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New on Povo
This page covers the additions and new features we add to Povo. It's the perfect page to watch or to subscribe to in your RSS reader.

April 09

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Last.Fm Widget Available

April 27, 2009
You probably were only marginally aware you had a member page (www.povo.com/~yourpovoname). We have lots of work to do to make that an interesting place to put relevant information about yourself, but I guess we have to start somewhere. I (djMax) wanted to put the music I'm listening to on my page, so I added the [1] widget as a template. Very simple usage: 

{{Povo:Secure Templates/LastFm | Username = whatever}}
See the example at right.
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Signin and Signup to Povo with Twitter

April 26, 2009
Povo is now integrated with Twitter's API for both signin and signup as well as "tweeting" your Povo edits if you so choose. To link your accounts, just sign out and sign back in with your twitter account, and then signin with your Povo account when prompted. From then on you can choose whether edits you make are tweeted on your behalf by Povo. Fun.
Please let us know if you have any trouble or suggestions.
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"Triple Search" on the Home Page

April 22, 2009
It's not that we've been doing nothing, but most of our recent activity has been behind the scenes or sales oriented. We're picking up the pace on the site a little bit. Today, Hasty changed the search box on the home page to search tags, listings, and places (e.g. streets, addresses, land cover) all at the same time. This is the first step towards merging the "what/where" boxes into a single box. We've been back and forth on this a million times, and probably will continue to do so, but try out the triple search box and let us know how it feels.
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GetSatisfaction.com and Povo

April 22, 2009
We'll be moving our feedback "systems" to [2] over the next weeks. It's not that we have a huge customer support load, but they just seem to have a nice set of tools and a "public forum" mindset that matches well with Povo. See you there, and ask some questions so we don't look so new.

October

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Wear Povo High Fashion Gear

October 17, 2008
We've made a line of high-fashion Povo clothing. Ok, well the "high fashion" thing is a bit of a stretch, but the shoes are pretty cool. We've used a tool called Wordle to take all the text on pages in a neighborhood (the South End for now) and highlight the most common phrases. It makes quite a representative and visually attractive summary of the characteristics of an area! We've put these Wordle's on T-Shirts (mens and womens) and shoes.
We also include a QR Code (Wikipedia), which leads to the South End QR Code Page describing the gear. People can take a photo of the back of your shirt or shoe using one of the variety of reader applications (e.g. BeeTag, NeoReader) and find out more. If you want one for your neighborhood, let us know!
See the Povo Store on Zazzle.

create & buy custom products at Zazzle
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Use Povo by Email!

October 2, 2008
In a perfect world, Povo would be accessible on any device, anywhere. We're not there yet because we're just not big enough to have the resources to write for every mobile device, etc. But we did just expose some basic services to mobile devices via email. To use these services, append "@povo.com" to the addresses listed below:
  • photos - attach a photo and it will automatically upload it to your member images. If you include the name of a listing in the subject, it will automatically add the image to the gallery for that listing! If it can't find one, no worries, you can go to [Special:Orphaned/Images|the orphaned images] page and add them later.
  • search - include your search in the subject line, such as "pizza near Appleton Street" or "park in South End" and Povo will email you back the top 5 search results and a link to more information.
The search interface is also exposed via Twitter, so you can direct message Povo on Twitter with a search specified as in the email version and well reply with a super short collection of results. (Usually only 3 fit the 140 character limit of twitter). And even niftier, if you use Twitterific or another client that lets you add your location to your tweets, we'll use that as a location from which to search. So this tweet: 

http://maps.google.com/?q=42.346469%2C-71.069264&ll=42.346469%2C-71.069264 kid friendly
Would do a search around our offices for kid friendly things. Remember to befriend/follow Povo first, or it can't reply to your messages.
More ideas for email-based services are welcome!

July

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Google Local Search Now Integrated

July 1, 2008
Povo is an ever-evolving guide to Boston, and obviously it's very early in our lifetime. So we know there are times when we might not have a listing, or our text search doesn't understand some crazy misspelling (this is a really hard problem, if you are a Lucene expert, contact us!). So we've added Google Local Search results to our search results page. If you get no results from us, we'll automatically run the Google search. If you get some results, you have the option to run the Google search at the bottom of that page.
We hope this gives you even more reasons to go to Povo first.

June

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Embed external RSS Feeds in Povo

June 27, 2008
Povo is a Creative Commons work, meaning you can take our content and reuse it for free as long as you give us attribution. Because of this, we generally try to "internalize" anything in Povo, such as images, so that you can be sure the work is "complete." We still think this is a goal, but we also have to be realistic. For example, you can embed You Tube videos, but we don't load them into our database. This is partly because we consider YouTube a "stable" content reference: they're unlikely to go out of business anytime soon. Today, we have also created a "super template" (templates that use things like Javascript or special server code) for embedding RSS feeds. The original intent is for things like news stories or blog entries which are not meant to be searchable or persistent on Povo. For example, here's this page as a feed in itself:
Loading...
Or a feed of news stories purporting to be about the Back Bay (from [3]):
Loading...
June 26, 2008
Whenever somebody uses a Template or makes a link to a Povo title, we keep a "map" of all those associations. This is the foundation of how our custom search engines (like the Parking Search) work. Many times, people make links or call templates that don't exist yet, intending to create them later. Of course, this doesn't always actually get done, and so you end up with "broken" links and templates. So, we have two pages to help see those things now:
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New RSS Feeds

June 8, 2008
You may not have know, but essentially every page and search on Povo is already available as an RSS feed (Atom format with GeoRSS extensions, to be specific). We've made new specialized feeds for reviews, graffiti, and listing additions which can be accessed on a region basis. For example: This was originally conceived to add our information to the Outside.in local blog aggregator. Comments are most welcome.
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Povo Knows Lottery

June 6, 2008
Did you know there are over 3,500 places (heatmap) to play the lottery in the greater boston area? About 500 of those are convenience stores. It's a bit crazy if you ask me, but you didn't. Povo now has those locations, including which ones have Keno.

April

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Povo Now Supports OpenID

April 23, 2008
We've had an OpenID button on the login page for a while. I can't say it's always worked very well. Well, it's time has come. We are using the excellent dotnetopenid library, including lots of help from Andrew Arnott. As a result, you can login to Povo with your Yahoo, AIM, Blogger, LiveJournal, or Technorati account, and hundreds more.
April 23, 2008
Happy to say that the Google Maps team has chosen Povo as a good example of the integration of their Street View API.
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See Similar Listings and Nearby Parking

April 23, 2008
Listing pages have a "side box" titled "Around Here" which shows nearby T stop, cross street, and anything tagged "visible landmark" nearby. We've added two new items to this box, a link for nearby parking (easy) and a link to see "similar listings" (not so easy). You can see similar listings nearby or elsewhere, in the latter case you can enter an address. This is handy if you love the unique blend of things that is the Appleton Bakery Cafe but you're in Newton and you want something like it.
Or at least it will be when we have a lot more tags (ahem, now is a good time to tag your favorite businesses!) and our algorithms have something to chew on. Right now, McDonalds is really similar to the Appleton Bakery, and while I do love the fries, we all know this isn't a great result. The way the scoring works is that for every tag they share, they get points. The number of points is based on how common the tag is. So for restaurants, they probably get 1 point, while for hamburgers they may get 10, and for cupcakes they'd get more. I think we have some fine tuning to do with the algorithm, perhaps subtracting points for non-shared tags, but it's a start and we find it an interesting way to navigate listings. Enjoy!
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We've Added UPS/FedEx locations

April 10, 2008
There are things in your neighborhood that you walk by everyday without even noticing – until you actually need them. UPS and FedEx dropboxes and dropoff locations are one example. They're not quite as ubiquitous as the blue USPS mailboxes (we've almost got those in too), but there are a lot of them and most people don't really pay attention to where they’re located, when the last pickup occurs, or what other services are available at the locations. We added all of the Boston area locations of UPS and FedEx, making it easy to find the nearest one in every neighborhood.
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Marathon

April 8, 2008
The Marathon is a uniquely Boston event. We put together a mile-by-mile guide that lets people post their insights about each mile of marathon. Since it's wiki-based, anyone can make edits to the site and add content. Spectators can find the best place to watch. Runners can learn what to expect on race day. Those who plan to watch the race can do local searches around any mile marker on the course to find places to park, plus bars, restaurants or anything else that they might want or need on race day. But by far the coolest feature is the ability for someone to virtually "run" the second half of the marathon course from Mile Marker 14 through the Finish. What better way to get ready for race day?
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Hillary Clinton Heatmap

April 7, 2008
For fun, we built a heatmap of all of Hillary’s travels as First Lady. Heatmaps are a way to visualize the concentration of things over an area. Povo heatmaps fully integrate with Povo content so you can see any search or even page as a heatmap. Soon, you'll also be able to embed these heatmaps in your blog or personal site.
Perhaps it was obvious to you that she went to Europe a lot, but you can also filter and drill down by time or geography to see where she concentrated. And if you have or know of similar information on Obama or McCain, let's try it out. The Hillary page is just a regular Povo page, so you could "import" data like this yourself if you're handy with a scripting tool of your choice. In this case we just created a section for every trip she took. The filtering (tag filter), mapping, and heatmaps come automatically.
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Burt’s Bees and Dr Hauschka

April 7, 2008
Burts Bees is a brand of all natural personal care products. They are sold at a suprising number of Boston area retailers, but not everywhere. Dr. Hauschka is an all natural and organic skin care line that is much harder to find. Both of them were suggested by a friend of Povo. So let's say you hear about their products and would like to try them. How do you know which stores carry the brand and where they're located? Does the CVS down the street carry them, or do you have to make a trip to a specialty store? Or maybe you're on your way home and you need that particular brand of diaper cream (haven't we all been there? No? ok.)...
It's not that this search is the be all and end all of Povo, but it's a new way of thinking about how to use it. It's not just the locations, it's the obscure, rare or unique features of that place.
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Shared Routes

April 5, 2008
You can now draw lines on the map, save them, and share them with others. This will form a major part of a "share your run" function that we plan to include with our upcoming marathon promotion. To create a route, simply trace a path on the map clicking each point along the way. You can also add a brief description as well.
This facility is also directly available in the toolbar on the main edit page under the "Map" menu. It was used by Keith to draw our fair city's subway lines.
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Street View

April 4, 2008
One of the compelling things about Povo is that almost everything on the site knows its location and therefore its location relative to every other thing on Povo. This is one of two core difference between Povo and a regular wiki (the other being search engines). Our standard map view provides a nice way of seeing how close things are to a given point, but there's nothing like seeing the street in pictures. Google recently allowed us to embed their Street View functionality into our listing pages, and about 2 days later we put it live. Now you’ll have the ability to "stand" on the street and take a look around before you ever actually go there. It’s a really great way to explore a neighborhood.
More importantly, you can make it better. Taking an address and showing you a picture of that thing (park, bodega, whatever) is not an exact science. If you give us Masa on Tremont, there's no automatic way for us to know which "side" of that corner to show you. So, if you click "see street view" and it's not right there you can browse around a bit and then save that "better view" for everyone else's benefit. This is another way of combining people and technology to make things better for both.

March, 2008

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Zipcar Locations

March 25, 2008
Zipcar is great company with which Povo shares some core values. They approach their marketing efforts on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis and embed themselves in the fabric of the communities they serve. You might not know it unless you’re a member, but Zipcar has cars parked in locations all over the metro area. Not only can you search for nearby zipcar locations, you can see a heatmap to decide where you should get your next apartment. They recognize that Povo is also a valuable resource for Zipcar customers, giving them the ability to find out more about the neighborhood at the other end of their trip.
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Boston Parks

March 13, 2008
Information on parks and recreation facilities are available in a variety of places and in a variety of formats, but we found them poorly organized and difficult to use. The facts are out there, but there had to be a better way for people to access it. We gathered the information and entered into Povo to create what we believe is the best and most complete guide to Boston area parks:
Show parks in Boston
You can continue to refine your search of parks by clicking on tags (in the right hand column)... Find parks with both a basketball court (for me) and a play structure (for my kids). We have Boston and Cambridge information, perhaps you could help out by entering parks in other areas? Or better yet if you know who in your town or city government has this information, let us know!
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Quizzes

March 1, 2008
We were thinking of creating a promotional "How Boston Are You?" quiz that we could use to help support our launch. Rather than use a random (i.e. unrelated to Povo) system to do this, we decided to build the capability into Povo so anybody else could do the same thing. Not everything works this way, but it is always our goal to build tools instead of specific solutions to a particular problem. This has pluses and minuses, we know, but in the end we feel that the imagination of the community will make or break Povo, not the few of us writing software in the office. So we developed the ability for anyone on Povo to develop their own quiz, though it's not for the faint of heart just yet.