Link: puasa.bruneigeekmeet.com
Developed by: TheWheat (Website, Twitter)
That time of year where restaurants really believe that Bruneians will pay good money to stuff their faces, every day, for a month. For years there’s usually some restaurant directory of some sort; I remember Maurina’s lists, and this year Brunei Foodies has promoted theirs. But I was pretty pleased to finally see a web app by Tim @ TheWheat allowing filtering by venue and various other search options.
My excitement:
It makes me really happy to see IT used “properly”! Tools & technology are there to help ppl, but many don’t know how to use them. #techBN
— hazirah (@possiblyzebra) June 8, 2016
I hope it is fair for me to say that in 2016, I would have liked to see more Brunei information that are packaged in modern web technologies. Directories that are maintained in a single blog post are just… kind of an outdated way of doing things. But I do understand. WordPress is still my favourite platform for running a website, and having Instagram and Facebook presence is still pretty important. The blog format is convenient and hard to give up, and social media is ridiculously easy to keep updated, in lieu of hiring techies who understand and/or see value in “properly” storing data to be easily pulled or reused. But I digress.
Additional features of the web app:
Tim pointed out that clicking the phone numbers would allow you to call them.
Also contains Sahur buffet options: Search “Sahur” in the search box.
I took the above screenshots, that I then shared on Twitter to make my tweet more sharable, to help people understand what the app was for. Though the screenshots didn’t seem to help the app to go viral - only 3 retweets, haha!
Thoughts:
Not everyone looks out for these buffets on an everyday basis, so it’s understandable. I don’t take to them myself - I dislike the rush of queuing or ordering, and I don’t eat that much anyway.
The directories, and therefore the web app, may only take into account those restaurants that have promoted their buffet deals. There are others that have not made a shiny poster for social media sharing, or contacted Brunei Foodies or any popular Brunei bloggers, but still offer buffet deals.
For those looking for late-night sahur options, there are many places that are open late but do not have any buffets.
