Zenbu:About

What is Zenbu?
Zenbu is a local search engine where you can find any business, product, service, shop or location.

The Zenbu Mission
To help you find anything, anywhere. Simply put, our mission is to enable you to find everything.

Zenbu needs you!

 * to add new or missing businesses - Add New Entry
 * to correct any wrong numbers or changed addresses
 * to rate and review entries

It's easy to get involved and any information contribution, large or small, is appreciated. [http://www.zenbu.co.nz/account Zenbu accounts are free! Sign up to get started.] You can find some ideas about how to get involved here.

You can rest assured that your efforts will be valued by and available to others, as all the information in Zenbu is usable copyright free under the Creative Commons Attribution license which guarantees anybody's rights to reuse, remix and share the information. A growing number of third party projects are using Zenbu data.

Scratching An Itch
Every day we are all searching for things; the nearest ATM, a recommended Chinese restaurant, a reliable plumber. This should be dead simple with today's technology, but sometimes it's not.

Historically this information was expensive to collect and distribute, which meant large amounts of advertising. Even now the websites of those big annual coloured books are designed chiefly with advertisers and not you, the user, in mind.

We believe this everyday information should be available and well maintained with useful search tools, so we created Zenbu, a user-focused resource.

Social Change
Search, access to information and the creation of communities are the three foundations of social change being pushed by the Internet. Zenbu uses these three concepts so it is a fun project for us, and hopefully you, to participate in.

Our Inspiration
Wikipedia brought the power of community created content into the limelight and has a non-restrictive license.

Google has fast, powerful search and user relevant results.

OpenStreetMap is the free wiki world map which has gathered mass support for a niche area.

Our Differentiation
Zenbu requires all edits to be made by registered users, unlike Wikipedia which allows anonymous edits.

The 'unit' of a Google search is a web page while the 'unit' of a Zenbu search is a real world thing.

Wikipedia captures quantitative information on any/every subject but Zenbu is just for factual details of 'things'.

OpenStreetMap is primarily about "The Map" with Points of Interest (POIs) on it; Zenbu is primarily about the POIs, often displayed on a map.

Sponsors & Credits
Zenbu runs entirely on open source software. Debian. Apache. Passenger. Ruby on Rails. Ferret/Lucene.

Thank you to all the people contributing to Zenbu, every little bit counts!