Wizard needs weekend plans, badly. Clever wizards know that the place to be this Friday and Saturday (June 27-28, 12–5 p.m.) is Evolution: 30 Years of Computer Games at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre (9 Ossington Avenue). 20 PC games are on display and available for play on their original consoles, showing how gaming technology has evolved since 1978. The games and PCs are on loan from the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Ontario,......

The third annual Toronto Independent Game Development Jam ran from the 9th to the 11th of May this year with over 125 developers managing to produce 34 different games across the intense three day period, and their pain is now our pleasure as all of the successfully completed games have been released online. As if trying to produce a full game in three days wasn't hard enough, developers were asked that their game relate......

Today’s release on Xbox Live Arcade is Trigger Heart Exelica, an originally Japan-only Dreamcast "bullet hell" vertically scrolling shooter, and if that sentence doesn’t make any sense to you whatsoever, that’s totally fine. You see, we’re actually here to mention last week’s Xbox Live Arcade release, N+. It's based on N, the freeware game sensation developed by Toronto independent game developers Metanet Software, but the main difference is that you have to own a......

Some Canadian cattle will now be allowed into the United States following a 4-year ban in the wake of several cases of "mad cow" disease. American Homeland Security regulations will still require that any bovines wishing to cross the border carry a valid passport. The latest UN report on climate change says that global disaster is a safe bet if we don't change our carbon-emitting ways by 2012. It's all good for Canadians though, as......

Microsoft has agreed to buy 1.6% of Facebook for $240,000,000, giving the social networking site a valuation of around $15 billion. The deal is good for both parties, with Bill Gates finally hanging out with the cool kids, and 23-year-old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg getting to throw an awesome kegger. John Tory has officially backed away from the faith-based schools funding issue that may have cost him the provincial election. Seems kind of silly......

"Honest Ed" Mirvish dies at 92. As the man himself would say: He may be gone, but his bargains sure aren't. Torontoist's obituary for him can be found here. Details on the funeral are here. Toronto police board still making up its mind about whether or not to approve Tasers. Insert bad joke about "shocking" here if you want to pretend that you are actually listening to Humble and Fred rather than reading Torontoist. New......

Toronto's overwhelming reception of Al Gore yesterday prompted David Miller to toughen his stance on climate change. Mayor Miller promised an aggressive change in policy on pollution, transit and construction, which will be formally proposed in late March. The Ontario government may have come up with a way around the new U.S.-Canada passport rules. A new super-secure driver's license is in talks, which would feature "laser engraving, holograms, currency-like print quality and other security measures......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! The appropriation of corporate logos appears to be a popular activity here in Toronto. It was only two days ago that we wrote about a rash of manipulations made to Microsoft Vista ads. Today, the famous Scotiabank world logo......

Try as you might, you can't look anywhere in our city without seeing some sort of ad for Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista. Alongside an unusually aggressive advertising campaign through more traditional methods, the company also went all out and paid for an elaborate ice house in Dundas Square. As the corporation should have expected, the backlash towards the over-the-top promotion began almost right away: there were the obvious jokes about "freezing"; impromptu......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

You'd never notice from its squat, generic appearance, but just north of Eglinton on Leslie Street sits the headquarters of one of the world's most luxurious hotel chains. Started in 1960 by Ryerson architecture grad Isadore "Issy" Sharp, Four Seasons Hotels now operates 73 hotels in 31 countries. With more than 25 other properties currently being developed, the Toronto-based chain has attracted the eye of two of the world's richest men. This week, the......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! Here lie the abandoned frozen remains of the Microsoft's promotional Vista and Office ice house. Where, you ask? That's right -- dumped under Toronto's very own Gardiner Expressway. Toronto photographer Cliph discovered the cast-off remains by accident while out......

Microsoft's brilliant marketing installation, an 1800sqft ice house in Dundas Square, tells you precisely what will happen when you install Vista: your computer will freeze. Perhaps the Redmond, Washington-based software company believed Canadians, who all live in igloos, would feel right at home in their icy digs. We kid, but when three University of Toronto students saw the house that Gates built, they immediately thought "house party". SSRI and N3554 of Überave, known for......

Cory Doctorow, editor of BoingBoing, author of many books (including Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town), and former Torontonian, will be in his hometown and our fair city on Thursday February First, promoting his new collection of short stories Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. The event will be at 7pm at Bakka Books (697 Queen Street West), the world’s oldest science fiction bookstore. Cory started......

So, about that giant ice house that Microsoft put up in Dundas Square: apparently 270,000 pounds of ice went into the construction of the 1,800 square foot structure, which includes a fully sculpted kitchen, dining room, study, living room, two bedrooms and bathroom all wired-up with televisions and computers (real, as opposed to of the ice variety) running demos of Vista and Office 2007. It's lucky that the weather has finally decided to act......

Microsoft put up an ice house in Dundas Square yesterday to promote the launch of Windows Vista. WARNING: Only click through to the article if you have never read a "tee hee I don't know shit about computers but I sure like to play Minesweeper, does Windows Vista have Minesweeper on it?" type of article and are interested in a fresh experience, complete with - yes - a reference to HAL from 2001: A......

On Tuesday, the American -ists will be celebrating democracy and hitting the polls, letting politicians know what they really think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for? Londonist votes for better skincare, alternative spaces for art, cute little birds and the men who keep them, and concrete. Lots of concrete. Shanghaiist votes for one of the Bee Gees and Air Supply (it's a double-ticket),......

Microsoft has recently announced its alliance with The University of Toronto for it's Live Book Search utility (which is not live yet.) The University will turn over digital copies of their collection to be legally placed online, "readily accessible to customers." This is an interesting and bold step for The University of Toronto who does not seem to promote free access to information. Torontoist wonders if you will be required to show your student......

Cast Iron, a one-woman show about an elderly Barbados-born woman in a Winnipeg nursing home reliving her early life, opened last night at the Tarragon Extra Space. One of the noteworthy things about Lisa Codrington’s first play, produced by Nightwood Theatre in association with Obsidian theatre company, is that it is written and performed in the Bajan dialect. [You can see what it looks like written in this Eye article.] Don't let that scare you......