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The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released a report titled "Neighbors Online." The report maintains that, although face-to-face communications and phone calls still take pride of place in local information gathering, online sources are making strides.

• 22% of all adults - 28% of Internet users - signed up to receive alerts about local issues via email or text messaging
• 20% of all adults - 27% of Internet users - used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues

A fight just broke out down the street from my house. Yesterday, a dog in my neighborhood had one of its legs amputated. That's the kind of news I like to know and so I'm very excited that MSNBC's hyper-local news aggregator EveryBlock has expanded this week to include services in Portland, Oregon.

EveryBlock is one of scores of competing services that serve up public records, social media content and local announcements on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, or in this case block-by-block, basis. What does it mean when the most successful of these services rolls into your town? 12 hours into the experience, here's what some people in the local (human) media geeks have to say about it. This conversation offers a unique view into the front-line battle to offer news consumers more and faster information about our own neighborhoods than we've probably ever had before.

AOL is continuing with its push to create content on a massive local scale, according to a story by the Silicon Valley Insider. The story says that AOL is looking to "expand Patch, its network of local news blogs, from 30 sites to 'hundreds', by the end of 2010."

AOL recently announced a similar 0-to-60 sort of initiative with its attempt to cover every single band at this year's South By Southwest festival with its content distribution project Seed.

When you search for a local business on Google Maps, Google displays general information like address and opening hours about this business. Since December 2009, Google Place Pages also present a sentiment analysis based on comments on sites like CitySearch, Zagat, OpenTable and TripAdvisor. Now, Google has started to display reviews from hyperlocal blogs and news sites as well.

Until now, all the news on the hyperlocal news site EveryBlock was compiled by the site's editors and algorithms. Today, EveryBlock launched a nifty new feature that allows its users to post stories to the site and notify their neighbors about interesting events in their neighborhoods. The new feature allows users to post anything from news alerts to questions and classified ads on the site. These alerts will also now appear in EveryBlock's newly enhanced iPhone app (iTunes link).

Borrowing a rake or cup of sugar used to be a matter of just stopping by your neighbor's apartment. Now even that's gone online, thanks to a new service launching in Los Angeles called NeighborGoods. The brainchild of L.A. Derby Dolls player and former Revver director Micki Krimmel, NeighborGoods builds on the Craigslist and Freecycle models, using a hyper-local bent and the idea of borrowing or renting what you need, rather than selling or trading for keeps.