Results tagged “futureshop”

It's amazing that no-one involved seems to think that this might be a bad idea: Future Shop is donating $50,000 each to make over the computer labs of two as-of-yet unnamed Toronto high schools that are within seven kilometres of a Future Shop store, in exchange for branding the labs with the company's colours. Future Shop has "some design element[s] that they would like to see common to all labs," notes the Globe. "The labs are to be painted a light grey with a red border, Future Shop's trademark colours. The possibility of naming the labs after the company has yet to be discussed." Great. It's not that Future Shop's philanthropy is in and of itself bad; it's more that it absolutely shouldn't be necessary to help schools grow, and that schools really shouldn't be accepting paid advertising, in any form.

Two nights ago, the Toronto Life Square Future Shop held their midnight launch event for Nintendo's latest desirable object, the Nintendo DSi. Those who don't keep obsessive tabs on the product cycles of videogaming platforms (and why wouldn't you?) might be confused at this point. Hasn't the Nintendo DS been out for like five years?

It's the Nintendo Wii's third holiday season, and it's still the must-have gift that's impossible to find. Torontoist contacted forty major retailers in the GTA, and they were all sold out—most of the stores we talked to didn't even know if they were getting more. "Nintendo arbitrarily sends them," explained one Best Buy employee at Sherway Gardens. "We never know if there are going to be some in the truck." Matt Ryan from Nintendo Canada told us that "Nintendo has no way of knowing what the ceiling is in regards to demand for our Wii product. We do however have more Wii units going into the marketplace during the holidays than we did last year." Nintendo may have increased supplies in North America by 50% this holiday season, but it's clearly been insufficient. If you're still looking for a Wii, the big retailers, like Best Buy, Future Shop, and Zellers, are your best bet, as those stores usually receive the largest shipments—but there's no guarantee that they'll be getting more.

MUSIC: The Edge 102.1's monthly new music showcase is on tonight at the Horseshoe Tavern. Tonight's line-up features upcoming Toronto indie bands Invasions, The Speakeasies, and The Rivals. The Horseshoe Tavern (370 Queen Street West), 8:30 p.m., FREE.

To those uninitiated to the ways of Next-Gen gaming, the huge lineups outside of the Yonge-Dundas square Future Shop and the Eaton Centre Best Buy could have seemed quite frightening. Are all these young, would-be hooligans planning a gigantic car heist of Gone in 60 Seconds proportions? Why are they eagerly talking about running people over, the Russian mafia, and a new targeting system that they simply can't wait to try out?

Oscar Peterson passes at 82. The great jazz musician was a Canadian hero and he did many amazing things, including spending the twilight of his career essentially playing jazz piano one-handed and doing it better than most people who had use of both their hands.

The new Future Shop at Dundas and Yonge opened Friday, and as shoppers entered they were warmly greeted...by a projection. "Aaron" scrolls through at least six messages, which include guessing you're a Scorpio and asking if your bag is big enough. On Saturday afternoon, customers seemed to ignore the greeter avatar while heading into the store. Here's hoping Future Shop gets the hint. If you need more of Aaron, you can also find him...

Developers RioCan bought the parking lot at the corner of Queen Street West and Portland back in 2005. Immediately, rumours started to circulate that a big box store, like Home Depot, was going to be built at the site. At the time, The Globe and Mail reported that RioCan planned to start building in 2007. Which is now. So what's happening with the project?

Former U.S. President Gerald Ford dead at 93. Not really much to say here: he was by all accounts an extremely decent man who served honorably. (Unless you are of the belief that all politicians are by their very nature forked-tongue devils, which is not the most uncommon belief out there.) I suppose Chevy Chase has one less go-to joke in his arsenal, though, which makes this an extremely sad day for Chevy Chase.

If you are one of the rare few who has not discovered Craigslist - the eBay to our 1998 - then head over to the site and discover what gets sold when there's no listing fee or bidding. Sure, there's plenty of great stuff to be had (there's no better place to search for an apartment), but be sure not to miss the other stuff your fellow Torontonians are getting rid of:

Just about one year after the last major Toronto (areaish) concert, Richard Branson announced that the Toronto Islands will host the Virgin Festival over a weekend in early September. This is the first time the Virgin Festival crosses the pond outside the UK. Note that this is the first time that Centre Island will be closed to the public.

To many, blogging is the epitome of nerd-like behaviour. A person willfully sits in front of a computer screen for hours, playing around with RSS feeds, HTML formatting, linking and Halo scan commenting. Did we mention blog-rolling? Nerdish to the max. However there does exists a more extreme case of nerdocious behaviour, and it was on full display this morning/last night around the Blockbuster/Future Shop/tech stores of the city. Sony PSP's hit retail stores today at 12:01 a.m., greeted by long lines of you-know-who's. There was even a PSP release party at the Blockbuster on Avenue Road (rumor has it the Vanilla Pepsi was flowing!). Other game related nerd stuff is that PokerRoom.com cashes with real-money Texas Hold'Em set up for mobile phone use.