At the end of December, Bell Canada—Canada’s largest Internet service provider—quietly announced that it would be doing away with its current, long-criticized, peer-to-peer traffic shaping practices as of March 2012. Most of us, whether we know it or not, are well-acquainted with P2P network communication–basically, any exchange that enables data sharing between hardware and software [...]

Let’s play a little hypothetical game here. Imagine a sunny Friday morning in Toronto, strolling down Adelaide, maybe whistling a jaunty tune, then being stopped on the corner by officers with firearms and tactical gear. Your singing is suspicious, they less-than-tacitly suggest, and they want to see your identification. For your safety, you know. The [...]

Toronto startup 500px is hiring. The website, which showcases high-end photography, has over 200,000 members, a tripling over three months, and co-founders Evgeny Sobolev and Oleg Gutsol expect to reach half a million before 2012. The allure of 500px stems from two main differences compared to other photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr: first, 500px has a cleaner, more elegant design to highlight the photography; second, the site curates the photography—with selections made by both users and the site’s editors—to ensure quality and reduce clutter. “What we’re focusing on are the really high-end artistic photography,” says Sobolev. “Photographers will post hundreds of photos on Flickr and then choose the top ten to post on 500px.”

It was an evil January night when I got the news that internet prices were about to go way, way up. Many years ago the Big Telecom providers like Bell and Rogers had imposed brutal, expensive usage rate caps into their internet service plans. Now the CRTC had passed a ruling allowing them to impose these usage-based billing (UBB) caps onto independent ISPs across the country.

Last week, while the rest of Toronto was focused on Pride, a free Arkells concert, and the Hot Docs acquisition of Bloor Cinema, Internet Archive Canada was laying off 75 per cent of its employees. On Wednesday July 6, all employees participated in an organization-wide conference call where they were told that due to drastic funding cuts, the layoffs were unavoidable. On Thursday, the company sent out the list of affected staff: out of the 47 employees working, 33 will be laid off effective August 12.

mesh organizer Stuart McDonald revs up the crowd. The sixth edition of mesh, “Canada’s web conference,” wrapped up yesterday evening after two days and more than 20 sessions tackling the web and the ways it is changing how we live. The conference spanned four themes—society, media, marketing, and business—and explored issues such as the evolution [...]

Excerpt from a letter from Rogers to the CRTC, dated March 22, 2011. With the outcome of the CRTC’s deliberations over usage-based billing still uncertain, it can sometimes seem as though the large companies that provide Canada with internet access aren’t accountable to consumers. But that isn’t necessarily true. Here’s how two strangers, working independently, [...]

Photo by marc falardeau from the Torontoist Flickr pool. Pat yourselves on the back, Canadians. Enjoy the victory—a great one, for sure—but don’t get complacent. This isn’t over yet. That was the message OpenMedia.ca was trying to get across this morning. The victory, for anyone currently living under a rock, is in the fight against [...]

Since the summer of 2010, Toronto’s political discourse has remained cranked at eleven. And while our new mayor isn’t completely to blame, he’s lit more than his share of fires. But just what kind of impact is this new climate having on Toronto’s online presence? To answer this tough question, we consulted the most important [...]

Glad Hand is Torontoist’s political cartoon, created by Brett Lamb and appearing here every Friday.

While it may seem a tad cliché to take a few whacks at Bell and Rogers, Canada’s foremost internet service providers, this year they deserve our scorn more than ever for one clear reason: bandwidth caps.