A few days ago I ordered dinner from Maldivian Bliss, a restaurant that is right up the road from the bungalow where I am staying. I stopped in on my walk back from the grocery store, around 5 pm, and ordered food to be delivered between 6:30 and 7pm.
After getting home and unpacking my groceries 7pm quickly rolled past, and I still had no food. By 7:15 I was really hungry, and getting cranky. I searched Apple Maps on my iPhone; unsurprisingly I could not find the listing. The new Apple Maps might be bad in America, but its worthless in Sri Lanka. For some reason Apple thinks its best to show me roads in Columbus, Ohio over roads in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I quickly switched to Google Maps, which is usually quite good here, and was frustrated when I couldn’t find the restaurant listing.
I figured as a shot in the dark that I’d do a quick search on Google, and I was shocked that the restaurant had a foursquare listing. I called the number listed on the page and was connected with the manager of the restaurant, who told me the delivery boy had gotten lost on a side street while trying to find my bungalow. A few minutes later, after being connected to the delivery boy, I had a delicious serving of chicken cheese Koththu Roti. It was really surprising that FourSquare was the platform which enabled me to find the restaurant I was looking for, especially since Google didn’t have the listing.
Since this happened I’ve been utilizing FourSquare much more on my iPhone, and its been really helpful in finding restaurants when I’m wandering through city streets in Sri Lanka. I’ve used it with great success in Colombo and Kandy, and I’m curious to see if any listings have been built up out in Trinco – which doesn’t have many tourists visting.
FourSquare has a great opportunity to build its listings in tourist destinations. If they were to partner with someone like Lonely Planet they would be able to capture vast amounts of information and help make it more accessible, by letting travelers comment and build upon the data base. Lonely Planet has great guide books, and a decent forum. Whereas FourSquare is built around discoverability; if I find a great new restaurant I’m a lot more likely to check in with Foursquare than email Lonely Planet about it.
Google Maps is usually spot on when finding locations in Sri Lanka. Since Apple released iOS 6, Google Maps is no longer the native map app. This means I have to access it as a web app, which can render it unusable at times in Colombo – especially when I’m trying to figure out when to get off the bus.
Apple Maps, the native app in iOS 6, is built upon TomTom’s database. It’s utterly useless in Sri Lanka. It cannot find common locations such as the US Embassy or Galle Face Hotel. and it doesn’t recognize addresses inputted into it. Many of the street names are incorrect, like School Road on this map; if you look Google Maps it is correctly labeled as College Avenue. It’s only use is determining your location.
Foursquare, which on the iPhone utilizes Apple’s Maps, is surprisingly helpful. As it utilizes the native app, its able to provide real time tracking about my location (which is really helpful when I’m making sure my tuk-tuk driver is headed in the correct direction). Since it has users provide GPS coordinates for businesses when they ‘check-in’ to a location, it is able to plot them on a map. It has been incredibly helpful using FourSquare to get around, and I’m sure that this app will become one of the most valuable ones on my phone.