on the top left-hand corner.

But the team’s goal to make Nusantara Beta an application to introduce Indonesia to the world might be hindered by the fact that almost all of the application’s content is currently still only in Bahasa Indonesia.

According to Taufan, Nusantara Beta’s activities are mostly still based in his rented room and most of its 16 members are still university students.

“We cannot really travel around due to financial problems. But videos and photos became triggers for us to save up for traveling. But we are not pure backpackers or travelers,” Taufan said.

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