As Ottawa goes right-wing, Toronto theatre funding gets cut

Posted on June 27, 2011 | 1 Comment

The arts are amongst the first government sponsored programs on the chopping block when you elect a right wing government. Now that the Conservatives have a majority, the outlook for local arts organizations is bleaker than it has been in the past.

Since 2005, Canadian Heritage funded the well-liked SummerWorks theatre festival through the Canada Arts Presentation Fund. This year they have pulled their funding which represented 20% of the Festivals budget with only  a few weeks notice before the Festival start date. As a result artistic producer Michael Rubenfeld recently  started an email campaign reaching out to past supporters to make up the $45,000 shortfall that the funding cut represents.

To make ends meet, ticket prices will go up 50 cents and some plays will be cancelled.   Show your support for Canadian Theatre by attending SummerWorks from August 4-14.  Show information and Tickets can be found at:  http://www.summerworks.ca

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Posted in blog, Causes, Events, Toronto

Bollywood is coming to Toronto starting June 23

Posted on June 23, 2011 | 4 Comments

Bollywood is coming to Toronto.  Toronto is hosting the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA), beginning Thursday, June 23 with film, music, and fashion and ending with the Indian Oscars on Saturday.   Many fans have been hanging out at the Pearson International Airport this week hoping to meet the many Bollywood actors coming to attend the three day celebration.  Over 200 filmmakers and celebrities are flying over from India and abroad, including three generations of the Kapoor family, the Deol family, the famous Shah Rukh Khan, “Slumdog Millionaire” actor Anil Kapoor, and Priyanka Chopra.  There are many Bollywood fans in the GTA and a huge South Asian population, so having  IIFA in Toronto is going to be an amazing experience.  It’s apparently been sold out for months. Would have loved to cover it in person!

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Posted in Events, Toronto, Uncategorized

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Do you want to help drive change in Toronto? Join a city board (Deadline July 11).

Posted on June 21, 2011 | 1 Comment

Join a Toronto Comittee or Board

A lot of us criticize the way things are in the city of Toronto but very few of us get out of the cafes and bars where we hold our debates about the city to actually do anything. Do you want to make a change and stop being a couch potato? Now’s your chance to do something:

The city of Toronto is looking for people to serve on the Board of Directors for a number of City organizations including the Toronto Board of Health, the Airports Authority, the MTCC, Toronto Hydro and a number of other influential city committees.

For more details visit: http://www.toronto.ca/public-appointments/opportunities.htm#apply

For a list of all boards, please visit: http://www.toronto.ca/public-appointments/board-various.htm

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Posted in Activism, Causes, Toronto

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Airbus building a transparent plane … scary but awesome.

Posted on June 15, 2011 | 1 Comment

Airbus plans to develop a transparent airplane that will allow passengers to see the sky, clouds, and stars at night, by the year 2050.  The seats will detect passengers’ body temperatures and use that temperature to control airplane systems.   And if you’re bored of sitting around and looking out into the sky, you can stroll down to the ‘Interaction Zone’ and play games such as virtual golf with other passengers on your plane, on other planes, or even on the ground.   How cool is that?  There might be a long line up though, so I don’t know how that would work.  It would be like flying in an alien spaceship.  I hope I’m not too old to fly in one by the time they come out … I’ll be 73 in 2050.  The view would be amazing over the Niagara Falls or the CN Tower, but then the airplane’s floor would have to be see-through as well. 

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Posted in Technology, Toronto

Get a Free Makeover from Maybelline at Luminato – June 14

Posted on June 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

If you are in the downtown area this evening , you can get a free makeover session from the make-up gurus at the  Maybelline installation at Luminato.  They even have a fashion photographer on site to take some glamor pics that you can then share online.

Check it out at  Metro Square -  David Pecaut Square (entrance off King Street, just west of Roy Thomson Hall) , Toronto.   Running from 5pm -11pm June 14th.

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Posted in Events, Lifestyle, Toronto

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Toronto Councillors Working to Ban Shark Fins from Restaurants

Posted on June 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

Two Toronto city councillors (Glenn De Baeremaeker and Kristyn Wong-Tam ) are proposing to ban the serving of shark fin’s in Toronto restaurants. Shark Fins and particularly Shark Fin soup are a delicacy in Chinese cuisine.

Every year 10′s of millions of sharks die needlessly because of finning. Fisherman cop off the shark’s fins and throw the still living shark back into the sea. With this severe injury, the shark’s then starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown.

TorontoBlog.net urges the community to support the Celebrate Sharks Summer Tour, and to help them reach their goal of getting 10,000 signatures on their petition which can be found at: http://finfreetoronto.com/petition.html

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Posted in Causes, Environment, Toronto

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Walk for Sick Kids in Toronto’s Coronation Park on Sunday June 12

Posted on June 12, 2011 | 1 Comment

If you haven’t heard yet, this Sunday, thousands of Canadians in Toronto will be taking part in the Wal-Mart Walk for Miracles.  They will be walking to help to fund medical care and  research that will benefit children in the GTA.

Children and Mickey at last year's Walk

Children and Mickey at last year's Walk (source: http://www.walmartwalkformiracles.ca)

The Toronto walk  kicks off at Coronation Park, where you can walk  along Toronto Maple Leafs celebs  and Disney characters like Mickey Mouse.

The Toronto walk will raise money  and all proceeds will go to The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and there will be simultaneous walks in the rest of Canada.

Last year  over 15,000 people participated in the walk across Canada and raised a  record $4.8 million.

Registration is opens at 8 am with a 1 or 5 K walk option. The walk starts at 10 AM.  Details can be found at: http://www.walmartwalkformiracles.ca/en/ww_loc.html?location=toronto

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Posted in Toronto

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Why a Toronto Blog?

Posted on June 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Toronto GTA blog mapI started off writing a blog about online marketing but life became busy and I just was not updating it, instead relying on twitter to do dozens of micro blog posts every day.

I’ve decided that I want to write about something different than the social media and online marketing I always tweet about and have decided to develop a Toronto Blog.  I’m a bit of an SEO whore so I tried to register TorontoBlog.com but found out that it was registered by a domain squatter who want’s $23,000 for it.  I offered him $500 but he laughed me off :) .  In any case TorontoBlog.net should still have some  SEO power over time.

So why a blog about Toronto?  I moved here in 2007 to work at Bell and really had no intention of staying longer than a few years.  My eye was on getting into the Silicon valley to work at a start-up or to launch another start-up with a venture capital backer like did when I co-founded GigaSize.com.  But life changed when I got married to a local Toronto girl and what was supposed to be a 1 year stepping stone has become home!

Stay tuned as I share my thoughts on life in Toronto and blog about the cool people, places and events I seem to always encounter here!

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Posted in Toronto

Thought of the day: What is good social media?

Posted on March 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I decided to come up with a short and comprehensive explanation of what good social media is for businesses for a twitter post  and I came up with the following: “Good social media for businesses is simply being a good corporate citizen. Treat customers & the community as you would want to be treated.”.   What do you think?

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Posted in Uncategorized

Interactive Retail Window – WeSC Motion Sensitive Videowall

Posted on January 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

I was blown away by this video of a custom retail window installation where people passing by are detected by motion sensors and their movements control a digital character within the display.  A totally different and innovative way of owning foot traffic eyeballs!

The installation was developed by students of the Hyper Island digital school for WeSC clothing.

Digital signage has come such a long way from when I used to work on out of home digital signage  in 2007-2008. Pretty soon I expect we’ll see a lot more interactivity with the  crowd, whether it be with Kinect like sensors, creative changes based on text message voting or even triggers like weather.  A consumer that actually interacts and spends time with your brand advertising is going to remember it a lot more than when they pass by undifferentiated creative in a sea of out of home advertising.

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Posted in Retail