Here is an English entry that actually isn’t junk! One review of betang.COM, coming up right here.

Betang.COM is, as the tagline in the header states, “Some kind One of Central Borneo’s online portal”. Actually, it can be interpreted as both, but the tagline itself is that (instead of “Central Borneo’s online portal” plain out) as to not claim itself as the only portal of it’s kind. Okay, enough of my incessant rambling. What is betang.COM all about?

Once again, betang.COM is an online portal containing everything related to the Indonesian province of Central Borneo (Kalimantan Tengah), especially that of the Dayak people residing in it. Due to the lack of information concerning this region available online, of course the need to create this portal presented itself – at least, that’s what I got from the “About Us” page. :D

As for the name betang.COM itself, it originated from betang, a traditional Dayak-style house. It is made out of wood and elevated 3 – 5 metres from the ground, as a protection against wild beasts, flood, or other dangers out there in the forests of Borneo. Betang are very huge, with length reaching 150 metres and width 30 metres; it’s no wonder that traditionally, over a hundred people can reside in the same betang! The philosophy of togetherness and solidarity is hoped to also be present in the betang.COM portal.

Indeed, betang.COM contains an array of articles with topics ranging from the latest news from Central Borneo, folktales, food, art & culture, social-politics, places of tourist interest, Central Borneo figures and of the people as a whole. Also, of course, other stuff that just don’t fit in those categories. :D There are plenty of interesting reads, and more are published onto the site regularly.

Where do these articles come from? Of course, there are two regular maintainers of the site: Bintang Sariyatno and Rudy Gunawan. Other than those two, anyone is welcome to contribute their article to betang.COM, and doing that will put your name on the Contributors list in their About Us page. :D In case you’re wondering why the hell my name is there, I haven’t written any article, but I think I did my share by designing the mascot of the website itself (right?). I think this is what truly makes betang.COM stands to its name; anybody who’s a part of the “family” of Central Borneo (… or not, like myself) is welcome to take part. So there is an endless supply of articles, as long as the residents of Central Borneo are willing to shed some of their time and story to share, of course.

Then we come back to the “mission” of betang.COM, as stated on their page: to collect all information regarding Central Borneo and publish it onto one trusted and structured source, instead of scattered everywhere like how it is now. This information is not only meant to be consumed by those hailing from Central Borneo, but also for outsiders to know more about this lesser-known region.

Enough with the philosophical stuff behind the site, let’s get on with the technicalities. From my point of view, the layout is quite nice. Not too dull, but not too hurtful on the eyes before. The layout is very neat, and I love the little previews of articles on top of the webpage. Very nice. And of course, the mascots are completely adorable. This is coming from a biased source though, haha…

Betang.COM also comes with features that I think are quite helpful. Firstly: there is a low-bandwith or mobile version that can be accessed with a range of mobile phone models (I tried it by taking advantage of my sister’s mobile, haha~), and I think they’re trying to add a multi-language function? Another feature currently present is to subscribe to betang.COM via email. Well, I’m sure that betang.COM is constantly improving itself to be accessed more quickly and comfortably. Another feature coming up (I think) is to be able to access betang.COM straight from Facebook which enables people to comment simply using their Facebook name and photo! Sounds very cool!

Overall, I hope for the best for betang.COM, and that it will continue improving its features. Also, I can’t wait for more interesting articles to come up soon so then I can read it. (I mean, I already know that Borneo is filled with lush forests, but I never knew just how easy it could be to get lost in these forests and possibly end up dying without anyone knowing or even caring about your tragic fate. Not to mention you might come across “the locals”, hahaha.) Good job, betang.COM.

[Good enough?]