Yes… there are now 29 cities featured in the Spotted by Locals network. The latest additions are Glasgow, Helsinki and Oslo.

I am very honoured and proud to be part of this great community even when I have – often times – neglected some of my Spotter duties over at the London cityblog. It is of no excuse so I will do harder and give our loyal followers more stories about the amazing city that is London.

There has been quite a lot of changes in Spotted by Locals both on the website and on mobile, too. Here are some of what I reckon are the cool ones.

Augmented Reality
Sounds like Lawnmower Man, right? Well, Wikipedia defines Augmented Reality as

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery.

Using the Layar app, you can download the Spotted by Locals layer that will show the nearest ‘spots’ to your location. When you point your smartphone’s camera to a ‘spot’ it will bring up the content that was posted on the Spotted by Locals website. If you are confused as to how it really works, check out the presentation below.

Google Maps Mashup
You are now able to see all the ‘spots’ with the accompanying link to post/article on a Google map! You can find this map in each cityblog. Click on the image below to see the map of the London spots.

Map of London spots

PDF Guides
If you still prefer the feel of paper in your hand, then download a PDF version of every city in the Spotted by Locals network. It is available for only €3.99, which you can pay via Paypal. It may contradict the basic Spotted by Locals principle that is doing away with the traditional travel guides, which are likely to have outdated information, but only for a little bit. How? Because each guide is an extract of the latest information of the posts on the website, which is kept very much up-to-date, so you are guaranteed to have the latest (and greatest!) information. For an idea of how the PDF guides look like, see below.

With all the problems that I experienced in the various sites and blogs I’m hosting and administering, I’ve decided to manually install the latest version of WordPress – WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”. Not only will I be starting from scratch but I will also enable the multi-site feature of WordPress 3.0 that will make any webadmin’s life a lot easier!

Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation.

Of course, I intend to share my experience as these may help others as I’ve also sought help from others who have done the different areas of what I’m about to do.

So, watch this space. Meantime, check out the video tour of WordPress 3.0 below.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of SeeSaw. All opinions are 100% mine.

Many new gadgets and services over the web have been invented and created to cater to our ever increasing fast-paced lifestyle. Not only are we – the public – contented with having everything at our fingertips but we now also want it at our own convenience. Before, only films are available on pay-per-view or rental but now, even our favourite TV programmes can be hired and viewed whenever we want to. The TV broadcasters themselves – BBC, Channel 4 and Five – have began to offer catch-up viewing services to TV license holders (and perhaps those who don’t possess one) through the internet.

There is another service on the web that offers viewers to watch shows over the web. SeeSaw is an online TV services that has both free and paid content from various channels including BBC, Channel 4 and Five. Even though the site is still in beta, it already boasts numerous content from previous series of the more popular shows like Doctor Who and Spooks. SeeSaw’s Comedy Section is also quite impressive with episodes of Father Ted dating back from Series 1! The site also offers a chance to view episodes from past series of some US shows (premium content) like Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty from as low 99p!

So the next time you think there is nothing good on the telly, go to SeeSaw and settle down to relax. Grab some snacks and refreshments as you may be doing a TV marathon even before you know it!