Since it’s been mentioned a few places elsewhere, I thought I should note the Washington Post company’s Express free commuter daily has launched a website centered around a blog authored mostly by my friend Mike Grass. If you recall, I founded DCist with Mike in July 2004 and edited it with him for nearly a year before he left to work for Express. I know Mike’s been working very hard on the blog and the new site, and it looks sharp. Of particular interest is the Metro Links section where users can search of bars, restaurants, or other activities by Metro station with the businesses plotted on a Google Map, a craigslist-like classifieds section

The blog’s comment policy will obviously have to be refined, this policy is too vague for me:

All comments on Express’ blogs will be screened for appropriateness, spam and topic relevance, so there is likely to be a delay before your comment is displayed. Thanks for your patience.

With the City Paper blogging and WashingtonPost.com running more than ever (although buried inside the site as pseudo-columns) in addition to DCist doing better than ever, the local blogosphere seems to have reached a new level of sophistication — and competition.

(Note to Mike: Where’s the RSS?)