In Corktown, just up from the Distillery District, a Jamie Kennedy Cafe hides in an unsuspecting alley. 4 Gilead is bright and beautifully designed and serves up delicious cafe fare from 8-6 on M-F, 8-4 S&S. As one might expect, nearly everything is excellent. Why not try it and see if you can find an item that is sub par? Could be a fun game. Cookies, danishes, breads, salads, sandwiches… the menu is not large but it’s worth a drop in for a snack. Between 11am - 3pm there are additional options to choose from on the ever changing a la cart menu.

Technorati Tags: Artisan, Cafe, coffee, Corktown, pastries, pastries, sandwich, breads, Toronto

A lovely looking wine bar called Pic Nic just opened last week on Queen East. The interior uses beautiful wood combined with stone and concrete. Very inviting. The menu, while not extensive, looks yummy so far, with a great selection of wines, cheeses and meats. There is a salad nicoise on offer, and a few other options that sound enticing. Cocktail hour, here I come.

Technorati Tags: cheese, cozy, Design, Riverdale, queen st east, Toronto, wine, wine bar

If you haven’t been to this mysterious place… you should. Delux at 92 Ossington is a great place to procure an excellent dinner.
A celebration, perhaps? A reward? Any reason will do, just make sure you have a reservation, as a lot of people have already figured out the truth about this special place on Ossington.

One of the big challenges in running a small software startup is service availability and support. This was, perhaps, a little easier in the bad old days when software shipped in boxes and "support" meant picking up a phone between 9-5 on business days, then mailing out a CD or floppy disc (remember those?) with updated bits.

Nowadays, much of the software people are building "ships" as a service running 24×7 on the web, or at least has a online service component to it. What’s more, customers increasingly reside around the world, and expect near-realtime responses, especially if their business depends on your software service.

You can imagine, then, that for a 1- or 2-person dev shop, making a web service highly available to customers is a particularly daunting challenge.

[You can read the rest of this piece over on my personal (and geekier) blog, MyOwnPirateRadio.]

Elicser is one of my favourite local artists.
You can find his works on public walls around Toronto, and in galleries.
Check out some of these images…

His pieces communicate very interesting characters and settings. I’ll let you know when I get the details of his next show.

Technorati Tags: Design, graffiti, Artist, Toronto

Thanks to Miru, we can all have these cute friends. Tai Kim McPhail originally designed these soft adorable creatures for her daughter Miru, and now makes them for more people to enjoy. She handcrafts them from recycled wool, cashmere sweaters and vintage buttons. You can find Miru’s Friends at a handful of stores around town. (Her website has all the details.) With each of these friends having so much character, I can’t see owning one of these and not being inspired to put on a short play for any willing viewer.

Technorati Tags: Artisan, environmental, handmade, recycling, Sew, Toronto

I promised a few weeks back to join Katrin on the Mukodu Blog. This is my first Mukodu post, co-authored with Katrin, and cross-posted on MyOwnPirateRadio. Sorry, no pictures.

People have been asking what we’re up to with Mukodu. While we can’t talk in detail yet on the specifics of what we’re doing, we are ready to share with you our vision, our motivation, and the company culture we intend to build.

Over the past ten years Katrin and I have lived in two countries, three different cities, and five different homes. We’ve also had the good fortune of travelling broadly. In doing so, we’ve recognized a common challenge: more and more people live in and move between urban areas, where they seek new opportunities, new friendships, and increased quality of life. Yet newcomers often don’t know where to begin, or how to get connected in a city, despite being surrounded by people. At the same time, "old-timers" often get so caught up in the routine of daily life — working, commuting, connecting with friends and family — that they fall out of touch with the changes going on around them, and with the people and resources right outside their front doors. It’s a great irony: despite living in populous, thriving, dynamic cities, we are so often disconnected. Thus the inspiration for the Mukodu blog, and for our first product, 5 Blocks Out.

5 Blocks Out is about connecting people with local life and culture. If you’re new to an area and trying to figure out which neighbourhood to call home, 5 Blocks Out will help you. If you want to learn what’s happening in the nooks and crannies of the city around you, 5 Blocks Out will keep you informed and up to date. If you want to hear what real people like you have to say about local places, events, and issues, 5 Blocks Out will help you to tap into urban word of mouth. And if you’re interested in helping others find “nearby good stuff”, thereby supporting local communities (yay!) and reducing environmental footprint (yay!), 5 Blocks Out plans to help you there too. 

Why work on a challenge like this? Because we love the places we’ve lived, and the friendships we’ve made there, and we want more of the same for everyone. We believe cities whose people engage in neighbourhood life, local culture, and civic discourse have unlimited potential as places to live. We believe healthy connections between people within neighbourhoods are essential. We believe the collective voice and wisdom of a city’s inhabitants is more interesting and, indeed, more personally relevant, than the voice of popular media. And so we’re setting out to create a community powered by the people, for the people, with the goal of making cities great places to live.

Mukodu is just getting going: for roughly the past year it’s been Katrin and myself, working together in true startup fashion: 25 hour days, 8 days a week, 1 to 2 minor miracles per day. We’re learning how to bootstrap a business on a shoestring, design and build products together, and leap tall buildings in a single bound. We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing, debating strategy, and thinking through minute design and implementation details. We’ve learned a lot, and built the beginnings of something we think you’ll love. It’s been thrilling, and terrifying, and the most fun we’ve ever had "working". We count ourselves very fortunate to be doing something we’re passionate about, day in and day out. We owe huge thanks to all of you who have supported us thus far.

Mukodu is also growing, and we’re looking forward to growing further. We’ve recently had a great boost with part-time help from Katy, Aaron, and Troy. We’re plugged in to a wonderful community and office space at the Centre for Social Innovation. And we’re starting to bring on some trusted advisors to kick the tires on our product and provide more guidance as we near public release.

While we aren’t in a position to hire people yet, we soon hope to be. We’ll need help: in particular, more software engineering and operations talent to build and run a kick-ass software service; advisors and board members to guide us; and angels to help prime the pump. We’re looking for these folks, starting now. We want people who share our values, passion, and hunger to change the world. We want people who are smart, scrappy, and get things done. We want people with creativity and a love for data analysis and problem-solving. We want people who understand that "going live on the web" is just the beginning; we must also have the humility to continually seek feedback and iteratively build something that actually works for customers and solves their needs. We want people who can handle the uncertainty and risk inherent in a startup environment, and whose instinctive response to a challenge is, "Can do!". If that sounds like you, or someone you know, let’s talk. 

We’re excited. We are getting great feedback. And with your help, we will make a real change.

Fire it up!

Osh and Katrin

Things are really buzzing in the West end. Buzzing with caffeine, that is. The Junction now has Crema Coffee Company. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best coffee shops in the city. Or perhaps it is the best - you decide. The design is fantastic, with clean and simple lines. It rivals Manic and houses a Clover machine.

mmmm…. delicious.

Technorati Tags: cozy, Dundas Street , espresso, latte, coffee