Qype - Live and tell

Thanks to everyone who attended the London Bloggers Meetup on Tuesday night. We had a record number of people at the Camel and Artichoke pub in Waterloo and it looked like everyone had a brilliant time enjoying the free booze and chatting to fellow members of the blogosphere.

Thanks to Andy Bargery too of course for organising the whole thing in the first place.

I’m trying to remember all the great people I managed to chat to, but I’m having to do it off the top of my head so if I’ve missed you out here you can correct me in the comments: Annie Mole, Hazel, Chris, Matt, Lindsay and the rest of the Londonist crew, Tim from Plummet Onions, Matt from Le Cool, Mr Mike Sizemore, Dan Lester, Sian from Glitterditch, Rashbre, all the happy Shiny Shiny people, and the lovely Mirona.

We’ll be doing it all again on 26th February, but in the meantime keep an eye on the blog for news of other stuff going on in the community.

Graffiti tends to divide people, but whether you view it as art or vandalism it’s hard to deny that we’re currently experiencing the kind of boom in ’street art’ that we haven’t seen since the Wild Style era.

The problem is of course that street art doesn’t tend to exist in galleries (hence the name!), so whereas Tracey Emin fans can stand around in nice warm galleries listening to an audio guide before enjoying a nice cup of tea in the cafe, street art connoisseurs have to get their walking shoes on, grab a map and go out there to hunt down their cultural fix ‘in the wild’ as it were.

Recently we’ve noticed more and more Qypers are using the site to document their favourite street art spots. Do a quick search for self-proclaimed ‘art terrorist’ Banksy and you’ll find two whole pages full of the mystery stenciler’s work from across Bristol and London.

It’s not just Banksy though. Qype is also home to some space invaders, an Oscar the Grouch and some fantastic boxing dogs.

If you’re in the capital then you might want to join the Sreet Art in London group, and if you’ve got any favourite spots of grafitti we should know about tell us about them in the comments.

Our glorious leader, Stephan Uhrenbacher, was recently interviewed by the Guardian Unlimited for their digital content blog.

Stephan answered a few question for the blog’s ‘Elevator Pitch’ feature, explaining what Qype’s all about, how the site began, and his plans for the future.

He also shares some of the stranger experiences he’s had since forming Qype, including the bizarre tale of the ‘Fun Factory’:

Something weird but remarkable happened to Andrew and Phil, two British members of the Qype team. The two guys share a flat in Hamburg and whenever they have guests to stay from the UK, the visitors tend to review their stay on Qype.

We were quite surprised when a band manager called from Munich saying his group would be coming through Hamburg and that they wanted to play the ‘The Fun Factory’. Even though this is a private home, Andrew and Phil have agreed to host ‘Commando’ and have invited a group of Qypers to the gig at the Fun Factory in February.

There’s even an arty, black and white shot of the man himself (taken at our Christmas party!).

You can read the rest of the interview right here.

It’s hard not to love Jeremy Paxman. From his infamous questioning of Michael Howard to his brilliant if sometimes rather rude handling of the teams on University Challenge, the man hardly puts a foot wrong.

Today though it seems the hardened reporter has left the comfortable world of politics and current affairs behind and moved on to much more dangerous territory: underwear!

Yes, it’s been revealed today that Paxo has penned a scathing email to Marks & Spencer complaining about their pants and socks.

The respected journalist and broadcaster apparently told the Daily Mail: “I’ve noticed that something very troubling has happened. There’s no other way to put this. Their pants no longer provide adequate support. The other thing is socks. Even among those of us who clip our toenails very rigorously, they appear to be wearing out much more quickly on the big toe.”

Marks and Spencer have fought back saying that “the quality of our underwear is probably the highest it’s ever been,” and M&S chief executive Stuart Rose has even agreed to meet to try and resolves what Paxman has dubbed a ‘mighty battle’.

Taking a glance through our users’ reviews of M&S stores across the country, it’s obvious that many people prefer the store’s grub to its undies. “A little pricey, but it is reliable on quality,” says dmj1962 of the chain’s food selection, while Ellieb claims that “The wide selection of fresh fruit and vegetables is better, I would say, than any supermarket around!”.

For a comment on the sock and pant situation though we have to go over to our reviewer Kittles who had previously suffered terrible mental anguish at the hands of “the most hideous enormous grannies pants” but was pleasantly surprised to see recent M&S modernisation had brought about a bit of an undergarment revolution:

Times have changed and, along with those hideous Grannie knickers, it’s quite possible to find some decent lingerie and decent prices, a good place for singlets, plain tees and socks too.

So there you have it: M&S, good for pants and socks!

Mr Paxman, if you’re reading this, please feel free to submit your own review. We look forward to your considered thoughts on the age old ‘boxers versus briefs’ debate!

If you’re planning on eating out this year then you can expect to see more simple, affordable and locally grown food on your plate, according to a recent survey of some of London’s top chefs and restaurateurs.

Tom Aikens of Tom’s Kitchen says that fish and chips are set to be big this year, part of a trend of serving simple grub in gourmet surroundings. Girogio Localtelli of Locanda Locatelli also predicts that simple is going to be big and that “the sourcing of the food is becoming more important than how the chef transforms it” (no coincidence then that our reviewers have already attached the tags seasonal food and good taste to his restaurant).

Meanwhile, Alan Yau of Hakkasan and Yauatcha (both highly rated Qype favourites) dismisses the trends and gets back to basics:

“The most important thing is the kitchen and the quality of the food it is able to produce. Second is the quality of service and No. 3 is the atmosphere, which invariably ties into the design.”

So that’s what the experts are expecting for this year, but (as usual) we’d like to know what your opinions are. Are you willing to pay more to eat ‘local’ food? Do you care if a restaurant’s ambience is just so, or are you more interested in the quality of the food? And when does good service turn into ‘obtrusive and annoying’? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Photo of Tom’s Kitchen taken by Wolfiewolf.

I just came across this post over on the brilliant Mental Floss blog about American ‘food challenges’ and it got me thinking.

They seem to really go in for this type of thing in the States. I mean just take a look at some of these promotions: a 15 pound, 20 inch beefburger that you can have for free if you and a mate can ingest it within three hours! Or what about the bucketful of spicy ice cream? Or a 12-egg omelet? The only one I think I might be able to even attempt is the 20 inch pizza. I think I could have a good go at finishing that in an hour….but definitely not in 37 minutes like this guy did!

But I’ve never heard of any restaurant offering anything like this in the UK (or in Europe for that matter)? Why is that? Is it a cultural thing? Are us Europeans far too civilised and health conscious to go in for this kind of competitive gluttony? Or are the restaurant owners secretly terrified that they’ll be bankrupted by hoardes of giant children who’ve been fed a diet of McDonalds their entire lives?

If you know of any places that have these kind of promotions, or if you own a business that has some kind of ‘eat it all’ challenge, then please let us know. Who knows, we might even bring the Qype team over to see if anyone can manage it!

If you believe the gadget gurus, we should all be constantly hooked up to the ‘wi-fi cloud’ by now, accessing our email as we walk our dogs round the park and downloading music and TV shows to our handhelds without even having to think about it. But, then again, we were promised jetpacks as well, and what ever happened to them?

Sure, if you’re in London then finding some free wi-fi to plug in to isn’t a terribly difficult task, you just take a look at this list of free wi-fi spots or do a search for the wi-fi tag in London to find proof of that. But we’re nowhere near the kind of blanket coverage that cities like San Francisco get, and that’s before we even think about the rest of the country. We know Dublin was supposed to get free wi-fi for the whole city but fell foul of EU regulations, does anyone know any other UK areas that are ‘well connected’?

Right now it seems that a lot of the places on Qype that offer free wi-fi are the small, independent business who use it to entice punters in to their cafes or bookshops etc. But what about the big players, shouldn’t they be the first to offer us this kind of thing?

It would be great to know what Qypers views are on all of this. What’s the future of wi-fi? Where are your favourite free wi-fi spots? How difficult is it to get connected in your city? Let us know right here in our comments section, or on the discussion that’s going on over here.

To quote Brad Pitt:

“The first rule of Qype Club is to write more reviews. The second rule of Qype Club is to write more reviews!”

Ok, so that’s not a direct quote, but it’s true: the more reviews we have on Qype the more useful and fun the site becomes. So in an effort to encourage our users to write up their experiences of local places we’re introducing a bit of an incentive.

Over the next few days we’ll be giving away a £10 Odeon voucher for every 20th review submitted to Qype UK.

All you have to is submit your stories/experiences/critiques as you normally would and if you’re the lucky twentieth (or fortieth, or sixtieth… etc) reviewer then we’ll send out a couple of gift vouchers to you straight away.

And, while we’re talking about special offers, don’t forget that all you have to do is tag your next review with ‘virginwines’ and you’ll automatically get a £40 Virgin Wines voucher.

To quote Brad Pitt:

“The first rule of Qype Club is to write more reviews. The second rule of Qype Club is to write more reviews!”

Ok, so that’s not a direct quote, but it’s true: the more reviews we have on Qype the more useful and fun the site becomes. So in an effort to encourage our users to write up their experiences of local places we’re introducing a bit of an incentive.

Over the next few days we’ll be giving away a pair of Odeon cinema tickets for every 20th review submitted to Qype UK.

All you have to is submit your stories/experiences/critiques as you normally would and if you’re the lucky twentieth (or fortieth, or sixtieth… etc) reviewer then we’ll send out a couple of gift vouchers to you straight away.

And, while we’re talking about special offers, don’t forget that all you have to do is tag your next review with ‘virginwines’ and you’ll automatically get a £40 Virgin Wines voucher.

You might remember that, way back in November, we attended the London Bloggers Meetup and had a great time chatting to the assembled writers, photographers, artists and vloggers.

In fact we enjoyed the event so much that we got in touch with organiser Andy Bargery and asked if we could do anything to help out with future meetups.

So we’re happy to announce that we’ll be supporting the next gathering of London-based bloggers by putting a bit of money behind the bar and offering a nice little prize for the best Qype review of the pub where the event’s held.

Put a big red circle around the 29th of January in your diaries right now, and head on over to Meetup.com to let Andy know you’re coming.

The venue is the Camel and Artichoke pub on Lower Marsh in Waterloo and everything kicks off at 7pm.

We’ll see you there!