Your Guide to the New Gridskipper

Welcome to the all-new all-thrilling Gridskipper.com, the product of many months of intense design, meticulous tech work, and devout prayer. We got fresh looks, sharp hooks, and maps, maps, maps. Let's check out the pretty face and voluptuous figure, then take a look under the hood, shall we?

The first thing you'll notice is our new emphasis on top cities -- Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Sydney to start, with more on the way. Each of these cities gets its own homepage, and when you visit Gridskipper, you'll (soon!) be directed to the homepage for the city nearest you. (If you're not close to any of the six, or you're being stealthy while surfing, you'll begin in New York by default). Each city's homepage assembles all material for that city in an easy-to-browse format. See the "TOP CITIES" strip at the top of the page? That tells you where you are, and you can check out various "CITY TAGS" below to see the latest in New York restaurants, say, or Berlin hotels.

Of course, we'll still post about travel and city news worldwide. Some stories will turn up simultaneously across all city pages, while others will appear in the "Other City Buzz" teaser located halfway down the page. We remain obsessed with global urban coverage, even as we pay special attention to our top cities.

While we go deep with some cities, we're also going wide. On any city page, you'll see map icons next to posts indicating the presence of a snazzy new map post format. Our expanded army of 36 international contributors will provide detailed map coverage of their home burgs. For example, check out maps detailing Italian shopping in New York, or cheap and chic Paris hotels, or outside dining in San Francisco. New maps will be posted every day for all our top cities, with occasional maps for other locales popping up too. And you can even view the maps in Google Earth -- just copy the link from the Google Earth icon next to the title on every map post, then use "Add Network Link" inside Google Earth to display.

We've updated the look and feel of Gridskipper, obviously -- now we're wide and dynamic, and our coloration is lighter and full of vim. We've incorporated many improvements from other Gawker Media sites, such as details about comments, post popularity, and author bylines, all visible to the right of post excerpts. And we've charged up the search function to make browsing the archives easier and more powerful.

This is all just the beginning. More fun stuff will be rolling out in the next few days and weeks, including maps with video, reader-submitted maps, and maps with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. We'll eventually add more cities, more contributors, more features, and more toys. In the meantime, let us know what you think at tips@gridskipper.com. Give us your honest opinions, constructive criticism, venomous invective, and bug reports -- if you see anything weird, describe it in detail and give us your OS (and version) and browser (and version), plus a screenshot if you're feeling generous.

So go forth and poke around, and stay tuned for more updates, improvements, and profound paradigm shifts.