somewhereindhaka.net: City's latest online entertainment guide

Published in The Daily Star
Section: Star Tech
Sat. November 26, 2005

Syed Tashfin Chowdhury

Are there any good concerts in the city today?" asked Shawkat to his friends. All five of them looked at each other, hoping to get a response. But apparently, nobody had heard of anything.

The six friends were meeting up right after completing their semester finals that week. They wanted to hang out and have a good time together.

But as none could come up with anything fruitful, they spent time at a local shopping mall, had lunch at a food shop there and then returned to their respective homes.

Early the next morning, Shawkat was disappointed to find out from a newspaper that two of his favourite bands performed at a venue in Gulshan the previous day, the very time they were loitering around in the mall.

Incidents like these are a common phenomena and the city still lacks a proper entertainment guide through which citizens can learn and make decisions about visiting ongoing fairs, expos, concerts, stage shows and other events.

www.somewhereindhaka.net promises to be just such a real-time web site, which will be an overall entertainment guide for city dwellers.

The site will provide an event calendar, forums and reviews of events, which will be categorised in six different sections.

The site, to be launched this week, will have articles under different categories like Music and Concerts, Stage and Films, Festivals and Expositions, Galleries and Art, Food and Spices and Books and Courses.

"The site will be very simple and user friendly. Browsers can click into each of these sections and find out about ongoing events," said Arild Klokkerhaug, head of opportunities, Somewhere In, a Norwegian-Bangladeshi joint venture software firm, which was initiated seven months back.

He explained that, sharing experiences and building togetherness for each event are the focus of the site. Members can tell others if they feel like going to the events, whether they have been there or even invite friends to join them, through the site.

He explained that through the site, browsers can learn more about each event through reviews written and posted on the site by others who have been to that particular event earlier. Pictures and images of the concerned event can also be uploaded into the site.

He also added that as the site develops later, users will be able to subscribe to SMS alerts or browse through user friendly WAP portals through which they can be connected to the site anywhere, anytime.

"Through the alerts, subscribers will be notified about the next few events where their favourite artist or band is scheduled to perform, at a monthly or weekly basis. The optional sms alerts will have a tiny charge. But this aims to help users toward making better decisions," he informed Star Tech.

"Such a site has a greater chance of success, if we, the site authority, keep our hands off the content and enable the users to create and report the news and events by themselves. We just need to focus on creating popular tools and ensure its smooth operation," he pointed out.

"Within a few weeks after its launch, we will enable users with free services through which they will enter, edit and manage the contents of the site, themselves," he said.

"We will enable services through which venue authorities, media organisations and concerned individuals can post their upcoming events into the site, once they register as members," he added.

Klokkerhaug further informed that these services provided through the site will be free of charge.

In their venture to create colourful moments for the growing web market in Bangladesh, the firm also promises to release a free Blog service in the near future.

"This is just a free tool through which browsers can write and publish their thoughts. Good and popular sites, which attracts massive attention, have proved to be effective marketing channels and our site may just become something like that in the near future, when and if it gains popularity," he explained.

Somewhere In, which claims to be recruiting the Best talents of Bangladesh, has been successfully providing offshore solutions to a number of promising business organisations of the nation, since its initiation.

Arild Klokkerhaug, one of the founders of the firm, is a Norwegian who has lived in Dhaka for over a decade. Through his experience on e-Governance and MIS projects and working with reputed companies like GrameenPhone, he has learned to look for what the market would love to be given. He hopes to fully utilise this knowledge in his own software firm.