Lots of the latest issues of Toronto’s Magazines have been highlighting cheap things to buy , do and or eat in the city. The only problem is that they’re in magazines which makes them useless to me when the time comes to answer the question – Where should we go for a bite tonight ? or What special something can we for dinner?…you get the idea.
So I quickly scanned the little articles (content not available online) and mashed it up with a google map. Let me know what you think and if I should add anything:
Alec’s Map of Cheap things to do, buy or eat in Toronto
You can subscribe to an RSS feed for updates if you find it useful.
Al
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Tags: cheap eats drinks toronto dim sum cashmere sweater manicure pedicure
iPhone vs. Bold
Well I’ve had many many friends and colleagues ask me what I think about these 2 devices. I did a lot of homework on both devices in order to formulate an opinion and in the end concluded that I’ll just both go out and buy both and experience them both first hand.
After about a month I’ve drawn some conclusions – know now that there isn’t a clear winner – it’s going to be a “it depends” answer.
So it comes down to your habits and your priorities. When I answer questions like this for clients I often use an analogy so why stop now? I think the experiences are best described through the analogy of a girlfriend.
The Bold: Perhaps you started dating her in the 90’s or perhaps you just hooked up recently; either way you should know that the Blackberry has gone through an evolution. From a chunky and somewhat awkward geek in high school to a very lean, athletic hotty today.
Moving along with our analogy, that smoking girlfriend you have today will never forget the gaucky, head-gear sporting Level 18 Elf with 15000 hit points she once was in the 90’s. She knows she’s hot now but will remember her roots as someone who wasn’t always hot and she’ll act accordingly. Her improvements will always be incremental and never epic. She will always be reliable and will first consider the right thing to do THEN the fun thing to. She might get loaded and crash once a month but the next morning she’ll reboot like it never happened and reach out to all her friends and let them know that she’s ok and ready to receive emails like it never happened. Also, she won’t have “conditions” to maintaining a relationship with you because she knows that after a few months of bad eating, forgoing her retainer at night and general loose living, she could slip back to being good ole simple Sally from 1998.
I was a Blackberry beta tester in the mid 90’s and I’ve had one of every model since then (along with Treos). They’ve made getting the job done a priority, then looking good as a nice-to-have historically. That being said the Bold is a beautiful device and it ties things together just a little bit nicer than the Curve. I won’t get into speeds and specs because I think that the average consumer shouldn’t care….so the screen is beautiful, the interface is prettier and the extras are all there. If you put it up against the iPhone all the features that should be on both devices are there.
The iPhone: You know when you’re playing pool and you sink a very sweet shot that you never intended on even trying; if you just walk around the table and play it cool like you always planned on doing it, you’ll look like a pro. Well that’s the effect the iPhone has on it’s user. Sure there are plenty of them out there but much like other Apple products, the user seems to somehow “be in the know” or “enlightened”. Let’s go back to our analogy.
The iPhone gets the job done and does it beautifully and elegantly. It’s got some missing features (depth) like cut ‘n paste and the ability to invite attendees to a meeting but you overlook them because she’s so damn hot. Both our girlfriends dance well, eat with nice manners, hold their own in conversation but it’s when you test them that the differences begin to show.
If it’s Friday afternoon in January and you’re stuck at Laguardia trying to get on a flight – you know that Sally will answer your call and do what she can to help you because she’s just that kind of girl. On the other hand, there’s a good chance that Irena (iPhone) will answer your call but she might not…she’s always been hot and she might choose this moment to do something else…because she can…and you might just have to suck it up. Or she might choose this moment to barf (crash), that’s how she stays so thin.
At the beginning of this post I talked about an “It Depends” answer. So, if you’re a road warrior and you want a device that will never fail you and a battery that will listen to you talk for hours – The Bold is your girl. If you’ve got an extensive library of media and accessing that is your priority, you’re willing to deal with the odd pouty tantrum and you like looking a little bit cooler then go with iPhone. The iPhone has a more productive developer network so you’ll have to wait for her to try on all kinds of ‘outfits’ until she finds the right one and you’ll just have to be patient – sometimes you’ll waste money on something she’ll never wear but when she gets it right – yowza! The Blackberry network of apps ain’t bad and given that you don’t have thousands of options you quickly realize that the app you get is pretty damn good anyway and probably close to what you were originally looking for anyway.
The Bold – Hot nerd with growing pains…
Versus
The iPhone - Always been hot and always will be - very reliable but she's got options
Tough call but know that you’ll be happy with either choice and likely never regret your decision. Both devices do the same things they just approach it differently.
Hope this helps.
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Tags: apple, blackberry, bold, comparison, hot nerd, iphone, iphone apps, jessica alba, pda, smartphone, tina fey
I received a recently cell phone bill for about $500 this week. 75% of the bill for data roaming charges came from when I was stuck in the airport for quite a few hours…pounding out emails, reading articles – some high volume activity but no heavy lifting like downloading a big file or anything like that.
I normally have a major issue with paying 9.95 for a few hours of wifi access but you’re snookered at an airport and can’t really pick up an unsecured network since there are no other businesses around.
But a significant amount of my time when i’m travelling is in the airport and I usually settle into a restaurant somewhere and start pounding out my todo’s. So I signed up for a month with Boingo and it didn’t seem to have an issue with multiple simultaneous logins (laptop and PDA). A year of Boing is $120 vs. $425 for 1 trip.
I’m going to get an account for my team and have them share a generic login when traveling instead of spending $2000 a month on 4 days of roaming.
a
So much less...
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Tags: airport, boingo, iphone, roaming, saavy traveler, travel, wifi
This is weird because I was thinking of this exact idea at Pearson International in Toronto this morning. I flew out of a beautiful modern Terminal in Toronto into a rather nice and more-than-I-expected airport in Minneapolis. I wrapped up my meetings and headed back to MSP to fly back home. It was mid-day and I wasn’t expecting any serious line-ups but they were a little heavier than anticipated. I was jockeying for position before the ropes started, trying to settle into a spot in line when my mind wandered back to this morning and the idea that was eddying in the back of my mind.
In the morning I was lined up behind a woman with a baby in a stroller at the security check point. I felt bad for her because it’s such a production to manage all that gear and get through the process without cranking up your anxiety level. I was simultaneously annoyed at her, for being poorly organized as well as the huffing business travelers behind me. I thought that they should have appropriate line ups for savvy travelers and for families that need more time…and perhaps a 3rd for people with lots eyelets in their boots and more than 9 piercings.
Back to the present: As I started moving down the line I was approached by a TSA agent and he asked, “Sir, how often do you travel?” How do I answer? Is there a bad answer? Will a specific answer result in a cavity search? —I took a deep breath and said – about once a week. He responded by saying that he thought so and shunted me to the “Expert Traveler” line! Oh Joy!
He pointed out the way finding signs behind him to explain the program. I told him that this was fantastic and promptly and efficiently headed down the expert path. This was home to me – I kicked my shoes off, pulled my laptop out, removed my coat (pockets full of metal), skillfully hung on to my boarding pass and quickly moved through the detector. My fellow experts were moving along quickly – so much so that it looked like an “I Love Lucy” episode at the security exit and the constantly moving conveyor kept pushing our belongings down the rollers without mercy.
At that point, the detector went off for a not-so-expert behind us and all of us, without remorse, mocked him fiercely. This was an even playing field and metal in your belt is unacceptable! My mind is racing with expert traveler scoring apps for Facebook – Ranking board Google widgets for different traveler levels – the list is endless.
It was really refreshing to see an institution like TSA that, over the last 5 years, has said you’ll do it this way because this is the way we do it now come up with an idea that fulfills on the wants of “customers” – segmentation even!
Sorry for the sub par photos but they didn’t like me taking snaps of the security area so I had to be quick.
Kudos MSP – I am now an advocate.
a
-
Finally, an airport that understands me for what I am - seasoned and impatient.
Even the image they use for the expert is self-righteous – look at her with her hands on her hips!
Filed under: Personal, business | 4 Comments
Tags: airport, msp, saavy traveler, tsa
Why Code 96?
First off, I’m a pretty opinionated individual so at the very least maintaining a blog gives me the opportunity to make my opinions known. If people find them interesting and happen to agree with them then great. If not then no harm done and you can move along I suppose.
With that out of the way – I like to tell stories – I like to infuse technology into my life where ever I can (much to my wife’s chagrin) and in order to do so I do quite a bit home work, trial & erroring and failing & regrouping; this will give me a place to store that work and hopefully others can benefit from it.
I like technology and gadgets and how they apply to business and personal life and plan to write about that frequently. I’m most often amused by human nature but recognize that I’m a cog in the machine too so it’s not in a self-righteous way. I just think we’re all inherently greedy, selfish, insecure and curious and how our behaviour maps to those four themes can be kind of interesting.
Some factoids (if you call these insights that’s annoying…these are just facts):
- Mechanical Engineering degree – never practiced though – but as a result I don’t look at the world and marvel. The universe is one big decision tree made up of squares and diamonds – there’s the odd magical moment here and there.
- I’m a husband and a father of 2 boys.
- I own a BMW M5 – was the car of my dreams and I feel like barfing every time I climb into it because it’s so inefficient.
- I try to run our household at 50% consumption of the average 4 person family – so far so good.
- I’ve worked in the Internet/interactive consulting/Interactive agency space since 1996.
- I’m not easily impressed but when I am I become obsessed with whatever has impressed me.
- I’m obsessive about topics and themes and then drop them and never really look back.
Why Code96?
A few years back I stepped out of the interactive consulting space to take a crack at traditional marketing. I was motivated to do this in an effort to gain a wider perspective on people’s relationships with brands, their behavior at retail and pathways to making decisions. A few months in the president of the agency I was at pulled me aside and said:
“I think you’re too trusting of our clients. I think this comes from your history in Interactive but this is traditional marketing and people don’t operate with the same level of honesty you do. You can’t tell a banking client that their customers really don’t like them. You can’t tell them that they’re engineered to kill innovation, no matter how polite or diplomatic you are.”
NB – I’m very diplomatic with messages like this – it’s never my goal to be mean or cruel. I’m just trying to help and if a CXO is surrounded by people just telling them the good news then they’re not doing them a service in any way. I would do this in closed door meetings and one on one…anyway, on with the story.
“So Alec, next time I see you going down this path I’ll incorporate the number 96 into the discussion and that will be our little secret code for you to dial back the honesty.”
So I said ok, went back to the office and began to build a strategy for re-entry into interactive. Code96 acts as a reminder to me why I love the interactive space. Yes there was a silly period in the industry around DotComs in the late 90’s to 2001 but despite that all of my colleagues came to this industry because they were drawn by a need to be part of something more honest, truthful and impactful.
I’ve been meaning to start this for quite some time so I’ve got a long list of topics I’d like to cover so come back soon, there should be more to follow soon.
al
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