Encountering a new neighbourhood can be alienating. The panoply of stimulation from new people, places and interaction is dizzying. It can be hard to feel like part of the community.

But don't worry. Now there's an app for that!

PSST! harnesses the power of gossip to welcome you into the secret life of a neighbourhood.

Once you activate PSST! on your smartphone, it will use GPS to figure out where you are. PSST! will then use its powerful web-aggregator to collect gossip about the area you are traversing.

PSST! trawls online sources such as blog postings, twitter feeds, facebook status updates for geo-specific gossip. This could be references to area landmarks, or even just posts emanating from a specific area. PSST! puts all of these to give you a live feed of all the informal thoughts, opinions, and judgments people are making about an area.

To allow for you to get fully immersed in the neighbourhood gossip, PSST! runs its feed through a text-to-talk program. That way, you can listen to the gossip without the distraction of your handheld device.