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MemberImage:DjMax

DjMax Povo Staff

Member Since January 25, 2007 •  My Contributions • Reviews • Lists  • Send a Message  • Add to Friends

Introduction

Hi. I'm one of the Povo people. We're trying to build a new kind of local guide, where people can contribute information (this isn't new) but also contribute the WAYS in which they find and search for things. On Povo, you can enter information about the parking garages in your area. But you could also build a search engine to let people ask "Where can I park for 2 hours near the South End for less than $10?". This "user generated functionality" can be collaboratively evolved over time. You might add the ability to account for Red Sox games, or oversized vehicles, etc. Anyhow, more later, but thanks for checking out Povo.
Povo Boston Site Developments

Background

Many people have asked for some background of the people who started Povo, so although I don't love web site bio's, here it is for all its worth.
I'm a co-founder of Povo along with ~hasty. Povo was spun out of Arts Alliance Labs, a small company I started in association with Arts Alliance Ventures to build core technologies for a set of digital media companies. That platform turned out to be useful for everything from running a digital cinema network to running the online volunteer systems (basically all the non-static, non-contribution web stuff) for JohnKerry.com in 2004. Before that, I was CTO and cofounder of PeoplePC, a division of Earthlink. I was previously CTO and cofounder of Firefly, where I helped develop personalization technologies including collaborative filtering (Wikipedia) and the Open Profiling Standard, which has evolved into P3P (Wikipedia) and attempts to protect users' privacy online. Following Microsoft's acquisition of Firefly, I joined Microsoft as the lead architect and developer for Microsoft's Passport product. I have bachelors and masters degrees from MIT.

Povo Is To Me...

I often write introductory mails about Povo, mostly for business partnerships or investment pitches. It's not a "brand statement" and so perhaps it's not best for the site, but this is my page so I'm calling the shots. It usually goes like this:
At Povo, we divide a city into blocks (also streets, parks and malls and such) and make a Wiki page for each one of them and each knows its position in space. Those pages are initially seeded with business listings and other available information for that block, but are completely editable to include new things (parks, bloggers, classified ads, apartments for rent), and include full history of all edits that were made to them. Users can build new geographic things as well (e.g. a new park, but not necessarily as rich as OpenStreetMaps).
Simple search is primarily done by tags on listings, and after each selection the “coincident” tags are shown with a count of how many results there will be. This interface is especially good for mobile, since little typing is required and there are never empty search results. We add synonyms and ambiguity resolution to traditional tagging systems, making it significantly more flexible than normal blog tags or product tags.
But the real power of Povo is that users can create an infinite number of very specific search engines themselves, with no involvement from “Povo developers.” In literal terms, this is because Povo has a built in scripting language. For example,
  • What’s the nearest post office that’s open now?
  • Where is the nearest park with a swing and a pickup soccer game today?
  • Where’s the nearest coffee shop with free wifi?
  • Where’s the cheapest parking garage within walking distance of the basketball arena?
Whereas other local sites have “fixed schema” and “fixed questions” Povo is more like an “open schema” database with a geographically aware query language where all those things evolve over time. We think this is an important leap towards user generated services as opposed to simply user generated content. Here are some sample links: Just as importantly, Povo is entirely Creative Commons licensed. Every page and search on the site is available as JSON, KML, or GeoRSS. The “Link/Share” button at the top of each page allows you to embed the results as a map widget, etc. So if somebody wants to power their “cheapestgasprices.com” from Povo, they can do so without cost. A handful of people have started doing so: