Keane Ingram has done two things I have regularly protested that I myself would one day do. One, he has visited every Sam Smith’s Pub in London, and two, he has made a Google Maps Mashup with the data, so you’ll never have a reason to pay more than £1.99 for a pint again.

Thanks to the McCallion brothers for the heads up.

Well it has been a strange 24 hours in the capital what with; earthquakes, Banksy’s going missing and London Blogger Meetups? Last night was the third meetup at the Camel and Artichoke in Waterloo and the turn-out was good. There was a lot of of people all in one place, with bloggers taking over the best part of the top floor. The crowd was an eclectic mix of UK bloggers and web publishers all writing about different stuff, from burlesque clubs and cakes to general life musings.

The London Bloggers Meetup is going from strength to strength and Andy Bargery who writes Marketing Blagger and Cheap Eats London is doing an awesome job keeping everything running smoothly and making sure everyone is busy talking. This time round we had some interesting conversations with James from whatleydude, Tim from Plummet Onions and Stuart form Shiny’s music site mychemicaltoilet.com.

Conversations were a little darker than normal with the Mills and McCartney divorce being an unexpected focal point. Overall it was a good night, and another really good show of enthusiastic bloggers. The next meeting is penciled in for 25^th March, so make a note of the date, sign up and come along it’s a great way to meet some of the other London bloggers carve out your own communities.

We all know how the story goes, bottled water costs a small fortune in most restaurants – the mark up is incredibly high and the culture of shame surrounding asking for tap water is rife. Giles Coren a food critic over at The Times is claiming that the tides are turning on the bottled water craze, and this time the government are paying attention.

Bottled water or as The Times refer to it ‘Bling-Bling’ is starting to take a back seat to tap water, largely through raised awareness of the environmental implications of drinking and transporting the stuff. The Times have some great stats on bottled water consumption and reckon that we Brits have spent over 2 billion on consuming 3 billion litres of bottled water – on top of the money we already spend on water rates and bills! The main concern is that the water is packaged in unsympathetic packaging and often travels all around the world for consumption – knocking up a lot of air miles.

So have fashions really changed? Are bottled water drinkers really becoming the next restaurant smokers – those people you never want to be seated next to? Phil Woolas the Environment minister seems to think it is pretty nonsensical to consume so much bottled water when we have perfectly good, clean water flowing from our taps. It will be interesting to see how this is reflected in restaurants and other eating establishments, to see if you are offered tap water first over bottled water or will the tap water shame remain?

Check out the article there are some great comments, creating quite a debate.

Photo supplied by Wespionage over on Flickr

The People’s Republic of South Devon is another great community offering, this time from south of the country. It ticks all the boxes for a great, well designed community focused site – plus it has some cool and quirky content. It screams independent and really reflects the vibe that is spreading through Devon of late. It is at the forefront of many ethical, environmental and local shopping initiatives and the site really reflects this buzz.

Post are all based around arts, environment or society in the local Devon area and is great source for keeping yourself informed about more unusual local events and musings. The site aims to be a place for people to have their say and voice their opinions about things going on in the local area. It has links to other great sites in Devon, it also boasts its own podcast, t-shirts and local jobs pages. An all round community winner!

With Fairtrade fortnight underway it is impressive to hear that so many places in Devon have achieved fair-trade status - take a bow; Teignmouth, Exeter, Bideford, Newton Abbort, Dawlish, Crediton, Barnstableand Travistock. It would appear that South Devon is pretty switched on and I know from spending a considerable time that way that it really does have a super cool independent scene.

Friday turned into a bit of a cake day here in our office. The cake fest fun started with a special surprise delivery from the fabulous Lola’s Kitchen in Primrose Hill – a lucky lady in our office received a dozen mixed, handcrafted, beautiful capcakes for her Birthday and well, we all helped finish them off. They were amazing, the sponge varied between chocolate, carrot and vanilla. Dan and I opted for the vanilla and polished one off between us – it was very good and they are pretty damn filling!

We then wrapped up work early and headed to Medcalf on Exmouth Market for some all round general celebrating. Then shamelessly we had another round of extremely yummy cake – this time from the lovely Patisserie Valerie! The office managed to put away the best part of half of a Giotto Gateau and about half or the bars alcohol supply! Well, it was all in the name of Elaine and Max’s Birthday. If anyone else is a big cake fan like us, check out the lovely group dedicated to ‘afternoon tea and cakes’ here on welovelocal.

It being Valentines and all I thought I would post about an area in the country that gets a lot of love on welovelocal.com – Birmingham. The site Created in Birmingham has got me pretty excited this week as it is all about the creative community in Birmingham. It aims to be a space to showcase some of Birmingham’s best creative talents and events. However the blog has a double identity in that it also aims to demonstrate to people in the creative community how the utilize internet, and in particular blogs. The aim is to create buzz and engaging conversation within the community.

The site provides a great overview of all that is going on within the creative community in Birmingham and keeps other creative peeps in the know about galleries, events and meetups. It is also on the shortlist for the Media Guardian Innovation Awards 08 - though, I know this through reading the blog not the Guardian.

If you’re a budding creative talent in Brum you can drop the editor Pete Ashton an email and tell him what you’re up to and what you do, and you may have a chance of being featured on the blog, failing that there is always an updated ‘News River’ that gives you the lo down on good links and news for the area.

You may well have noticed the big orange arrow on the picture? That is in fact Dan’s dad in all his younger glory - this was a total coincidence, I was posting about the site and Dan caught a glimpse of my screen and informed that the picture was of his dad?! Incredibly random - but hey, that’s what happens when you have super famous parents right?

Back in December we posted about the closure of Leeds Corn Exchange, well now another local favourite is facing closure, only this time it’s in time in Stoke-on-Trent. The Hole in the Wall oatcake shop is facing closure due to the council’s plans to demolish the building it stands in. It follows a similar story to the Corn Exchange in that potential closure comes after £2.3 billion plans have been drawn up to re-generate the local area surrounding the shop. Re-generation at the cost of loosing local favourites and traditions.

Oatcakes are a local tradition and institution in the Staffordshire area and shops like the Hole in the Wall operate out of the front room of the terrace houses, serving customers from a single hole/window. This tradition is over 100 years old and originates from a time when pottery factories littered the towns, making hungry workers in need of good cheap food.

The Hole in the Wall is one of the last remaining oatcake shops that still operate from an original terrace house, and if it closes then the tradition will certainly start to decline. The shop is located on Waterloo Street in Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent serves over 2500 oatcakes to locals and visitors everyday – demonstrating its continued popularity. The shop is part of the local community and locals fear losing, it will meaning losing a part of their identity and heritage.

To get behind saving the Hole in the Wall you can sign the online petition on the Downing Street website, write a gleaming review for it here on welovelocal.com or just have a read the full BBC article.

Photo supplied by Joe Saunders over on Flickr.

Maison Tropicale

Last Tuesday saw the opening of the latest exhibition at the Tate Modern for the Design Museum – Maison Tropicale designed by revolutionary architect Jean Prouvé. The exhibition showcases the prototype house that was designed around the 1950’s to revolutionise and increase the amount of colonial homes in West Africa. The concept was based around the idea that these flat packed homes could be, through design, folded and neatly couriered in cargo planes to Africa creating cheaper and more efficient homes.

The prototype that sits outside the Tate Modern was originally erected in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, in 1951. It was, in 2000 re-found in the Congo and bought to France to be restored. The houses that were made from folded sheet steel and lots of aluminium were in theory, supposed to be a cheaper alternative to sourcing local materials in which build homes from. However the house remained a prototype despite its high specification design, due to the fact that local triumphed over design rationale. The Conservative expatriate French Bureaucrats did not see the appeal of the visionary designs, and with no costs being saved, opted for the use of local materials and more culturally sympathetic homes.

Outstanding design, if you want to find out more the rest of Prouvé’s work and ideas are on display at The Design Museum entitled - The Poetics of the Technical Object.

Exhibition runs from 5th Feb to 13th April 2008 – remember to book your tickets.

Photo by edvvc over on Flickr.

This really is a blog that requires no introduction, but I had to give it a mention here in my plight to give coverage to great community blogs. Manchester really is a hub of active communities and city enthusiasts – it’s quite overwhelming. Not to mention the growing number of city bloggers landing book deals – they must be doing something right!

The Manchizzle blog focuses on the best of Manchester’s culture, arts, festivals, events and blogs. It would appear that Manchizzle really is a centre for all Manchester blogs. The blogging community really is so strong in this part of the country - I am not kidding, I haven’t seen so many blogs in one city outside of London before.

If you fancy an inside peek at Manchester’s best cultural bits then this is blog for you, or failing that if you are a blogger in Manchester and feeling a little unconnected this is definitely the place to make some local blogging friends as it’s filled with links to the city’s best blogs.

I made these videos using Processing, a Java-based language, to make these data visualization videos of welovelocal’s London reviews over time. They span from the start of welovelocal to January 29th, 2008. The colour of each dot represents the rating of each review with red being 1 star and green being 5 stars.