I’m a bit of a stats and data junkie. There’s nothing I like better than analyzing data over a hot cup of fruit tea. Yes, really. Forget death metal, internet pornography, and class A drugs… I like data analysis and I’m proud to admit it. With welovelocal, I have such a wealth of statistics that if they were real, I would rub them against my naked body… possibly. So, with all this data, what else can I do, but analyze it?

This is the first in an indefinite series that I will be posting over the days, and months, and maybe years. The first, tentatively titled ‘London Lights’, is an image of nearly all the businesses on welovelocal and where they are positioned on a map. Now, it would be no fun to have an actual map on the image, it’s much more amusing to work out where areas and roads are based on the lights on the image. See if you can guess where Regents Park, Upper Street, the Thames and Kentish Town Road are?

Download London Lights in massive 1600×1200 wallpaper size

A few of us from the welovelocal team are heading to the Old Queen’s Head on Essex Road tomorrow night for a night of London based quiz questions as provided by the folks over at Londonist.

It should be a good night, hopefully see you there.

Since welovelocal.com launched a few months ago we have noticed the growing stack of Yellow Pages at the front of our office. Obviously when ours arrived we gave it marching orders to the nearest recycling bin; but what surprised us is how many other people in our block seem to be doing the same. Day after day, the poor forgotten yellow book does nothing but gather dust and cobwebs, while the rest of the modern world searches quickly online, finds recommendations from independent sources, and seeks advice from friends across the city.

We say it a lot, and it sounds a little cheesy, but imagine if the yellow pages was written by your friends. The plumber you saw hadn’t paid the most to be there, it was the one that your next door neighbour had used; the florist was the one used by your flatmate when you were best man at his wedding; and the bar’s were those that you frequent on the post-work Friday pub crawl, that you never could remember the names of for some alcohol induced reason.

Told you it was a bit cheesy, but you sort of get the idea of what we’re trying to do, and we hope you’ll join us for the ride.

Everyone knows one of the best things about living in London is that it is an international city in the truest sense of the term.

London is spoilt with a wealth of cultures from across the globe, which infilitrates every corner of the city and helps London constantly reinvent itself as it absorbs the best local cultures from around the world.

As such, I was very interested to come across Owen Powell and Alex Horne’s ‘The World In One City’ yesterday, which is now nearing the tough final stretch in their hunt for a citizen from every nation around the world who currently lives and works in London.

The UN recognises 192 countries and they’ve found people from 112. With 80 people left to find, we thought we’d ask our welovelocals to help Owen and Alex on their hunt for the citizens from the remaining nations. If you are from (or know someone from) one of the remaining countries wanted list, then please get in touch with Alexa or Owen.

As well as loving local, the developers here at welovelocal love short release cycles too. This means that when we build new features, you get them sooner rather than later. We don’t like waiting around here and we’re always ready to push out our sexy new features to our sexy users straight away.

Obviously the major thing we released was our £10 Amazon voucher for 10 reviews. We’ve already given out quite a lot of vouchers in the last few days, and there’s still loads of time to get your reviews in and claim your tenner. If you’ve not signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Writing 10 reviews is easy!

We’ve changed our action panel on the business page too. If you go on any business page, you’ll see the same yellow panel as usual, but now it comes with super slide-down animation. Very nice. Also, you can now check out how to get to your new favourite business using Transport for London’s public transport directions.

If you’re one of those media types, you can check out our new press section, which features a video review from Center Networks, various links, downloads and a press login for the site so you can check out a full user account without having to sign up yourself.

There’s plenty of other stuff too, such as the new chart in the review section of your profile, and lots of bug fixes that we’ve ironed out. We’ve got loads and loads of features planned for version 1.4, our whiteboard is crammed full, so keep your eyes peeled for them in the very near future!

That’s right, for the month of July we’re offering a £10 Amazon Gift e-Voucher for sharing your local knowledge. Review ten businesses in London, and as a small thank you in return we’ll email you an Amazon Gift e-Voucher to spend on whatever you like at Amazon.co.uk. Easy.

How does it work?

1. Sign up/login to welovelocal.com.
2. Spruce up your profile with a bit about yourself and a photo.
3. Write 10 reviews of any business in London. We’ll be checking all reviews individually, so we won’t accept any old junk!
4. Once your reviews have been accepted, we’ll email you a £10 Amazon e-Voucher. This should be within 48 hours of submitting your tenth review.
5. Enjoy and go shop!

You can read the full terms and conditions here

Feel free to tell people you know about the offer, welovelocal.com is a much better place with friends.
As you already know, we want to take word of mouth online, so help us build the welovelocal.com community and spread the word, because local’s better with friends.