Google did some clever clogs stuff at Wembley today. Christmas IS coming - time to book for this year’s Winter Wonderland. There’s a bit of a row over Mclicensing hours in Kentish Town. London's first ticket-office-less tube station is to open at Wood Lane on 12th October. The Met should benefit from a reduction in red tape in the hunt for knife carriers. The witch-finder general is after Police Commander Ali Dizaei again. Sombre......

Google is out and about capturing London for the latest addition to its Street View service. These 360 degree panoramic views are already available in most major US cities, but now Google is capturing everyone and everything on the streets of London. If your’re planning a visit to one of London’s seedier establishments or are a generally dodgy person then you may want to watch the traffic. You could become part of the growing......

A man rolls into a bar. Sounds like the start of a dumb joke? It’s not. Wheelchair-enabled people like going out in the evening as much as anybody. What does appear to be a joke is how difficult it can be to find info about wheelchair accessible pubs et al in London. We did a bit of online snooping and were dismayed by the lack of resources out there. What material we did come......

Here at Londonist we love to indulge in all sorts of devilishly scrumptious treats. However, we know healthy, conscientious eating is the key to a happy life. It’s hard to be a saint in the city, especially when trying to eat healthily and conscientiously. That’s why we truly appreciate Vegan London for providing “perhaps the most up-to-date information on the best vegetarian restaurants in London that are suitable for vegans,” along with “details on......

Regular readers, occasional visitors, the people we work with and those who end up here because of an unlikely Google search may not be aware of the team behind the scene. But we're there, at the 21st century version of the coalface, at our keyboards, on our laptops, putting Londonist together with pleasure. Seeing, doing, thinking, shopping, travelling, Photoshopping, researching and making up stuff about London is a great deal of fun and we've......

For my first post to the Londonist I had several interesting digital maps, too many in fact to fit in, so here are a few I had left over. First up it's a city guide, nothing that new but moodmapper.com tries to create a USP by using your moods. Click on the coloured grid to show your feelings and let the site do the rest, an interesting idea. London Transport has a problem with......

Over on our flickr group there has been some interesting discussion about Google Maps. It's web 2.0 crazy. Simon Crubellier began the thread ('Google Maps Strangeness') with, Has anyone looked at the maps.google.co.uk satellite photo of Trafalgar Square lately? What on earth is going on there? It's obviously the crack of dawn on a summer morning, all the surrounding streets are empty, but the place is packed... The images of London were last updated......

Doc Rogers lives and works in the heart of London's SoHo – he's currently a creative technologist for an advertising company and a keen blogger. 1/6 – I have to spend a lot of time surfing the world wide web for work, so I often stumble across interesting sites and blogs that are London-related. Today it's all about the maps, possibly not the most exciting of topics I know, but there are some cool......

You want entertainment in London, you say? And you want it for free? Well, good sir or madam, you've come to the right place. Anyone who's lived in this fair city for a while knows that free entertainment is actually all around us. From our world-class museums to almost uncountable numbers of galleries; hear talks by some of the planet's great thinkers, and japery from the best new comics. It's all free, and it's......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 18. Social Revolution? When I was a kid, television was dominated by the game show, like The Price Is Right or Bulls Eye. I think the appeal was through empathy of that elated feeling of winning something great… Bully’s special prize. Then our society changed. Reality television took over, we became more interested in how......

Heathrow lady sacked for wearing a tiny, almost invisible stud. Story more amusing if you exchange the words stud and lady. Playboy opening massive store in London. No jokes to be had here. iPhone for UK launched in London. Generates 1025 stories on Google News. Still not bigger than Jesus, currently charting 19,695 hits. Losers. The Shard skyscraper is stalling because of 'credit crunch'. You can almost hear the documentary makers searching their audio......

Last week we reported on Walk Score, a tool for people who want to take positive steps towards greener living. This week, something for our more pessimistic readers: Flood Maps. Another twist on Google Maps, look up where you live or where you’re thinking of moving to, type in the amount you predict sea levels will rise, and find out whether you’re going to end up underwater. Projecting sea level rise is problematic. A......

We’re all going to die at some unpredictable point. However, discovering you’ve an identifiable mortality timebomb discreetly ticking away in your brain is going to make you reassess your life. You can’t ignore the fact that you’ve been dealt a rather more difficult card, highlighting your vulnerability, yet not allowing you to plan for anything, because, who knows how long you’ve got. This happened recently to Lisa Connell, 28, of Barnet. Initially devastated by......

You've seen those adverts for a well known building society, right? – the ones with the annoying chap explaining that it ‘doesn’t work like that’. Change the building society for the Ordnance Survey (our national mapping agency) and make Google the customer for a farce that has made London the laughing stock of the mapping world. Fly around Google Earth and you will see 3D models of cities around the world, but fly into......

If you’re looking for a new place to live, and want to live more greenly at the same time, Londonist has discovered the perfect tool to help you: Walk Score. A cunning twist on Google Maps, give it a postcode and it’ll calculate how many useful things, such as shops, restaurants, cinemas, schools and parks, are within a mile of your house. Meaning you can use your car less, get fitter, save money and......

Last weekend, 22 walls in Shoreditch, Camden and Portobello received a facelift. French stenciler Jef Aerosol (that may not be his real name) put up the images of iconic music celebrities (Bolan, Lennon, Jagger, Drake, Hendrix, Curtis and, erm, Gandhi) as well as images of beggars, buskers and forlorn old women. The stencils, thrown up in just three days, are concentrated in three areas, as the map below shows. Blue markers indicate stencils that......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 9. Corporate Social Responsibility? I reckon the Tories were on to a goodun when they began their social responsibility gubbins which, throbbing away, is “the heart of modern conservatism”. Not sure who started it first but all the big corporate have been lapping it up too for a while now. As Mr Google will show......

Off to see Timberlake at the new-look Dome tonight? Make sure you don’t get the wrong venue. The Greenwich attraction isn’t the only O2 in town… The O2, Greenwich Peninsula Function: Entertainment venue, including stadium, 11-screen cinema and exhibition space. Includes Justin Timberlake. Age: 7.5 years. Opened at the end of 1999 as the Millennium Dome, now recalled to life as the O2. Capacity: 20,000 in the main arena. Size: 365 m diameter and the......

We've seen plenty of boastful stats about the reinvigorated Dome — apparently, it could swallow 13 Albert Halls or 10 St Paul's Cathedrals. (Scenarios not all that far fetched, considering nearly a billion quid and numerous reputations have already disappeared into its maw.) But here's a way to judge its size for yourself. Using Google Maps, it is possible to compare London's landmarks from an aerial perspective. The shots are all from the same......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

One of Londonist’s favourite web 2.0 communities, last.fm, has just been bought up by American firm CBS for a rather tasty $280m (£142m). Whilst it may not have been sold for as much as other social networks (such as News Corp's £294m MySpace purchase and Google's $1.65bn buy-out of YouTube), it does mean that last.fm can stay in London and still keep its open source nature. Dave explained what Last.fm is all about much better......

2. London’s Phantom Hounds Phantom black dogs, or ‘hellhounds’ as folklorists like to call them, are, despite the haziness of legend, manifest the world over. Across the United Kingdom such canid apparitions have been given many names – Striker, Padfoot, Roy Dog, Guytrash, and the most well known being Black Shuck. Most of these fiery eyed beasts appear to haunt rural or at least semi-rural areas, so you might think that London would be excluded......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 36. Marble Arch Underpass Where? It's an underpass. It passes under Marble Arch. Like, dur. What? This haphazard collection of tunnels was constructed in the early 1960s, to improve pedestrian access to Hyde Park. Ha! It’s a choice of two evils – brave the heavy traffic or plunge into the depths. We asked an aged and wise hermit on the corner of Edgware Road for advice.......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 35. Saffron Hill Where? Narrow street running parallel to Farringdon Road between Charterhouse Street and Clerkenwell Road. The quiet southern end is not used by vehicles, hence its inclusion in this series. What? The street is named, you will not be surprised to hear, after saffron, which was grown in this area from the 14th century. The world's most expensive spice was in high-demand in the......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

Imagine the sights and the smells of the world’s largest and most expanding city. A city full of promise, the streets paved with the fragments of young men and women’s dreams. And other people's filth. This is Dickensian London during the serialisation of Oliver Twist, 1837-1839. See Fagin and his band of merry child thieves cheerily skipping though the streets, picking pockets and singing away as if they knew that Anti Social Behaviour Orders......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 34. West End Lane to Dresden Close Where? Off the beaten track this week, to the railway hinterland beside the O2 Centre, NW6. What? Could this be London's grimmest passage? The tiled chute - last seen in the finalé to Star Wars - has purpose built kinks to conceal knifey hood-yoofs. Each brick is artfully decorated with the tag of some local scally. To the south......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 33. Newman Passage Where? In the heart of Fitzrovia, linking Newman and Rathbone streets. What? A tripartite affair, with a short cobbled road forming the western and southern stretches, and an alley leading east beneath the Newman Arms' pie room. Newman Passage forms part of the Berners Estate, and dates from 1746. The road stops abruptly to the south, thanks to the post office depot, which......

Part 10 To make it a bit tougher for you to identify the location, we've smudged out the Google-able part of this plaque. Special bonus points for anyone with a non-cake-related fact about good King Alfred. There are still a few unidentified plaques in the archive, if you can be arsed to take a look.......