Let’s face it - going anywhere in Malaysia is like walking around in a maze with your eyes closed. The cities and towns are poorly planned and the roads are redirected at whim. Worse if you’re traveling to somewhere you haven’t been before. Maps are good, but it doesn’t show less prominent places like your favorite roadside stalls.

Thankfully, now there’s a website to go to for directions. Dromoz.com (a striking similarity to dmoz.com) indexes real places in Malaysia. Dromoz explains itself:

Dromoz is a user-contributed and user-maintained directory of real, physical places in Malaysia. It is NOT about websites and it is NOT a search engine. Instead, Dromoz is an experimental project to test the usefulness of a web resource on actual places; its content is built and maintained entirely by volunteers.

Features

Here you can ask for directions to a specific place in Malaysia. The volunteers will then assist your request, though that may take some time. In addition to directions, details about a particular area can be requested; such as population, hotels, restaurants and public transportation available at the area.

If you prefer to search on your own, Dromoz’s search feature provides a list relevant places according to your keywords. The results returned are taken from their database, including: maps, directions, photos and even videos. Users will be spoilt for choice with the wide range of leads to choose from. Alternatively, the directory section will allow you to narrow your search until the postcode level. It will return all the places in the area you select.

There’s even a section for videos which are in one way or another, linked to places in Malaysia. These videos provide little assistance for those looking for directions, but are helpful sometimes in showing the details of a particular place (e.g. clubs, shopping malls and such).

The ‘Community’ section is similar to ‘Directory’. While the directory shows all the places in an area, the community will show only the type of place you choose - such as hospital, schools and more. Those knowing where they want to go will be better served here. Serendipity is a section where users can share their interesting places. Located in the community page, Serendipity is meant to be a guide to fellow Malaysians and travelers.

Complaints

Dromoz is not a pretty website - though the features more than make up for that, many first-time visitors will be put off by the site design. Usability gurus will scream at the fact that majority of the links open in a new window. The amount of advertisements is quite excessive and awkwardly positioned around the maps. Inconsistent maps are quite an issue here due to the user-contributed nature of Dromoz. Some maps are too small to be read while others lack location markers. Fortunately, most of the maps there are still a great help.

At the time of writing, the community is rather inactive in assisting requests for directions. Too many requests go unanswered. As for the directories, there are still many areas without entries - understandably, this project is an huge venture and would take a long time to truly index the entire Malaysia.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s a very helpful service to less-traveled ones such as us. While there are minor issues, the community is constantly improving itself and you can help out too! At times, it’s practically the next best thing to having a human guide. There is more than one way to get the information you want by means of asking, searching and navigating on your own. The numerous visual cues provided like images and videos are helpful as well.

We rate Dromoz, “Bookmark!”.
link to Dromoz

Tags: Directions, Dromoz, Malaysia, Maps, Reviews, Websites

Response to “Dromoz - Malaysian Places Directory” ( 1 )

Please spend a moment to join the discussion or trackback from your site

Featured Media