City life can seem like a giant puzzle in need of solving. Which neighborhood pharmacy delivers? Is that hot new restaurant overpriced? Which farmers market has the freshest produce? Where did you get those shoes? Good questions. We happen to know people with the answers. You. The collective you, that is. Each of you holds answers to pieces of the puzzle. Collectively, you’ve got it solved.

Here’s where Povo comes in. Povo provides the means to tap into that collective pool of local information, map it, and make it available to everyone. Povo's wiki platform lets you share your insider’s knowledge in an organized, easy-to-use framework. It’s a collaborative tool that lets everyone in the community create, evolve, and maintain local neighborhood knowledge. It’s the ultimate urban guide – demystifying your city, block by block, street by street.

Collaboration is good, it makes good things better, and better things great. For those of you so inclined, here's an invitation to find new and meaningful ways to help evolve and customize Povo’s functionality and organization to keep it great. If you’re the kind of person who spends their day thinking of ways to make things work better, you’ve come to the right place.

Actually, you are. Povo is Portuguese and, very literally, povo means you: folk, people. It’s a people site; for you, by you, about your neighborhood. The company that cultivates Povo was founded in 2007 by Hasty Granbery and Max Metral, with initial funding from Arts Alliance Ventures. We're just 6 people located in the South End on Appleton Street.

No, Povo is a regular business. We believe that if we are successful in providing an environment for powerful search, collaboration and interaction about all things local there will be ample opportunities to keep Povo running. Mainly, we aim to provide context sensitive advertising, similar to other search engines like Google or Yahoo. If you search for cupcakes near our office, for example, the Appleton Bakery Cafe might be willing to pay for a highlighted link with a coupon, or have a link to their own separate site. We will always preserve transparency (i.e. you always know what's paid and what isn't) and the "editability" of the wiki. For example, you'll always be able to edit our (and every other) listing. Most importantly, all of Povo is Creative Commons licensed, meaning that if you want to repurpose or remix it on your own, you are free to do so as long as you give us attribution. Wikipedia uses a similar license, and we hope to provide the same kind of open and evolving information.