Driving or Walking from the streets of Santa Monica to the Beach Yesterday, Google introduced a new Google Maps feature: directions when on foot. "Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them," explained Andy Schwerin, Software Engineer, on Google's blog dedicated to maps. "Just get directions as you normally would.......

Click here to play with this map! Holy! See all that blue? Most likely, your street has been caught on camera. After this past summer when Google initially released a very limited Street View function in Los Angeles, a vast improvement in coverage all over Los Angeles and Orange counties was recently released. Now, did they get your street this time?......

Sometimes it seems like this city is out to beat us up, put us down, and lead us terribly astray. Even those of us who have lived here for years can't help but feel let down sometimes by L.A.'s impersonal and often contradictory nature. And we're just talking about transportation. But more often than you might expect, if you just open up and let the city happen to you, you'll find that L.A. is......

Ever try to get in the left-hand lane hoping you'll get that green arrow, but only end up waiting thru one series of lights after another? Imagine you drive a truck for UPS and you find yourself in that situation day after day, year after year. Then multiply those trucks by the tens of thousands. Think about how much gas is being wasted and how much CO2 is being released due to idling. The......

The Onion has published a companion Google map to promote their new laugher of a world atlas, Our Dumb World. Click on the markers in the map below for gems like Brazil ("Boasting some of the sexiest people ever to be stabbed repeatedly at night..."), France ("Heated conversation that will ultimately end in sex..."), and Mexico ("Now Hiring 2.4 Million Busboys"). View Larger Map In other Google Maps news, a new "terrain" layer has been......

Here's a map of central LA traffic at around 5pm the day before Thanksgiving. Ooof. Good luck out there, guys -- and you can keep track of the gridlock you'll be encountering over at Google Maps. Godspeed, my friends, and please be safe. Respect your fellow drivers, hook up with a carpool, and take your time.......

Keep updated on this map as the day goes by, check the traffic before leaving work by clicking here. It looks as if all of LA is running smoothly right now. That's because it's lunchtime, not crunch time. If you didn't take the 405 this morning, then you were spared some extra special traffic caused by some unfortunate events:Most lanes of the 405 at La Tijera Boulevard are closed this morning after the 4:45......

View Larger Map Ventura Blvd. is well served by three bus lines, the 750, 150 and 240. During the day on a weekday, you can pretty much walk to a stop and find a bus coming. To the north of the Valley's famous boulevard is the Orange Line, which during the same times of day seems to run every few seconds (it's only at 12 a.m. am I waiting longer than 10 minutes). Sandwiched between......

Ohhh, that was a nice 20 to 30 second rumbler too. Tonight's 4.5 earthquake, minutes before 1:00 a.m., comes on the heels of last night's 7.5 quake in Indonesia, Southern Japan's 6.4 earthquake and a Earthquake Conference, sponsored by SCAG, that took place yesterday morning in Ontario. The epicenter is in the Santa Susana Mountains north of the intersection of the 118 freeway and Topanga Canyon Blvd. near the split of the San Fernando and......

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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......

It's Wednesday. The 14-inch Philly cheesesteak we took down at lunch is starting to sit heavy. Be a glutton like us and check out these links to all the food news that matters this week. - The LA Times explores the cuisine of Shanghai: and where to find it in the Southland. - Awww, those crappy cheap wines grow up SO FAST! Buy a bottle of two-dollar merlot and drink it all tonight in......

Why is this man smiling? Because he doesn't know that he's in ur Google Maps as part of the Street View feature, a new addition to the already-perfect map tool. Now one can see a birds-eye view like a traditional map, a satellite view, a hybrid view of both, and with this new feature one can see what the front of the building looks like and the whole damn block. With the new “Street......

State Assemblymember Mike Feuer represents the 42nd District, which includes parts of Hollywood, West Hollywood, the Westside, Sherman Oaks and Studio City -- basically, hill hugging 'hoods. Yesterday, he came out with his first e-mail newsletter (you can sign up here). It was well-done, informative and used the new "My Maps" feature on Google Maps. The Google Maps part make hims like totally rad. You can view his district and the proposed plot of......

Google Voice Local Search, or Google 411 Experimental -- as the robot's greeting would have it -- is live. In Google's ongoing efforts to take over the world, this service is free, no ads and it connects you directly. The Googleplex also managed to push the product live (experimental) less than a month after Microsoft announced their acquisition of voice query software developer TellMe. 1-800-GOOG-411 It's all computerized on their end, however, with no human......

- When the Instapundit is tired of spinning he puts up pictures, when O'Reilly slips in the ratings he increases his volume but Geraldo sticks right in there - O-Dub - If Dick Cheney is such a tough guy, why does he always seem to be getting interviewed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh? - HuffPo - CNN desperately trying to prove that they're not part of the Liberal Elite. Don't worry CNN, we......

The good people of Yahoo! saw our schoolgirl glee at Google integrating traffic into their maps today and sent us a little email to let us know that Yahoo! has had traffic on their maps since December of 2004. We sit corrected. And even though Yahoo!'s traffic is pretty damn good, and indeed better than Google's; Google's maps are smoother, cleaner, and thus better than Yahoo!'s. But we must say we never considered Yahoo......

LAist is recently single and we find ourself on the weirdest "dates". The other day we were picked up by a woman who we know is interested in us. She was all, "hey let's go see Obama speak and later we can go get a bite." We were all, hmmm, that sounds like a lunch date. So the young lady picks us up and asks if we know the way to where the Senator......

The Valley is like, only, 48.4% of Los Angeles (225 square miles of the City's 465 square miles make up the San Fernando Valley). Without trying to cause another East-West war, which gets people fired up (see comments), we're going to set one easy Valley rule here: the 405 divides East from West Valley. Funny enough, LA.com's home base and parent company is the same as the Valley's unofficial newspaper -- LA Daily News.......

Dear Laist, So I was goofing off at work and realized I hadn't checked in with Curbed L.A. to see what they thought about yesterday's groundbreaking at Hollywood and Vine and I scrolled down and saw that they jacked your story AND headline about the GoogleMaps improvements. Your headline on Sunday was "New Google Maps Upgrade Proves LA Has a Subway" and CLA on Monday wrote "GoogleMaps Confirms Metro Exists". In astonishment I saw......

Last fall LAist took a road trip around the country. Our mother called each night to make sure we were all right. We'd say, "we've got EVDO, WiFi, cell phones, Google Maps, ATM cards, it'd be almost impossible for us to not find exactly what we want for the lowest prices possible." And that was from the road. Here in the lap of luxury of LA, with DSL and LAist as your homepage, Lord......

We work at home. We work on Macs. We don't like Outlook. We are Google kids. We use Gmail. We use Google RSS Reader. We use Google Groups, Google Maps and Google SMS. We also use Google Calendar and here's five of many reasons why: 1. If you're like us, you plan events big or small. And sometimes planning that party on a holiday we forgot existed on that day screws things up. With......

At this morning's keynote address for the 2007 Macworld Conference and Expo held in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced two hotly anticipated new products: Apple TV, which will allow users to watch content from their computers on a television, and the new iPhone, which integrates a cell phone, an Internet communications device and a widescreen iPod into a single device. This news comes on the heels of yesterday's announcement that Google and Samsung......

1. Engadget: Next Friday Circuit City will be selling $99 laptops, sorta 2. BoingBoing - Cemetery 2.0 links your real headstone to your Facebook Memorial page. 3. FC2: Windows Vista doesn't work with the Zune? 4. Gizmodo - Blender capable of blending 40 pens 5. Xujing Lei - still loves her cat 6. Huffington Post - Guest blogger John Murtha writes: "Iraq is key... Let's get to work." Hey John, don't quit your day......

this year LAist introduced "Ask the MACist" and now we give you... Ask the PCist! by Andrew Solmssen - send your questions to pcist at bitboy dot com Hey PCist, I love to do new and wonderful things with my PC, but I want to pay zip, nada, zero, zilch and bupkis for the privilege. What are some great free tools that will make my heart sing and my wallet happy? There's some amazing......

One thing LAist salivates over is the many Google mashup maps Gothamist gets to show New Yorkers. Here in LA, we're still struggling to find a good number of Los Angeles based Google Maps. We love RentSlicer. LA Eats has potential. What are we missing here? Google Maps Mania, the unofficial Google Maps blog that tracks websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps, has pointed us towards My California Traffic. Here you......

With thermometers spiking into the 80s today it's kind of hard to imagine winter elsewhere. But winter it is. And the Winter Olympics start in just 3 days in Torino, Italy. Local newscaster Fred Roggin is over in Europe to do some sports coverage ... and some blogging. According to the latest post, he's just now getting the hang of his Blackberry (careful, Fred, we hear those things are addictive) and that he has......

Looking for real estate by neighboorhood can be tricky; it's easiest to search by zip code, but 90039 is tony Silverlake, the still-sketchy Frogtown flats and spotty Glassel Park all at once. Trulia is trying to make it easier, combining Google Maps and local real estate listings. Want to live downtown? Look for a little green icon and click: yipes, $893,000. Forgot to hit the "less than $500,000" filter. The idea is great, but......

Okay, so now that The Chronic (what?!) -cles of Narnia Rap has jumped the shark and even your crazy uncle joe knows that Google Maps is the best (true that double true) and your kid sister is walking around in her Crazy Delicious tee and has skinned her myspace page with Andy Samberg pics (even though she really crushes on Chris Parnell but, ohmigod, none of her friends are going to understand) and you've......

A few years ago, in a random used book store in Hollywood, we I bought an electric coach tour guide of LA printed in 1906 called Los Angeles From an "Auto". Anything with a copyright dated 1922 or earlier is in the public domain, thus deserves to be easily accessible to the public and a search for the tour guide's title on google and the LAPL card catalog found nothing, so it seemed the......