One of our favourite Gawker websites, Gridskipper is no more. They've been sold to the Curbed Network (and the writers are now whoring themselves out)

Where now, will we get all of our info about the best breakfast in Hollywood? Or where to get free wifi in Paris? Or even what's being born at Wellington Zoo? (check out the "via", yes we squeed at that).

Gridskipper was also the site of Wellington's tremendous victory over Baku (Azerbaijan)

Happy Trails [Gridskipper]

For those who weren't aware of it, the Council has a nice online service that allows people to "petition the Wellington City Council, via the internet, on matters relevant to the Council's business".

Anyone can create one, so, if there's something bugging you that you think the council should be looking into, just go right ahead. (Remember though, if it's something that needs fixing as opposed to some more substantial infrastructural problem, just use their Fix It service).

A majority of the current petitions cover one of Wellingtonista's favourite topics, namely urban transport (they're removing cycle lanes!?), so, if you'd like to add your weight to those issues, or raise one of your own, rock on over and have your say.

(Note: this service is bought to you by the excellently entitled 'Democratic Services' council department).

We like CaféNet at the Wellingtonista, yes we do. But it's not always an unqualified feeling. Mostly it works well once you find a hotspot - and more arrive all the time. But sometimes, and with some devices, things aren't so rosy.

At this Wellingtonista's risk of sounding like a spoiled geek whose new toy won't do what it says on the box, it seems that iPods Touch and iPhones don't always have an easy time connecting to CaféNet. And it's not just this writer's experience - others have noticed it too.

More after the jump...

Lolcat style pics invade real life jumping from teh intartubes.

From flickr user Simon Lieschke, and as spotted in this morning's (ever entertaining) Wellington Flickr Pool.

Just in case Jo felt a little selfconscious about promoting her own empire-building, I thought I'd mention the brand new Aucklandista!

Currently it is mainly populated with stories about how Wellington is different from Auckland (spoiler: Wellington is arty and windy, Auckland has traffic and celebrities) but in the coming weeks it will include many other wonderful articles about the City of Sails.

Usually website related pissing contests (Hot Or Not; Rate My, [er...] Kitteh etc etc ad infinitum) are inherently dull.

But maybe not so dull if you are former Wellingtonian, now Münchener mad-genius developer Ben Nolan.

His Best Cities Facebook application did, for a tiny golden moment, have Wellington in the top spot. Which means of course that this pissing contest is now of interest to us, too!

Unfortunately, Facebook being the kind of random, viral place that it is, the app has been seized upon by at least two distinct regional groups each competing within each other parochially for the title of best city.

The upshot of all this is that towns like Slavonski Brod, a no doubt quite lovely town with a rather pulchritudinous population but not much larger than Invercargill, is the world's fifth best city, with Wellington relegated to 15th.

This is clearly not good enough. Get to it. peeps!

As the interweb moves inexorably towards a "don't make me come over there" attitude we are glad to report that two of Wellingtons most complete "What's On ..." guides are now available in glorious RSS

• Feeling Great - subscribe
• Wotzon - subscribe

They are both providing explanations about what 'RSS' is and what they cover - Feeling Great | Wotzon

Wotzon has gone an extra step further and also provides:

• Customised RSS feed - sign-up required
• Wotzon widget - download required

Of course you have always been able to keep up-to-date with the real deal by subscribing to the fine Wellingtonista feed

Eat them all up in your reader of choice (which this author would surprised to discover isn't Google Reader :-)

Lovely Blogs wants you.

Lovely Blogs is a chance to pimp your own ride, be the cherry on your cake, take the bull by the horns, kill two birds with one stone, count your chickens before they hatch, save nine with a stitch in time, roll and gather no moss and many other totally irrelevant moral ditties.

Go there, send in the questionnaire, and join the ranks of the fabulous. It will make you better looking and live longer.

Disclaimer: some or all of the above may not apply to you.

The Wellington News Feed (an aggregated collection of local RSS feeds kindly supplied by our friends over at wellington.gen.nz, which we display in the right hand sidebar on the Wellingtonista homepage), is not only a rich source of grass-roots info about what's going on in this lovely city of ours, it also offers the occasional good ol' fashioned laugh.

From the indecipherable news events conveyed by the local shortwave enthusiasts, to the breathless match reports of Karori Slapperz AFC ("Wellington's finest social football [team]"), there's always something popping up that makes you think, 'you're in ma feed, mirthin' up ma blogz'. Or something.

Anyway, today's laugh came from an inadvertant typo (at least, we hope it's a typo): "pubic forum tonight". The mind boggles...

Occasionally, and only just occasionally my geek side shine though. This happens to be one of those days, so for your enlightenment and please I present The Wellingtonista in graph form.

In case all those colours confuse you this is what they mean...

• blue: for links
• red: for tables
• green: for the DIV tag
• violet: for images (the IMG tag)
• yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
• orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
• black: the HTML tag, the root node
• gray: all other tags

...and if you are still confused, don't worry I am also, but don't we look pretty :)

If you want to see our graph magically populate check out. After which you can try your own web site.

A while back we noted all of the New Zealand nominees for the 11th Annual Webby Awards. Well the results are now in, let's see how we did.

Web-famous expat Jessica Lee Rose (AKA Lonelygirl15) won a Special Achievement award for Webby Film & Video Awards Best Actress.

The Wellington City Council lost out to the official website for Greater Boston's Public Transportation System. Shame really.

And Destination New Zealand lost to Yellowstone National Park (not be confused with Jellystone)

But hey, it's an honour just to be nominated, right?

It's that time of the year again when the Webby Award nominees are announced and the people can choose the best of the web. And just like last year Wellington (and New Zealand) is represented.

• Your favourite council's website, the Wellington City Council, is up for an award in the Government section.

• The Official Tourism New Zealand site for Destination New Zealand and previous Webby Award winner is back again in the Travel section.

So get there and get patriotically voting.

We all know that Wellington is a great place to take photos: its natural beauty, public art, lively street life and eclectic architecture all contribute to a visually stimulating city. The busy Flickr-ers of the Wellington Flickr group know this, and they've decided to take their best photos into the real world.

"Online to On the Wall" opens at the Paramount Theatre tomorrow night at 6pm, and runs until the 28th of March.

Back in Feb those lucky Auckland MySpace people had the chance to check out Evermore for Free.

Well Wellington, our time has come and it's a goodie. If you are a MySpace member just add The Black Curtain to your MySpace friends and you'll be told the secret squirrel location of the free screening of HotFuzz this Friday.

Why Go?
Well, to start it's free.
To follow it's by the genius minds behind Shaun of the Dead
To continue you get a special appearance & introduction by Peter Jackson.
If that's not enough - it's free, people!

My only hope is that Simon Pegg is as funny in person now as he was when he was in Wellington for the Laugh Festival back in the deep dark '90s.

Imagine that you are a large Scottish Bank. You want to film a new advert. For no doubt good reasons you already have a short list of ingredients:

• The agreeable voice of Ken Stott; and
• A flock of sheep.

But no location. Yet. Hmmmm. Sheep. Where should you send your advert-wallahs?

New Zealand of course! But you also need an urban setting, and lots of production talent. Oh, and if there's the occasional Stagecoach liveried bus then all for the cheaper (less sfx, you realise.)

And so your sheep and your advert-wallahs turn up in... Wellington!

They have a fine old time, too. In the airport, at the train station, and on a (digitally manipulated) motorway offramp, the suspiciously tidy sheep act the part of inert bank customers following each other around the place. But one brave ewe models the desired behaviour for all the other sheep to, er, follow: to breakaway and join the Royal Bank of Sheep!

Here at the Wellingtonista we won't point out the irony inherent in using sheep to promote slightly more individualistic behaviour. Nope. Instead, we'd suggest a nice game of spot the fleeting Wellington locations, while having your day's concerns soothed away in the Scotch Whisky balm that is Ken Stott's voice.

Hat tip, and where to go to see this spot: the Best Ads On TV Blog.