Some of the top business blogs are also helping to shape the world they report on, with the leaders in the ‘blogosphere’ becoming key influencers themselves. Our list of the best business blogs of 2010 will give you the best websites for business news, views and discussions.

Top Business Blogs

• Freakonomics – By now, most of us have heard of the sensation that is Freakonomics, the bestselling book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner which explores “the hidden side of everything” – mainly by mining otherwise dry data to explore fascinating facts. The Freakonomics blog takes this concept to its logical next step by having regularly updated articles posted on a variety of economics or data analysis subjects.
• Seth Godin’s Blog – Seth Godin’s work as an author and public speaker may well precede him, but his regularly updated blog is essential reading for those searching for an honest and considered voice amongst the usual clamour of marketing bloggers.
• SmallBizPod – Despite being marketed at the small business audience (and thus making it a good fit for those with Argyll virtual offices in London), SmallBizPod is a combination of podcasts, blog and news site with some useful and engaging content that is appealing to all businesses. The archive of podcasts is especially good, with the co-founders of Moonfruit and Xing recently being featured, amongst others.
• Duct Tape Marketing – Again, this blog has a companion piece in the form of a book of the same name, but the marketing advice and insights on offer to small businesses could prove invaluable.
• London Hotspots – Our sister site blog contains information on a wide range of topics, though with a focus on modern business life and leisure in London. Individual posts are always filled with advice around how to best make the capital a less-stressful and more enjoyable place to work, with a focus on how London virtual offices, serviced offices and meeting rooms can best work for you.
• Business Blog Consulting – At the risk of this post becoming ‘meta’ advice, the Business Blog Consulting site demonstrates how blogs can be used for effective customer/client communications across a wide range of industries. There is a veritable treasure trove of valuable information to be found on here for the businessperson interested in corporate blogging.
• Biz Plan Hacks – “Practical planning tips for busy business owners” – it’s hard to find fault with the strapline on Biz Plan Hacks, as it does precisely what it claims. Some of the advice is rather obvious, such as how to handle conflict resolution in the office, to more practical tips like guides to online invoicing applications and business expense tips.

If you’ve got your own pick of the top business blogs, or just have some of your own invaluable tips to add, please leave us a comment below.

Below, you’ll find some resources that will help when searching for car parking in London, such as interactive maps, lists of parking zones and more.

Car Parking in London Map

This useful map from Parkopedia contains a list of a large proportion of the various different car parks (both private and personal), car parking metres, street parking and the congestion charge boundary.

While the City of London and the South East have the most dense concentration of metres, the West End and Mayfair has the largest volume of public car parks, making it simple to park near our London office space at Pall Mall or Charles Street.

Mobile Apps for London Car Parking

Tying in with our recent post on Mobile Apps for Business in London, there are now several specialised iPhone apps dedicated to the sole purpose of finding parking spaces:

• AA Parking (Powered by Parkopedia)
• Park Up – London Parking
• London Tube Parking

Local Council Websites

More information on individual parking areas for parts of London can be found on local council websites. For a list of London councils, associated websites and contact information, please visit the London Councils website.

If you have any useful tips or suggestions for car parking in London, leave a comment below and we’ll add it to the list.

The three most important categories of mobile business apps are networking, productivity and travel – all of which are essential for ensuring you stay connected when away from your London office space.

Networking

• LinkedIn – By now, almost everyone has heard of the business social network LinkedIn and how useful it can be for networking. The official Blackberry and iPhone apps (NB: there are also unofficial ones for Android) allow you to take your business networking contacts on the road with you, and contain all the functionality you’d expect to find on the LinkedIn website, right in the palm of your hand. The best feature on the app is the Bluetooth connectivity in the ‘In Person’ mode, which lets you connect with other LinkedIn app-using professionals around you.
• Happening – Without people, networking becomes slightly tricky. Fortunately, the Happening iPhone app has been developed to let you know what is going on around you, from conferences to meetings, concerts, public events and everything in between. Drawing on the Yahoo! Upcoming database of events, Happening displays geographically relevant events in chronological order, allowing you to easily choose the right one for you.

Productivity

• Pocket Informant – Available on the three major platforms listed above, Pocket Informant is one of, if not the best productivity apps on the market. A fully-loaded task manager and calendar tool, this app has it all for the businessperson looking to plan their hectic schedules, including synching with Google Calendar, event location mapping and support for multiple calendar display formats.
• Evernote – Remembering something whilst away from your desk can be annoying, as you’re not always armed with a pen and paper to jot it down on. Fortunately, Evernote’s smartphone app (available on iPhone, Blackberry and Android) allows you to snap pictures, record voice, clip a Web page or tap in some text and store it on a central server which you can then access from anywhere, linking all your devices together. Simple but very effective.

Travel

• Tube Map – It’s useless being able to work from anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going, or how to get back to your London office space. Helpfully, TubeMap is at hand to guide you around the intricacies of London’s Underground system. For a free iPhone app, it’s remarkably featured-packed with live line status updates, A-to-B route planner (with options to choose between either fastest route or fewest changes) and a handy station finder. An essential mobile business app for London commuters.
• TripAdvisor – The TripAdvisor Android and iPhone apps provide a fantastic level of service for those who are in London on business and are looking for a place to stay, local attractions or somewhere to eat. This app combines most of the features found on the website of the same name, with user-submitted content in the form of reviews, tips and suggestions making up the bulk of the app. The GPS-enabled ‘Find Me’ functionality is particularly useful if you’re not sure exactly where you are too.

Do you have a favourite mobile app for business in London, or disagree with any of the choices we’ve made? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Argyll’s London serviced offices are fortunate enough to be closely located to a number of the Royal Parks. London parks deemed “Royal Parks” are owned by the Crown – in fact, although widely used, the public has no legal right to use the Parks as access is at the behest of the monarchy. The five Royal Parks in central London are Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent’s Park, St James’s Park and Green Park.

Although not nearly as big (and indeed not the biggest of the London parks in the city centre), Hyde Park is arguably the Central Park of London due to its central location, extensive transport links and large lake, The Serpentine, which it shares with neighbouring Kensington Gardens. Hyde Park is famous for Speakers Corner, where some of the most influential figures in world history have spoken or attended meetings such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Hyde Park is also famous for its large outdoor gigs such as Live 8 and the Hard Rock Calling and Wireless festivals.

Neighbouring Hyde Park is Kensington Gardens. Often mistaken as a section of the larger Hyde Park, this London park houses, and once was the private gardens of, Kensington Palace which is the official residence of various members of the Royal Family including the Dukes and Duchesses of both Gloucester and Kent. It was also the official residence of Diana, Princess of Wales until her death. Worth visiting in the park are the impressive Italian fountains, as seen below.

Italian fountains in Kensington Gardens by AESanfacon

St James Park, which is overlooked by our Argyll, 16 Old Queen Street serviced offices, is the oldest of the Royal Parks, and sits almost directly in front of Buckingham Palace. The park is fortunate enough to contain a small lake, which is known for the group of pelicans that inhabit it. At the eastern tip of the park are the Churchill War Rooms, the historic underground complex that housed the British government nerve centre during WWII.

As well as the main London parks, there are plenty of smaller green spaces and garden squares in London in which to relax. Of particular note is St James’s Square Gardens, an open green space, overlooked by the London serviced offices of Argyll, 33 St James’s Square and a stone’s throw away from offices at Argyll, 78 Pall Mall. Cavendish Square, a small park that is a particular favourite for shoppers due to its close proximity to both Regent Street and Oxford Street, is overlooked by our Argyll, 17 Cavendish Square serviced offices. Finally, there is Belgrave Square Gardens, overlooked by Argyll Grosvenor Crescent offices and several international embassies.

Over 60 people attended the champagne reception in the boardroom of Argyll 33 St James’s Square SW1, taking in the beautiful views from the balcony overlooking St James’s Square while feasting on top notch sushi supplied by Sumosan.

Boardroom at 33 St James’s Square on Flickr

Motivational speaker and NLP specialist James Stokes provided some valuable insights on dealing with and working through a negative internal dialogue – which led to some interesting discussions afterwards.

As if the Harrods goodie bags weren’t enough of a treat, attendees were each  also given an exclusive promotional £50 gift voucher redeemable against any London meeting rooms booking within an Argyll business centre or the wider Executive Offices Group portfolio.

We’d like to wish the Mayfair Times well with its new venture and look forward to welcoming the Mayfair PAs to the many meeting, conference and event rooms available across our 32 London meeting room locations. And if any PAs are reading this – do leave us a comment here on the Argyll blog and share your photos from the launch event, we’d love to hear from you.

You can read more about the Mayfair Times’ PA parties here on their website: http://www.mayfairpa.com/parties. You can also follow @MayfairPA on Twitter or join their Facebook Page.

In this blog post we’ll highlight some of our personal favourites, galleries of note, must-visit locations and places for those who are looking for a West End art gallery with something a bit different.

The Opera Gallery, London, is located at 134 New Bond Street, right in the heart of the West End and surrounded by some of our most prestigious Mayfair virtual offices. The gallery – which has a presence in many major cities all over the globe – houses a wide variety of styles in a range of mediums, including masterpieces from Dali, Chagall, and Bonnard, as well as providing emerging new talent with a place to showcase their art, photography and sculpture work.

Scream London is a widely-revered contemporary London art gallery that again focuses on displaying works from both established and emerging artists. The current exhibition is entitled ‘The Rolling Stones: Against The Wall’, and showcases a revealing collection of -behind-the-scenes shots of the band by several legendary photographers, including David Montgomery and Roberto Rabanne. ‘Against The Wall’ runs until the 3rd July. Visit Scream London at 34 Bruton Street, a short walk from our London serviced offices at nearby Berkeley Square.

The Riyahi Gallery at 97 Mount Street houses a collection consisting of “museum quality” ancient Islamic works of art, fascinating from both an aesthetic and historical perspective. The gallery was established in 1963 and contains pieces in a variety of mediums, from pottery, glass and metalwork, to manuscripts and paintings.

Something of a left-field choice, but definitely worthy of inclusion after an article in The Times last year hailed it as “the most exclusive public gallery in Britain”, The Kennel Club Art Gallery proudly houses the largest collection of dog paintings in Europe and can call itself the only dog art gallery in the UK. A short walk from any number of our London serviced offices in the heart of Mayfair, the gallery runs several exhibitions throughout the year, with the current one – ‘Two Dissimilar Breeds: The French Bulldog & Schipperke in Art’ – running until the 11th June and the ‘The Pointer in Art’ starting shortly after that.

Our final choice is The Mayor Gallery at 22A Cork Street. Founded by Fred Mayor in 1925, the gallery has established itself as the preeminent London art gallery at which to see Surreal and Dadaist art, as well as being home to works by leading American Pop artists and ‘European Nouveau Realism’ pieces – well worth a visit if these styles are to your tastes.

The Chelsea Flower Show, or RHS Great Spring Show as it is officially called, dates back to 1862 when it was held in the RHS Garden in Kensington. It came to its current location in 1905 and is now attended by 157,000 visitors each year. Some of the world’s leading garden designers compete for the highly sought-after awards.

As well as enjoying the weird, wonderful and sometimes just plain extravagant show gardens that are created especially for the occasion, you can also pick up plants and seeds for your own garden from the extensive range available at the show.

To give you a flavour for some of the inspiring sights you can take in at Chelsea Flower Show, here’s a video from the BBC featuring designer James Towillis talking about his pre-event preparations:

Tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show must be purchased in advance – you can book online here.

You can follow the RHS on Twitter for real-time updates from the Chelsea Flower Show.

If you do decide to attend the Chelsea Flower Show, we’d love to see your photos and videos or hear your stories – leave us a comment and tell us about your experience.

If you’d like more information on our London Serviced Offices and London Virtual Offices at Eaton Gate or any other location, you can find out more here.

Umu, a Japanese restaurant billed as “the only Kyoto style restaurant in the UK” is located on Bruton Place – a short walk from our London serviced offices on Berkeley Square. The restaurant has met with consistently excellent reviews since opening, and with dishes such as grilled skill fish teriyaki, eel kabayaki and the grade nine Wagyu beef, it’s little wonder. Umu also plays host to over 70 different premium sake labels, and a healthy wine list of over 300 bottles, ensuring that most tastes are catered for.

Galvin at Windows is often talked about for its spectacular 28th floor views across London, yet this pales in comparison to the mouthwatering food on offer from Head Chef Andre Garrett and Chef Patron Chris Galvin. The menu focuses on seasonally-inspired dishes based around modern French haute cuisine, with starters, main courses and desserts all prepared with incredible attention to detail – and for eminently reasonable prices. If you’re planning on dining here with a large party The Balcony is of particular note. An exclusive table for up to 18 people, it’s perfect for lunch or evening business appointments while working at London serviced offices on Brook Street or Davies Street.

Opened in 2007, L’Autre Pied is a relative newcomer to the Mayfair restaurant scene, though the name might be familiar to some of our readers – L’Autre Pied is the sister restaurant to the highly-acclaimed Pied à Terre. With chef Marcus Eaves at the helm, the restaurant has been producing some truly imaginative and beautiful contemporary food across a range of different menus. Main courses include dishes such as the roasted rabbit leg with mushroom and tarragon beignets, creamed broccoli and hazelnut and thyme jus, while desserts like the passionfruit bavarois with marinated pineapple, cinnamon sable and mango sorbet are reasonably priced and use only the finest ingredients.

When it comes to modern Indian fine dining restaurants, few do it better than Chef Patron Atul Kochhar at Benares, located on Berkeley Square. With dishes featuring seasonal produce and superior ingredients sourced from India, Kochhar has created several menus to cater for different tastes and styles throughout the year, including such mouthwatering items as the onion chutney crusted cod with textures of onion and the grilled fallow deer fillet with yellow pumpkin kedgeree and pear chutney. There is also a truly inspired bar cocktail menu, featuring a passion fruit chutney martini and raspberry and pomegranate caprioska.

Musicals

All The Fun of The Fair – the new David Essex production – opens at the Garrick Theatre on the 28th April, near our London serviced offices at St James’s Square. Directed by David Gilmore, the show is inspired by the Essex album of the same name, and even features Essex himself in the role of fun fair owner Levi Lee.

Opening on the 14th April, the classic Hair opens for a repeat of its 2009 Broadway run. Set in 1967, Hair tells the story of Claude, an anti-establishment hippie who gets drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Featuring a selection of well-known songs, including ‘Good Morning Starshine’ and ‘Let The Sunshine In’, this production promises to be just as memorable as the first. Tickets are available now from the Gielgud Theatre – close to our Pall Mall London serviced offices – and online retailers.

Drama

Beginning its run in January this year at the Noel Coward Theatre on Saint Martin’s Lane, ENRON is still essential viewing throughout the Spring and beyond. So far, the play has been a resounding success, garnering excellent reviews from critics and the public alike. ENRON recounts the tale of the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of the American energy giant, focusing on the accounting scandal that eventually brought the company to its knees.

Starring Felicity Kendal in the eponymous lead role, Mrs Warren’s Profession has been playing at the Comedy Theatre on Panton Street since its March opening, conveniently within walking distance from most of our prestigious London serviced offices in the West End. This tale – originally penned in 1894 by George Bernard Shaw – of a prim-and-proper young woman discovering a darker side to her mother has been greeted warmly by critics, citing Kendal’s performance in particular as a highlight.

Comedy

Our pick for a new comedy/drama show to look out for this Spring is Holding The Man, a funny and touching story of a young man in Australia, struggling to come to terms with his sexuality while attending an all-male Melbourne high school and beyond. The story touches on some important issues, and is already a smash hit in Australia. The play opens at the Trafalgar Studios theatre on the 23rd April, making it an ideal choice if you’re looking to take in a show after a day at our London serviced offices on nearby Old Queen Street.

Watch an interview with the play’s adaptor Tommy Murphy below:

For something luxurious but different try Sketch on Conduit Street – a short walk from our London serviced offices on Brook Street and Davies Street. This distinctive, modern and highly-original venue is one of the most unique places to drink and dine in the whole of London – however, it is also one of the most expensive. Cocktails here are highly recommended, and the food is excellent.

In close proximity to Sketch is Mews, a consistently popular Mayfair bar and restaurant with dark, art deco themes throughout. Spread over several floors, Mews offers a variety of environments depending on your mood, from the upstairs restaurant serving a delicious and varied menu, to the luxurious and accommodating cocktail bar below.

The Connaught bar within the grand hotel of the same name is located on Carlos Place, a few blocks north of our Charles Street London serviced offices. The staff are attentive, the surroundings opulent and the drinks flawless. When in Mayfair, this is a lovely place to stop by.

For a different atmosphere altogether, try the Mahiki Club on Dover Street which promises to transport you to a “Polynesian paradise.” The drinks menu is firmly set in the tropical end of the cocktail spectrum, with decor to match: Hawaiian fixtures and fittings rub shoulders with atmospherically-lit Tiki themed art, giving the impression of an exotic waterside hideaway, which in reality is only a five minute stroll from our London serviced offices at St James’s Square.

If you’d prefer something a little more traditional, the Mayfair pubs are sure to have something to your tastes. The Red Lion on Duke of York Street and The Golden Lion on King Street both come highly recommended, and The Only Running Footman is only a few doors down from our office address on Charles Street. What’s more Guy Ritchie and Madonna’s pub, The Punch Bowl is a great place to spot celebrities, and is located directly opposite our serviced offices on Farm Street.