Indonesia Digest: Kompas invests in Urbanesia.com, Metro TV Android app, and more

(1) PT Kompas CyberMedia, the company behind Kompas.com, announced an investment in city directory startup Urbanesia.com.

(2) Metro TV officially announced (via Twitter) that they have released a mobile application for Android platform and it is available for free on Android Market.

(3) Plasa CEO Iriana Muadz has officially resigned a few weeks ago. Iriana officially took the CEO hat since March 2011, together with COO Widi Nugroho.

(4) At the end of 2011, the Blaast mobile platform began to open access for general users, especially  low-end mobile users (Nokia, etc). Although Blaast only did a soft launch of their beta version, it has reportedly been downloaded more than 10,000 times, with the majority of them coming from Indonesia.

(5) Following their acquisition by LivingSocial  in June 2011, Dealkeren has rebranded itself as LivingSocial Indonesia. Their website has changed from DealKeren.com to LivingSocial.co.id.

(6) Despite the large number of generic Chinese phones flooding the Indonesian market, PT Industri Telekomunikasi Indonesia (INTI), a state-owned enterprise, will be forging ahead with plans to release its own brand of Android smartphones.

(7) Cabara.co.id is a local Internet service that offers a booking service for helper/assistant/informal workers (maids, baby sister, chauffeur, nanny, office boy, office girl, etc.). It is still in beta, and some features aren’t available yet.

(8) Go Indonesia, a local travel site, seems to be getting a lot of attention on the Internet. Its motto reads: “The real and The First Online Travel Agent in Indonesia”.

(9) Bhinneka has been the dominant e-commerce site for gadgets for a long time. Recently however, they’re finally getting a new competitor namely JuraganGadget, that just launched in Jakarta few weeks ago.

(10) East Ventures officially announced two more startups that they’re working with. They are: Inapay and Jajalindo.

(11) Huawei Tech Investment was appointed as a partner of PT XL Axiata to manage its mobile network for the next seven years. The designation is based on Huawei’s experience in managing the network and the ability to provide assurance that the XL network services will remain reliable.

(12) idblogNetwork, a local ad program aimed at bloggers, will launch a new feature that allows advertisers the option to work on a pay-per-sale or pay-per-lead basis. Advertisers will only pay based on the number of items sold with a referral program that is owned by idBlogNetwork.

(13) Tiket.com is finally accepting payments via credit card. Tiket.com claims that their payment system uses the best technology to detect fraud.