View Larger Map Finally. We've been talking about it for over a year, but Google has just launched the Street View feature for D.C. and some surrounding areas (We Love DC had this earlier). The feature, part of Google Maps, lets users see 360 degrees along streets — that means buildings, people, parks, and sometimes shenanigans (at least in other cities). Nearly every D.C. street is captured, with the exception of Pennsylvania Avenue and E......

>> We tragically forgot to mention in About Tonight that all left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers will gather on the Mall for Screen on the Green's first showing of the summer, Annie Hall. The movie starts just after sunset on the screen between 4th and 7th, NW. Bring an umbrella and/or a Faraday cage, as the thunderstorm watch goes until 9 p.m., but the screening is more or less rain or shine, unless lightning......

Some of you may remember our venerable DCist Maps project, which provided an overlay of the D.C. Metro system in the classic WMATA style, plus the ability to build your own customized maps. We were proud of the li'l guy, but he had clearly begun to show his age: designed in an era when 800x600 was still a common screen resolution, the map window was ridiculously small. And although we spent an awfully long time......

There's been all kinds of crazy stuff found on Google's new StreetView application, which we wrote about before - guys who appear to be peeing on the side of the road, climbing fences into houses, and so on. While D.C. won't be getting StreetView for a little while longer, there is still some strange stuff to be seen with good ol' Google Maps. Joyriding has long been a problem in D.C., where (usually) kids steal......

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......

If you're anything like us, you've been experiencing major geek covetousness ever since Google Maps launched its Street View functionality late last month. The feature (which may seem similar to past users of Amazon's A9.com) shows street-level photos of locations. Users can move smoothly from spot to spot, rotating their view and taking in the sights. Unfortunately, Google Maps' coverage of D.C. doesn't feature any of the blue outlines that signify Street View-equipped roads. But......

Who needs government when we have Google? Yesterday, we reported that DDOT's suggestion for a new and (slightly) improved D.C. Taxi Zone Map is being needlessly hamstrung by the lovely people over at the D.C. Taxicab Commission. They feel that city streets on the new map appear too bright and, you know, visible. Lucky for us, technology, in its quest to make the world as we know it obsolete, has intervened. We stumbled upon this......

Good morning, Washington. We really wish we had some good news to share in regards to the local weather forecast, but it's starting to seem as though the more often we refresh the weather page, the worse the predictions actually get. So new rule this morning. We'll only talk about kittens and lollipops and pretty pretty ribbons until we get at least two days in a row with sunshine. Our strategy is clear: annoy the......

Back in the day, people would gather to lobby, write letters and protest for a cause. These days, all it takes is access to a computer and a creative approach to using online tools. And while the fight for District voting rights has involved a good amount of old-school tactics, online activists have more resources at their disposal than ever before. Newly-elected Shadow Representative Mike Panetta has been leading this fight in recent years, employing......

We've had the displeasure to write about the demise of area records stores recently, with Revolution and Tower joining DCCD in the big bargain bin in the sky. However, the D.C. area is still home to some good music stores, and thanks to blogger Ben Welsh and Google Maps, we have a quick way of finding them.Welsh put together a map showing local record shops, making it easy to find where to get Pitchfork's......

What's better than happy hour? Maps with lots of happy hours. Thanks to Google Maps, there are a few drunken mashup sites that map bar specials in D.C. for that special time of day. The two we've found, Unthirsty.com and Drinktown.com show user-submitted happy hours around the country and detail the food and drink specials each day. Unthirsty even says if there's patio seating or wi-fi, in case you want to do some tipsy instant......

Debating Where to Debate: It was big news a few weeks back when Marie Johns challenged Adrian Fenty to a duel...errr...debate during a phone call she placed to a radio show Fenty was guesting on. The ambitious one-on-one challenge by Johns was set for August 12 at high noon...errr...9 a.m. But WTOP is reporting today that both Fenty and Johns may end up debating themselves, because they can't seemingly agree on a location for their......

As you have hopefully heard (or at least read in Wikipedia), it's not Adam's Morgan -- Adam doesn't own the Morgan. The neighborhood was given its name during D.C.'s school desegregation in the 1950s, when the all-white John Quincy Adams School and the all-black Thomas P. Morgan School were both integrated. Adams School still exists on 19th Street just north of the Washington Hilton, but Morgan School, which was located at the corner of California......

We're a pretty wired bunch here at DCist, and we imagine that you are, too. Do you get appointments in iCal from Upcoming.org via RSS and use Google Maps to plot your path there? Of course you do. But what about those odd occasions when you're not by a computer? It's a living hell, we know. Well, we're here to help. Toward that end, we're happy to present LastCall Beta, our effort to make the......

More on the church parking issue, you say? Today we find the Washington Times reporting that some Logan Circle residents are fuming at what they see as a concession to the neighborhood's powerful churches, a day after D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams put off enforcement measures and instead appointed a taskforce to study the matter. After close to a year of complaints, city officials promised to start enforcing the city's double-parking laws on Sunday, going......

Do you know the way to 9 1/2 Street NW? A disturbing story popped up on the Public Safety Area 305 listserve earlier suggesting that District police and emergency services do not. The following story was reported Monday by a 9 1/2 Street NW resident: As some of you already know, yesterday was a big day on 9 1/2 Street, crime-wise at least. Yesterday afternoon a man was beaten and robbed in front of......

So, we've been watching as Wired pinpointed the GoogleCenter of the country and Gothamist followed suit, locating the GoogleCenter of the Big Apple. The Internet being what it is, with the imitation and all, we decided to give this a whirl ourselves. To do so, you simply visit the venerable Google Maps page and type in a location. Then, zoom. Ultimately, you should find yourself staring at what the G-men consider the center of......

Damn it. Someone beat us to the punch on a new and very cool Google Maps hack. These days, pretty much everything is plugged into Google Maps. We even developed our own nifty little Google Map with the Metro system overlayed on it (which WMATA promptly ripped off, or so we'd like to think). Late last year, we figured it'd be cool to find a way to plug in the District's list of criminal incidents......

Today's Transit on Tuesday brings you WMATA's Google Maps hack, a sexy take on area commuting, and another chance for you to vent your frustrations at WMATA's top brass.......

We've written before about D.C.-related Google Maps hacks, including several excellent efforts to represent the Metro system. It looked like so much fun that we decided to give it a shot ourselves. So today we're happy to announce DCist Maps, our very own Google Maps application. As you can see from the graphic, we've programmed an overlay of the Metro system over Google's map of the region. Our map also lets you plot addresses, find......

When DCist theorized that Mt. Vernon Square was ripe for hotel development last month, we realized we were stating the obvious. And an article that appeared yesterday on real estate website GlobeSt.com confirmed what many knew was coming: the effort to secure space for a hotel serving the new Convention Center has begun. The Washington Convention Center Authority has purchased a half-acre at 901 Massachusetts Ave. NW, including the offices of the United Association of......

If you're anything like us, you've been using Google Maps for a little while now. Since launching their mapping service earlier in the summer, Google's simple, intuitive, and efficient means of finding your away around town (and beyond) has been giving MapQuest a run for their money as the web's preferred mapping website. Google keeps refining the website, recently adding a hybrid-view mode to their map service, allowing one to view road overlays on the......

This photo was posted to DCist photos by Dave Lantner. Today will be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain due to thunderstorms in the afternoon. Tonight the Doves play the 9:30 Club. New Visitor Center to Feature Tennessee Marble: The new Capitol Visitor Center now being constructed will contain "sandstone from Pennsylvania, granite from Minnesota, [and] pink and cedar marble from Tennessee," according to the AP via the Examiner. The center's indoor spaces will......

Coming on the heels of a weekend in which a well-known volunteer traffic officer was critically injured after being hit at the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, the District Department of Transportation has released a draft report detailing the city's most dangerous intersections. Topping the list with 13 crashes between 1998 and 2002 is the intersection at Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue in Northeast, pictured at left, followed closely by Seventh......

Amazon.com and their search engine A9 has announced they have completed photographing many of the streets in D.C. for the "block view" feature of their online yellow pages. (Our friends at Gothamist wrote about their New York photos in January) Users can now view photographs of the storefronts of many District businesses alongside their telephone number and address. Like most online mapping, the photo alignment is far from perfect and sometimes requires scrolling down......

When Google unveiled their Google Maps utility, we were immediately a fan. Aside from a few quirks, their "click and drag" interface made surfing online maps a joy. However, one of our first thoughts was that the map would be more useful if it contained the locations of Metro stops. The folks over at MonkeyHomes.com must have read our mind - after churning out a map of the New York Subway using Google's map data,......

What happens when someone combines two things you love? Sometime's it doesn't work out so well. Other times, it does to quite the opposite effect. Paul Rademacher has combined Craigslist and Google Maps to produce a nearly magical tool which allows you to search Craigslist listings for housing - either to rent or buy - in any metro area with a Craigslist site. While we're sure it involves some sort of fancy programming footwork......