tweets and eats

by irenet - June 30, 2009

A week ago we began a new experiment which we’re happy to see has caught on quickly: we’re tweeting restaurants. For the time being the Twitter accounts are only active for downtown Madrid, but more barrios and cities (Barcelona, for example) are coming soon.

The idea is that if you live, work or hang out in an area, you often find yourself undecided as for where to head for lunch. If you use Twitter and regularly check 11870.com before picking a restaurant, this tool is for you: follow the account for your district (or districts) and every weekday at 1:30 pm you’ll be notified of the eaterie du jour.

So far, these are the active accounts (¡a comer! means time to eat!).

• comer en Sol
• comer en Malasaña
• comer en Ópera
• comer en Cortes
• comer en Chueca
• comer en Lavapiés

New districts and cities coming soon!

categories: features, just for fun

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Thanks to the Indispensables

by irenet - May 22, 2009

11550 downloads and 1 month later we’d like to take a minute to thank everyone who lavished attention on the release of Los Imprescincibles de 11870.com. The enthusiasm shown by both media (Spanish PC World or El Economista), bloggers (Online Communities Handbook, pensando en mis cosas, ozutto, geekol), business owners (Dudúa, La Tipo) and especially 11870.com inhabitants. Those who received part of the limited print edition have proudly posted pictures of their guides (ronsel, durbon, manel). All the great buzz and feedback is a great encouragement to us, and motivates us to think of more and better ways to keep finding cool outlets for the valuable information people are sharing on 11870.com.

Now we’re just going to sit back for a second, breathe and wish everyone a nice weekend!

categories: just for fun, press

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Code swarmy Monday

by irenet - April 20, 2009

This video is another way to watch our site evolve. In the code swarm graphic below each sphere represents a piece of the project, accompanied by the name of the person that was working on it and committed the changes. A couple of years become a couple of minutes.

If you’d like to learn more about our technology team and their work, check out 2E5E, the 11870.com tech blog. It’s in Spanish, but you can try a machine translation to get a sense of what’s going on. Though the code snippets and command lines should probably tip you off to what they’re writing about.

categories: just for fun, technical

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Seasonal flair

by irenet - December 24, 2008

In the days following the release of our new main page, many 11870.com inhabitants have complimented us on the seasonal robot theme designed for the footer. Esther, who’s behind many of the little bits of flair that make the site special, has adapted the robots into a set of desktop backgrounds.

They come in several colors and two arrangements… for you to pick and choose the one that fits your mood. Here’s the link. Happy holidays!

categories: just for fun

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Turkey for your salad days

by irenet - November 25, 2008

For an exchange student Spain or an expat, Thanksgiving can be a particularly hard day to be away from one’s family. You can sit at home pondering the political interpretations of The Wizard of Oz and chanting “There’s no place like home” or you can face the fact that you’re not in Kansas anymore (at least today).

In fact, if you’re in Madrid, there are a number of restaurants that serve special meals in case you’d like to observe Thanksgiving with friends this year.

US-inspired cuisine restaurants like La Gamella or the Southern-styled Gumbo typically draw crowds, so phone ahead to find out if they have any tables available. If you can’t make the dinner shift you might be able to have a late lunch. Other options are Cafe Panini‘s 22€ menu and Toma’s (45€ per feaster). As you can see the prices vary a bit too, so phoning ahead of time will also help you find who’s got the special that suits you best.

And while for the past couple of years only the Tony Roma’s on Genova street has a Thanksgiving menu, a few Irish pubs like O’Neill’s or The Dubliners are starting to offer them. Do you know of any other places for Thanksgiving? It’s a good time to share them

ASCII art by Joan Stark

categories: just for fun

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Mugshots

by irenet - November 4, 2008

It’s a mug! Now that it’s no longer a secret, we’re going to do a bit of show and tell regarding the little gift we sent out to ‘summer 2008′ participants.

If you missed out this time, you should know that exploring the services tagged as summer 2008, estiu 2008 or verano 2008 will give you an idea of what was hottest this summer with 11870.com people. If you do know what this is all about, then you should be receiving the mug in the mail soon. Please let us know if it didn’t get there in one piece, we know that a few didn’t make it…

When your mug arrives, you can share a picture of it in our Flickr pool.

Now about the mug. We’ve lovingly written your 11870.com moniker on it in permanent marker…  but it’s not really that permanent. After a couple of runs through the dishwasher your mug will still remind you of 11870.com,  but if you want it to say something else like “good morning” or “wake up and smell the coffee”, now is your chance!

categories: just for fun

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Boo!

by irenet - October 31, 2008

Were you scared? Not much, right? That wasn’t really our intention. For a terrifying Halloween, you could check out an old celtic cemetery, a goth club or watch scary movies until your eyes pop out. We’d love to hear about your favorite places to observe this Celtic tradition that encourages cross-dressing and taking candy from strangers. If you’re not in a Halloween-speaking country, your best bet is probably an Irish pub.

Happy Halloween!

Imbued with this particular holiday’s spirit, we’ve carved out a pumpkin. Like any self-respecting office mascot, she bleeds coffee.

categories: just for fun

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One in ten thousand

by irenet - October 7, 2008

Once in a while users drop by the 11870.com HQ to meet the team, chat and try out our espresso machine. We love meeting the people that inhabit 11870.com, not just for the photo-op, but also for the great stories and tips they give us on how to improve the site.

From left to right: Marux, irenet and ferujaldon

Last week our visitor was Marux, a San Franciscan whose network of friends is spread over cities like Madrid or Istanbul. Through her visit and her page here we’ve learned that she has her eye out for good vegetarian food, is a self-declared coffee whore and loves vintage motor bikes.  If you’re reading this: thanks for stopping by!

And speaking of users… we reached the myriad recently. Yes, there are now over ten thousand 11870.com inhabitants sharing their favorite places and services.

categories: just for fun

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Summer of 2008!

by irenet - September 5, 2008

Summer’s a perfect time for discovering: people take off and travel the world, returning with great pictures and stories about places they’ve been to. We’ve invited all our users to participate in an end of summer challenge that fits the occasion.

Discover two new places on 11870.com before September 30th and you’ll be in for a nice surprise… so says Maestro Armero, who’s being very secretive about the whole thing We’ll find out what he’s up to in October, when the challenge comes to an end.

If you’d like to participate too, just add your discoveries (places you’re the first to save) to your page and tag them as summer2008. Remember, the purpose of this is to pool our knowledge: so tell us a bit about your experience there!

categories: just for fun

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picks from the office listening pile

by irenet - July 11, 2008

At 11870.com we share a love for music… and our records too. We thought it would be fun to let you in on some of our favorite songs via Muxtape.

Our tastes are varied: soul, pop, rock, dance, flamenco… so it’s a pretty crazy list. Since muxtapes can only be 12 songs long a lot of team members got left out in the first one. They get dibs on choosing what goes on the next mix though, as we plan to update our tape from time to time.

Here’s what’s on 11870.mix Volume 1, and who chose it. Stay tuned for Volume 2!

irenet: Aroah – An orchid is a flower that thrives on neglect
urbilateria: Terremoto de Jerez – Fiesta en el barrio Santiago
ferujaldon: Scissor Sisters – Comfortably Numb
overgon: Deep Dish – Flashdance
lngky: Lauryn Hill – Everything Is Everything
antiácido: Santogold – You’ll Find A Way (Switch & Sinden Remix)
fresus: Stereophonics – Jealousy
mitrofan: Havalina – Dónde Irán
dagger: Looptroop – Don’t Hate the Player
peralta: MGMT – Time To Pretend
alexei: Jaco Pastorius – Portrait Of Tracy
gemel: Interpol – Evil

categories: just for fun

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