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I’ve noticed that Toronto is a city of trends, especially when it comes to food takeout There’s always times where a certain type of food is suddenly hot and popular and takeout shops start to pop up everywhere

1. Pizza. The original take out food and still stands the test of time. The only real changes are that there are more “gourmet” varieties around with special cheeses, breads and weird combos of meat and vegetables.
2. Wraps/Pitas. I remember when they were so popular after a night out at the bar. Exteme Pita, Mega Wraps and clones started to pop up everywhere pitching healthy eating. They seemed to kind of die out but I guess people realized that you could buy the ingredients at a grocery store and make it exactly the same at half the price.
3. Sushi. Enough said. So many out there it’s hard to tell which one is good.
4. Asian Fusion. Add chicken, noodles, peanut sauce with big plates and you have a new restaurant.
5. Salad Places. Nothing better to capitalize on trendy Toronto then healthy $10 salads!
6. Burritos. Burrito Boyz is the king right now, but the service sucks and it’s not worth a 45 minute wait.
7. Shawarmas. It’s almost a revival to the old wraps/pitas trend but with one huge difference, hummus.

So what’s the next trend? Rotis? Poutine?

I’ve always had a certain disdain for Rogers and that fact they’ve pretty much taken control of the media in Canada but I just saw on the news today that they run a “Pumpkin Patrol” on Halloween :

And for the 23rd straight year, the Rogers Pumpkin Patrol will be going out along with them to ensure they don’t get into anything too scary. The safety guardians gave an annual preview of their handiwork at Toronto Police Headquarters Friday, revealing there will be 150 vans and 300 employees fanning out across the GTA on October 31st to keep an eye out when your kids don’t.

It’s a great service but what shocks me is that it’s in it’s 23rd year! Seriously??!!? It’s the first I’ve ever heard of it and I am still young enough to remember going trick or treating.

On August 9th, 2008 I emailed access Toronto about a lamp bulb that was out in a park near where I like to walk the dog. Here’s the original email sent to “accesstoronto@toronto.ca“:

Not sure who to email this to but the bulb on the lamp in the “Norman Jewison” Park by Yonge/Gloucester Street needs to be replaced. It’s been out for a few weeks and it’s extremely dark in that one area. It’s the lamp closest to Gloucester Street (South end of park) by the bench.

Please forward to Parks and Rec.

Surprisingly, I got a response 2 days later on Aug 11, 2008

Thank you for your inquiry to Access Toronto, the public information and referral service for the Toronto Government.

I have forwarded your e-mail to the area park supervisor, Mark Emslie, for his attention and response.

I hope this is helpful and please do not hesitate to let me know if you require further information or assistance.

Sincerely,

Ada Bielow

Act. Mgr., Public Information

City of Toronto

Then an email from the park supervisor on the same day:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I will place a work order to have the lamp checked.

I was very impressed with the email response time from the City of Toronto. Almost unbelievable. Well I guess it’s back to reality because as of today, September 7, 2008, nothing has happened. This is what I expected but it was too bad that the emails gave me some false hope.

You’ve seen it in variety and convenience stores and those glass fridges at take out food restaurants. The huge can of Arizona Ice Tea, 695 ml, and labeled right on it at great price of just 99 cents! Question is – have you ever gotten it for anywhere near 99 cents? Take it out of the fridge and ask the sales person if it’s 99 cents and they laugh at you, and just shrug when you point to the price.

I’ve seen it ranging from $1.59 to $1.99 (guessing tax not incl). I have a feeling it’s illegal to display a price and not honour it but whose gonna argue over around 5o cents?

Good news, found one store near where I live that sells it for $1.25 – tax incl. Pretty close to the advertised price. Anyone have better luck?

EDIT Sept. 6, 2008: Just got it for 99 cents at Canadian Tire of all places!

As a followup to my previous post, I noted that Rogers has provided a opt out for their “custom Rogers/Yahoo” search page. I was a little too soon to give them credit for it as I proceeded to select the opt out option and now I see this standard Internet Explorer looking “Cannot find server” page. BUT – notice the url address is http://www20.search.rogers.com/not_found. Rogers has simply created a fake Cannot find server page as their version of opting out of their service. What a joke. Rogers does it again!

Check out TorontoMusic.net to get a snapshot on upcoming music concerts and reviews in and around Toronto. It aggregates various RSS feeds from a number of music sources, put together in just one page to give music lovers an easy way to see whats upcoming around Toronto. It also includes local concert reviews.  It’s worth checking out any one who’s into the rich Toronto concert scene.

Looks like changes are coming over at cp24.com – See screenshot as of 8am, August 10th, 2008. It looks like it’s currently under some kind of redevelopment that hasn’t quite gone as smooth as planned. Interesting that a Java exception was thrown but not handled properly so it gives you a bit of an idea as to what technologies they are employing.

Also notice the “CTV” favicon now. Makes sense since they have recently taken over CHUM Limited and maintain control of CP24. This site was previously redirecting to citynews.ca

There is no doubt that the iPhone being released in Canada on July 11th will be huge. Regardless of price or plan, lots of fanboys, tech nerds and kids with rich (or dumb?) parents will get there hands on it.

The highly anticipated price plans have been released on the Rogers website. Notice that there is no unlimited data transfer like our friends in the US get as well as the basic extras cost extra. (call display, evenings at 6pm rather than 9pm, etc). It looks like for a decent plan, you are looking at paying at least $100 a month, probably more. Don’t forget the extra charges as you are watching Youtube videos that push you past your cap!

Check out the tons of comments which are even more entertaining and basically comes down to everyone saying “F YOU Rogers”.

http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/06/rogers_iphone_plans_revealed/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/27/rogers-announces-iphone-3g-plans-unlimited-data-isnt-one-of-th/

In fact, it has even spawned  a brand new site http://www.fuckyourogers.com/

It would be interesting to see how the iPhone does in Canada. Unfortunately, it seems the Canada is far behind that of the United States in this regard as there is very little competition here.

Check it out the beta here: http://www.beta.ttc.ca. Supposedly it costs about $400k for the revamp, and will be fully functional by mid July. The RSS feed for service alerts is a great idea and looks fairly clean and simple. A definite improvement from their current site which looks like web 1.0 at it’s best or something that was done by some TTC employee who just learned how to use Dreamweaver.

For those who don’t use RSS or even know what it is (and probably could care less), a new Toronto based site www.torontoh.com has recently launched that puts the latest Toronto news all on one page. It pulls information from different sources – from mainstream news organizations to local Toronto based blogs. Inspired by popurls.com, it’s simple and to the point – a great snapshot of whats happening right now for Torontonians. Keep an eye on torontoh.com, and don’t be surprised to see other sections added beyond news as well as other cities.