All quiet on the London tube network

Aw, what a shame!

Last week we were all enjoying little train symbols running around the live tube map and now we're looking at a dead page.

The problem is, the live tube map and dozens of other applications that have sprung up since Transport for London (TfL) started giving app developers free access to their live train data in the middle of last month, have been so popular TfL's servers have been overwhelmed. So they've shut it down.

The underground train departure data, made available through London Datastore, was receiving 180,000 requests/hits a week when it became available on 15 June, but quickly soared to 10 million hits.

As Dr Giles Nelson of Progress Software says: "Let's hope it'll be up and running soon. What this episode illustrates is the thirst that consumers and businesses have for real-time information".