Harpoen Lets You Leave Digital Graffiti All Over the City

Jakarta has a new iPhone app and its name is Harpoen. What does it do and what's the big deal? Harpoen lets you leave notes, photos, remarks, comments all over the city, virtually. This digital graffiti app lets you put up what the developer calls "harps" all over the city which can be placed permanently or temporarily, as you can set these harps to disappear after a particular length of time if you wish.

I've been playing with this app for a while and I can certainly see the novelty as well as potential functions for this app. This app can act as a public notice board or as a missed connections board where people would leave messages for others to discover.

Funnily enough this app reminds me of those toilet graffiti where people leave all sorts of messages on cubicle walls. You can really leave any kinds of notes anywhere all over the city using this app and if you have some artwork stored in your photos app, you can leave it for other people to see, as long as they use the app as well. I've seen people leave links to YouTube videos or SoundCloud recordings and it's fun to discover the things that people scatter all around you.

Imagine playing a scavenger hunt using this app and having to find instructions on virtual notes that will disappear at a particular time. Time's ticking.

“The Indonesian market is starved for something fresh and relevant,” says John Patrick, Founder and CEO of Harpoen. “Indonesians are such a creative and passionate people. There's no reason why we shouldn't be inventing our own future of technological innovation.”

Despite being an iPhone app, it looks like it was taken straight out of Windows Phone with circular icons and thin arrows that would look right at home in a Lumia.

While the app requires Facebook Connect –it takes you to the Facebook app to activate if you have it installed– it does allow you to leave notes anonymously. When you sign in, you are asked to provide a unique username though if you don't like it you can change it later to one that hasn't been used by anyone before.

Harpoen will officially launch later this month at a digital pop-up art exhibition in Central Jakarta. Appreciated only via Harpoen's location-based application, the exhibition will feature original works by prominent local street artists and photographers. Details will be forthcoming.

The app is currently in soft launch mode and is available for free on the App Store.