The recently released report critiquing the TTC by a five month old Customer Service Advisory Panel, included 78 observations and subsequent recommendations to better the system. The panel members were a diverse lot, including Ryerson marketing professor Dr. Roy Morley (a teacher), Matthew Blackett of Spacing Magazine, Robert Culling a transit operator and Julie Tyios (a friend) a digital communications entrepreneur.
Overall I thought the report was well produced, excluding the fact that they didn’t use one hyperlink. The age of paper reports is over dammit!
John Gauthier, a member of Toronto’s twitterratti has started an enterprise that helps solve social issues as well as business problems. John is an outgoing tech-geek, who knows his CSS, PHP, MySQL and now how to run a courier service.
John’s new business, Good Foot Delivery, employs individuals with developmental disabilities to run packages across Toronto’s downtown core. The Toronto Star just gave him some amazing coverage, in an article by The Toronto Star cleverly titled Off on a Good Foot, which tells his story in detail. Good Foot Delivery relies heavily on web orders and smartphones with GPS for the couriers; decent tech integration.
I’d like to write about how there seems to be something fishy with the Pepsi Refresh Project, which could award John a $25,000 grant for his socially beneficial company.
Pepsi’s contest, based on a cheery social media voting platform allows individuals, organizations and businesses to submit their initiatives “that will have a positive impact on communities.” They can enter one of four categories, each with a monetary value.
What interesting about this contest is the lack of disclosure as to how many votes each entry has received. John is the $25,000 category and is currently residing in 17th place. I had a look at the only metric available in this contest, the comments and found something very fishy.
The idea of a local gaming culture sounds pretty… unbelievable. In a post arcade reality, most gaming socialization consists friends chatting or the hurling swear words during bouts of Modern Warfare or a “GG “(good game) at the end of StarCraft matches. That being said there is a little bit of TO gaming culture starting to bubble up, though it is taking some effort.
The Hand Eye Society is doing it’s best to help connect local independent game developers and gaming enthusiasts into something that resembles community. Organizing socials, unconferences, presentations, showcases and established connections with the interactive design community at large, the top echelon of The Hand Eye Society is really trying to build something. This has even been recognized by the Canadian Arts Council who has funded The Hand Eye Societies events.
There is a chance that you have encountered the official ambassador of The Hand Eye Society, The Torontotron. This old school arcade cabinet features a rotation of locally produced 80s retro inspired games, which are great fun. The cabinet has a tour schedule and might be coming to an Uber-geek event near you.
You can become a member of The Hand Eye Society which has an unquantifiable number of perks by pledging about 10 hours of time in the following ways:
To help people make games.
To connect game makers with each other and with an audience, offline.
To foster diversity in game creation and public perception of games.
If you are looking for a good one-off that really shows that Toronto gamers know how to party, you should check out the upcoming FAN EXPO GAMING PARTY, featuring DJ Finish Him (Shaun Hautten from Toronto Thumbs/ Electric Playground)
I got my first real bank account when I was 15, it was a chequeing account with no fees, relatively high interest and consisted purely of online and phone banking. That was in 2000, a full decade before ING’s “game changing” THRiVE.
My first legit job was in the garden centre of a Loblaws, I got the job just as PC Financial launched. PC Financial was Canada’s first bank to give full services without a brick and mortar presence. Ever since I started banking I used only the Internet and I never paid a service fee. The idea of going in to speak with a teller seemed like a ridiculous proposition as there was little I couldn’t do myself.
ING is coming out like this is something never been done before. PC Financial did this with the help of CIBC at a time when many still used dial-up.
PC financial is better than ING for day-to-day Chequing for two reasons.
1) CIBC machines are treated as home branches, therefore there are no withdraw charges.
2) You get PC points and Who doesn’t like points programs?
I still think THRiVE is a great alternative to traditional banking and I say everyone should consider it; it’s just not that novel.
If you want a real of Scott Pilgrim go to a game reviewer, this is me just rapping off some insights.
What a jolly romp through the streets and landmarks of Toronto I had yesterday. With four of my friends I blunged, beat and brutalized hundreds of non de-script baddies for the soul purpose of getting from point A to point B, which was a concert at Leo’s (Lee’s) Palace. With Streets of Rage gameplay and Nintendo nostalgia Scott Pilgrim is just a good ol’time for a Toronto Gamer.
This game is about comedy and intense action, sometimes a little too intense as it’s high level of difficulty even on the casual level will make you get easily angry at the non-gamers you are playing with. And be warned, to preserve that nostalgic style there is no save function other than character power levels. You will have to play from start to finish in a single sitting, the hardest challenge of which is maintaining the attention of 4 people for about 6 hours straight *pro-tip: drink pop not beer.*
The most ironic part of the experience was pointed out by my friend and fellow button basher Mark. There are all these cute references to Nintendo games throughout, yet they released if for both the xBox and PS3 and not the Wii – What the Hell!?
Only a fraction of the group I was playing with would call themselves gamers. After playing about 2 hours I only got 4 evil ex boyfriends in. If anyone would like to finish the game and needs some help, let me know.
Here is a little treat, the initial animated pitch for the game. Some stuff was cut, but a lot of the good stuff stayed
RT @mikeschramm: iTunes reviews, were anonymous, are now linked to Ping accounts, which use real names and locals. It's basically Real ID.about 23 hours agofrom HootSuite
John Gauthier
