Tag: london underground

Tracking Your Phone’s Tube Journey

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During November and December last year, Transport For London used the London Underground’s Wi-fi network to track the hashes of MAC numbers as they moved through the system. Although tracking the start and end points of a journey is relatively easy, how a large volume of people move between stations has been harder to understand. Perhaps the number one reason to do the trial was to better understand the journeys that people actually make on the Tube. At the moment, TfL can tell what station you started and ended your journey at based on your Oyster card – but it can’t tell how

‘Mind – The – Hashtag’ as Tube typography changes

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London Underground has updated the Johnston typeface. The world is ending. Still, they’re there if you know where to look: the diamond dotting the lowercase ‘i’ and ‘j’ isn’t nearly as high in Johnston and Johnston100 as it is in New Johnston, while the top half of the lowercase ‘g’ has been stretched out to be less perfectly geometric, like it was back in the early 20th Century. The end result, Monotype hopes, is a typeface that is closer to Johnston’s original intent, feeling more personal and less utilitarian than it did before. John Brownlee reports for Co.Design.

Imagine if you could alter the Tube Map, and nobody complained…

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If London Transport are going to start playing around with the fonts and spacings on the London Underground Tube Map, then all bets are off and I can officially start liking some of the alternatives, such as Hong Kong based ‘_SameBoat_‘ who’s come up with this little curved beauty: This anonymous hero… has been posting their own re-jigged tube map to Wikipedia since last August. Unlike Transport for London’s version, this one basically abandons the 80-year old template we’re all so familiar with and starts again. It retains the map’s straight lines and 45 angles where appropriate; but isn’t afraid to abandon them where

Geoff Marshall to the Tube is just like myself to Eurovision

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Delightful interview with Geoff ‘Do I  know the London Underground?’ Marshall on Norton Folgate: Geoff Marshall knows the Tube better than anyone else you’re likely to meet. He was world record holder of the Tube Challenge (visit all stations on all Tube lines in the fastest possible time) for two years. He’s currently planning his next attempt at the Challenge which will take place in May. I sat down with him and Elephantine Dark blogger Edmund Hardy for a chat and a beer. My one claim to Tube running fame is that I beat Geoff in at ‘Zone One‘ challenge many

Badgers and the London Underground

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I am not a train-spotter as such, or even at all, but I do know to sit in the final carriage if I am getting out at Warren Street (that’s where the exit is) and that ‘*******’ is the only station name that contains no letters from the word ‘badger’. You don’t want to be inside my head. I’m not sure I want to be. Sorry for causing all your work to crash to a halt while you work it out.