![\"Screenshot](\"/images/2025-02/neighbo-contact-page.webp\")
Tech policy has had a rare moment of public attention this week due to the Australian parliament banning kids from\nsocial media, updating the Privacy Act, and abandoning plans to regulate online misinformation,\nas well as the ABC publishing an exposé on misleading and deceptive stores advertising on Facebook and Instagram.
\nAll this discussion and debate focussed my mind on what resposibilities Neighbo will have to the community. I reckon\ntech companies should be attentive and responsive to community concerns rather than wait for government to make laws\nto mitigate industry failures. But what does that mean in practice for Neighbo?
\nI’ve decided on three principles:
\nYou should be able to trust that what you see on Neighbo is legit. None of those misleading and deceptive stores like\nABC exposed, no meaningless AI-generated content like on UberEats1.
\nThat means Neighbo has to make an effort to get things right. Neighbo will do that by having people—me, for now—actually\nreview what we publish to check it for accuracy and anything that smells off. It has become clear that current AI\ntechnology cannot replace humans, nor will the LLM technology it is based on ever be able to do so. AI may be able to\nhelp us make decisions better and faster but AI can never decide what is suitable to publish. Humans must take\nresponsibility.
\nBut Neighbo won’t get it right every time. We need to be open to reports of problems and mistakes on Neighbo, taking\nthem seriously and being grateful to the people who care enough to help us get things right. I find it frustrating that\nFacebook repeatedly dismisses my reports of scams, so if someone makes such a report to Neighbo I will\nbe sure to take action on it urgently. I also want to be transparent about when Neighbo gets something wrong, not just\nfixing mistakes but making it public what we fixed and why.
\nI’ll formalise these principles a little more before I launch Neighbo in 2025. If you have any thoughts or feedback\nbefore then I am very happy to hear from you!
\nFootnotes
\nFor example UberEats describes Hanna’s Kebab\nas “a sushi restaurant located in the Broadmeadows neighbourhood of Melbourne. Despite being categorised\nas a sushi venue, the restaurant notably features a selection of wraps and HSP (Halal Snack Pack) dishes, with the HSP\nChicken being particularly popular among patrons.” It is clearly not a sushi restaurant and only an AI would make a\nmistake as silly as this. I just had to see this one piece of AI bullshit and now I don’t trust anything UberEats says. ↩
\nHi I’m Charlie Gutjahr and I’m developing an online guide to Melbourne called Neighbo. It will be a website that can\nanswer questions like:
\nI’m making Neighbo because it’s surprisingly hard to get answers to questions like these. The big tech platforms just\naren’t giving me what I want any more. I feel like their apps are pushing what they want on me, rather than giving me\nwhat I ask for. The ads are incessant (and too often just scams) and now AI generated junk is starting\nto turn up and overwhelm the genuine information.
\nNow feels like the right time to go back to something simpler, something more human, based in the local community and\nthus more trustworthy. That’s what I want, and so I’m making it for myself. Hopefully you’ll like it too.
\nI wanted a good Aussie name because this guide is for Australia. It’s not meant to grow into a multinational megacorp;\neven an Australia-wide guide is a bit ambitious and not what I’m planning. My local neighbourhood is the focus.
\nA neighbourhood guide… Neighbo seemed a suitably Aussie name for that.
\nI’ve founded Neighbo Pty Ltd to build this, and when it’s ready I’ll launch it at neighbo.au.\nRight now it’s just me doing everything, perhaps it will stay that way or perhaps a few people will join to help me. I’d\nlike to spend some time rethinking how we find local information and how we discover the amazing things going on around\nus. That’s a lofty goal, as well as a rather abstract one, and so I expect I’ll need to experiment with a few different\nideas until I come up with the right one. That’s another way of saying that I don’t expect to launch anything this year.
\nIt’s rather pleasant to do this by myself with no deadlines and no team of people questioning my assumptions.\nUltimately though Neighbo should be something my local community wants, and that means it can’t be just me in my bubble\ndoing whatever I want. So as I progress this from abstract idea into a real website (and perhaps app) I plan to involve\nmore of you.
\nThis blog is the first step of that. It is way for me to reach out to people who are interested in this project. If you\nare one of those people who want to hear about how Neighbo is going then please subscribe. There is an email newsletter\nyou can subscribe to below, as well as an RSS feed. They will both have the same information as you’re seeing here.
\nSee you soon, neighbours!
", "url": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2024/introducing-neighbo/", "title": "Introducing Neighbo", "summary": "A blog post from me, Charlie Gutjahr, about how I've just started making Neighbo.", "date_modified": "2024-09-26T04:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Charlie Gutjahr", "url": "https://neighbo.au/contact/" } }, { "id": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2025/welcoming-your-emails/", "content_html": "Have you noticed how it’s almost impossible to contact certain big tech firms? When something goes wrong can you email\nthem, can you talk with a real person? Some yes, but others no. Too many seem like they don’t want to deal with us.
\nI want Neighbo to be a part of the local community, and that means you should be able to contact me. Problem is that\nwhen I set up an email inbox for Neighbo it started getting spam even before I told anyone about it. It’s hard enough\ndealing with legitimate email as a small indie app developer and I worried that dealing with spam too would just be\ntoo much.
\nSo I’m trying something new: all emails to Neighbo are rejected until the sender acknowedges I don’t want spam.
\nThis isn’t a normal way for a business to handle emails! Normally the email provider (Apple, FastMail, Google,\nMicrosoft, etc) will filter out spam after the email is delivered, but their filters aren’t perfect and spam does get\nthrough. Australia requires consent for all commercial electronic messages, but a spam filter has no way of\nknowing if we have or have not consented to a particular email.
\nNeighbo puts responsibility back on the sender instead of the spam filter. The sender just has to agree not to send\nspam and then they can email Neighbo as normal:
\n
My hope is that this will cut out almost all the spam to Neighbo, giving me more time to actually build Neighbo and\nsupport the community.
\nWhat do you think? Does this risk me missing too much email, or should everyone be this strict about spam? Well you can\nnow tell me what you think… just go to the Neighbo contact page at neighbo.au/contact then email me 😀
", "url": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2025/welcoming-your-emails/", "title": "Welcoming your emails, but not spam", "summary": "I want Neighbo to be a part of the local community, and that means you should be able to contact me. Problem is that when I set up an email inbox for Neighbo it started getting spam even before I told anyone about it...", "date_modified": "2025-02-28T06:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Charlie Gutjahr", "url": "https://neighbo.au/contact/" } }, { "id": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2025/neighbo-is-the-search-engine-for-melbourne/", "content_html": "Hello, Neighbo is the Melbourne search engine.
\nThis year Neighbo went from an abstract concept to a real app, albeit one that you can’t see yet. So I’m stoked that\nwe finally have something for you to take a gander at—the logo and tagline for Neighbo:
\nWhen I first started work on Neighbo just over a year ago I called Neighbo an online guide to Melbourne, one that can\nanswer questions like “what’s happening this weekend near me?”. That is still true, but I have shifted my thinking from\nNeighbo being a guide to being a directory to being a search engine. The shift makes Neighbo less about my opinion and\nmore about helping you find what you want. There is plenty of information online about where to go and what’s happening\nin Melbourne but it is too hard to find. Neighbo is going to try solve that problem.
\nThere’s also something wonderfully retro about launching a search engine in 2026. The tech industry reckons that AI is\nthe future, but the reality right now is that AI slop is ruining search. So we’re building a search engine that has\nhigh-quality, accurate data. A real person reviews every record in Neighbo. I am personally walking through Brunswick\nconfirming that each shop and venue in our database is legit and correctly listed. This surely won’t scale… but it\ndoesn’t have to. Scaling slop doesn’t help people, but answering questions accurately does. I intend for Neighbo to\ngive more accurate answers than anything else.
\nI’d like to thank two Brunswick locals for helping us find this new focus for Neighbo. Kathrin Wheib from Make Good Studio\nconducted user interviews and a workshop which helped me understand Neighbo needs to be less about me and maps, and more\nabout accurate and comprehensive information that’s easy to find. Pauline Mosley is an independent graphic\ndesigner and branding expert who developed the Neighbo brand identity, and challenged me to narrow down the scope of\nNeighbo and find a clear message about what it is that we’re doing.
\nThe Neighbo logo, tagline, colour palette, and numerous visual elements that you’re seeing on this blog are thanks to\nPauline Mosley. She has done stellar work finding the right look for Neighbo; not an easy task when my pitch for Neighbo\nis to be “for everyone”. The result is a visual design that I think is accessible and friendly enough for anyone while\nstill being contemporary and interesting. I’m particularly happy about how the search icon in the logo combined with\n“the Melbourne search engine” tagline in a search bar makes the purpose of Neighbo so clear. I am rapt to have an\nunambiguous purpose after months of meandering and experimentation with what Neighbo might be.
\nI could not be more excited about the launch of Neighbo in 2026!
", "url": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2025/neighbo-is-the-search-engine-for-melbourne/", "title": "Neighbo is the search engine for Melbourne", "summary": "We have a new focus on being the accurate, reliable search engine for Melbourne. Today we unveil our new logo and visual design that prepares us to launch Neighbo in 2026.", "date_modified": "2025-12-23T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Charlie Gutjahr", "url": "https://neighbo.au/contact/" } }, { "id": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2025/neighbo-has-more-data-more/", "content_html": "You can’t see much of Neighbo yet, but behind the scenes Neighbo is becoming an even more comprehensive guide to\nMelbourne. We’re now incorporating data from Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft, and FourSquare directly into Neighbo\nwhile still maintaining our own hand-crafted information about places and events. Combining those giant global\ndatabases with our superior local knowledge gives us both breadth and depth… so Neighbo can cover more places while\nalso being more accurate!
\nFor this thank Andrew Bednarz who joined Neighbo in April as our Principal Engineer. One of the many things he has\ndone since joining is build a custom data pipeline to bring in regular updates from third-party sources. It\ncombines the data from OpenStreetMap that I wrote about in a previous blog with two new sources:\nthe Overture Maps Foundation and Foursquare Open Source Places. It keeps track of the connections we’ve\nmade between places in the Neighbo database and those other databases, and generates deltas (a summary of changes)\nbetween versions of data. That lets us review changes as they come in and make sure they’re legit.
\nOverture is an open-data initiative from several dozen companies, and it’s where Neighbo gets Meta and Microsoft data\nfrom. Overture has a vision to create reliable and interoperable map data that drives collaboration\nand have recently announced the Global Entity Reference System (GERS) which we are adopting at Neighbo.\nIt’s early days and to be honest I’m not sure how we’ll use GERS yet but it does look promising: I’m keen to find ways\nfor Neighbo to work with our local community, and GERS may make it easier for us to share our data with each other?
\nFoursquare is the big geospatial platform that you may remember from the early days of the iPhone—and indeed everyone I’ve\nmentioned it to said “wow, Foursquare are still around?!?”. Yes they are, but they work more behind the scenes now and\na few months ago started providing data in a free and open-source format. I’ve noticed that some of that data\nisn’t great quality (I’m pretty sure that “moo’s perfect parking spot” isn’t a real business) but it does incorporate\na number of places even Meta and Microsoft don’t know about.
\nSo when do you get to see all this? The app isn’t ready yet, but I’m excited that this week we’re spinning up our first\nproduction infrastructure so that we can internally review and edit Neighbo data. We’ve been quiet for a while but\nthings are moving! I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from us soon…
", "url": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2025/neighbo-has-more-data-more/", "title": "More data! More!", "summary": "How Neighbo is becoming more comprehensive with data from Meta, Microsoft, and FourSquare.", "date_modified": "2025-06-29T14:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Charlie Gutjahr", "url": "https://neighbo.au/contact/" } }, { "id": "https://blog.neighbo.au/2024/who-owns-data-about-your-neighbourhood/", "content_html": "Neighbo will be all about what’s in and what’s on in Melbourne. That is a lot of data, and data is valuable. Who owns\nit?
\nMy opinion is that we should all share ownership of data about the places and activities around us. This is the\ninformation we use to live our lives, so no one company or entity should be able to monopolise it.
\nFor Neighbo there are complex yet important legalities around copyright1 and database rights2 which I’ll need to\nsuss out with a lawyer before I can commit to anything specific. For now though I think it’s reasonable to talk about my\nprinciples. The main principle is that Neighbo should be generous with the data it has, letting others use much of it\nrather than lock it away in a walled garden.
\nThe first way I intend to do that is by contributing Neighbo data to OpenStreetMap.
\nI’m gathering data for Neighbo by walking the streets of Brunswick and taking notes on what I see. I don’t want Neighbo\nto give you a boring text view of the world though, so Neighbo will feature a polished map of Brunswick.
\nDrawing a map of Brunswick from scratch would be difficult given it’s just me working on it right now, and practically\nimpossible to do for all of Melbourne. Fortunately I don’t have to start from scratch because OpenStreetMap provides\nexcellent map data that I can use. Maps aren’t just lines and lettering though; OpenStreetMap includes data about\nbusinesses such as shops, restaurants, and pubs—the same places I’m gathering information on by walking the\nneighbourhood.
\nThat is where Neighbo can contribute. The business information that OpenStreetMaps has is pretty good, but it’s not\nperfect. Here’s an example of what it says about two pubs in the area:
\n![\"Map](\"/images/2024-10/example-openstreetmap-data.png\")
\nMap data © OpenStreetMap
Both pubs have a name and address (though without a suburb specified) however Thunder Road Brewhouse has useful\ninformation such as opening hours and website which aren’t provided for the Quarry Hotel. More problematic—but less\nobvious—is that Thunder Road Brewhouse doesn’t actually exist any more! It was bought up and relaunched as Rocky Ridge\nBrunswick. This OpenStreetMap entry was once valid but it is now out of date.
\nThis is a good opportunity for Neighbo to help. Once I’ve collated all the business data for this area I will use that\nto update OpenStreetMap and fix missing or incorrect information like this.
\nOpenStreetMap data is used in a lot of places that you might not have noticed. For example when you plan a public\ntransport journey in the PTV app the businesses shown on the map come from OpenStreetMap—and so an update to a\nbusiness in Neighbo would also update the PTV app. Other major apps like Uber, Strava, and AllTrails use OpenStreetMap\ndata and so changes in Neighbo may well update their maps too.
\nUltimately though I can’t know everything about Melbourne. If I’m going to expand Neighbo beyond a handful of suburbs\nthen I’d like business owners and event managers to provide information directly to Neighbo. I don’t expect people to do\nthat for me right now when no-one has heard of Neighbo, but perhaps Neighbo being a conduit to a swathe of popular apps\nwill be an incentive for businesses to update Neighbo?
\nI’ll have plenty more to say about that later on. Neighbo needs to get data before it can give it, and so in the next\nblog I’ll show you how I’m gathering data and getting exercise by walking much of Brunswick…
\nFootnotes
\nCompanies routinely claim ownership of data by asserting copyright and then impose conditions through licenses,\nbut not everything is copyrightable and courts sometimes override them. For example Telstra Corporation Limited v Phone\nDirectories Company Pty Ltd [2010] FCA 44 found that Telstra did not have copyright in its White Pages and\nYellow Pages directories. I am not a lawyer and am in no position to say what copyright Neighbo may be entitled to; I\njust know I should seek expert advice rather than speculate in a blog 😀 ↩
\nDatabase rights are laws in some countries which give a database some legal protection from being copied when the\ndata isn’t otherwise protected by copyright, however Australia don’t have a database right. See Wikipedia for more. ↩
\n