Press Record.

Sat Shout Out Out Out 9pm at Lee's /:\ Sun TV On the Radio 8pm at Kool Haus

Shout out out out out = two drummers + four bass players + two samplers + five synthesizers + one vocoder volatile dance music.

TV on the Radio is a New York City avant-garde indie rock band formed in 2001 whose music spans genres as diverse as free jazz, a cappella/doo-wop, trip-hop and electro. The group has released several EPs including their debut Young Liars (2003), and two acclaimed albums. Their most recent, Return to Cookie Mountain (2006), received wider notice and appeared at the top of several end-of-year lists.

"The Composer is Dead" featuring Lemony Snicket
Special Performance
Sat. Mar. 3, 2007 at 2:00 pm / 7PM
$12 through Tsoundcheck
This one's only for those of you 29 and under. Booya for late birthdays.

WARNING: DO NOT READ!
This press release is very unpleasant

We warned you, but if you insist … This press release is about the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's presentation of an alarming musical collaboration between Lemony Snicket - one of the most popular children's authors of our time - and a preposterously talented composer named Nathaniel Stookey.
It includes children, big words, and murder.
"Evidence suggests that the Canadian premiere of THE COMPOSER IS DEAD, by San Francisco composer Nathaniel Stookey with story and narration by elusive best-selling author Lemony Snicket, will take place at Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 2pm and again, if you are fortunate, at 7pm. Tickets will go on sale Monday, December 4 at 9am.
Commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, which gave its world premiere in July 2006, THE COMPOSER IS DEAD is a stunning addition to the TSO's third annual New Creations Festival. It is a collective effort (an expression which here means "conspiracy") by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Lemony Snicket, and Nathaniel Stookey to introduce new music to young audiences in an accessible and entertaining way. A gleefully original work that turns the tradition of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf on its head, THE COMPOSER IS DEAD uses a gripping murder mystery to trick unsuspecting audience members into listening closely to the inner workings of the orchestra.
TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian will conduct the wretched winds, bothersome brass, pesky percussion, and slippery strings with live narration by Mr. Snicket himself. The performance is expected to leave those in attendance weeping uncontrollably, hopefully with joy.
The elusive Lemony Snicket, also known as Daniel Handler, is the author of the New York Times best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events. Though Mr. Snicket's investigations generally prevent him from such public engagements, he has made a remarkable exception in this case due to his affection for the composer, the CN Tower, or neither.
THE TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Lemony Snicket, narrator
Nathaniel Stookey, composer/host

Nathan Phillips Square Design Competition

		On-Line Exhibition of Four Finalists' Design Submissions Selected images from each of the four finalists' submissions for Stage II of the Nathan Phillips Square Design Competition are available for viewing at the On-Line Exhibition. A public exhibition of the submissions and design models is also on display in the Rotunda of Toronto City Hall, opening on February 20th, 2007 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and continuing from February 21-26th, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Public Comment Card Members of the public are invited to submit their views on the design proposals by filling in a public comment card that is available on the website or in the City Hall Rotunda. Comments must be received no later than February 26th, 2007. The Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization Public Advisory Group will forward a summary of public comments to the Competition Jury that will be meeting to select the winning design proposal. On-Line Exhibition Select the links below to view images and brief descriptions of the final design proposals submitted by the four short-listed design teams: Baird Sampson Neuert Architects Plant Architect Inc. Rogers Marvel Architects Zeidler Partnership Architects

Feist

Massey Hall, Toronto, ON
Fri, May 25, 2007 08:00 PM

on sale: Sat 03/03/07 12:00 PM

Also Tokyo Police Club sold out their second show for April 4 and 11.

AND Toots and the Maytals go on sale Sat for thier March25 show at teh Phoenix. (Yes you know them, yes they're awesome)

Can this be right? Lets say worlds population = 6.6 Billion

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are 190 million main telephone lines in the United States as of 2002.

The average telephone line is used primarily for local calling and is used over an hour per day for all types of calls (faxes, modems, etc.)

There are 1.1 billion main telephone lines in the world as of 2002, according to the ITU

Interesting, now chech this out...
http://nyanyan.to/skype/7d_chart.php (no idea how accurate)

Last 7 day Active Skype user count: almost 9 MILLION
Downloads of Skype in the last 7 days: 503 MILLION

Great news from the Joost Content Team.

Today we're announcing a majorpartnership with Viacom. Which will bring programming and lots ofchannels from Viacom's key brands and properties available on Joost on our imminent launch.
MTV will offer popular shows, both past and present, including LagunaBeach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World, Punk'd and My Super Sweet Sixteen, while COMEDY CENTRAL will feature episodes from Stella, CCP's and FreakShow.

Nickelodeon, CMT: Country Music Television, MTV2, Logo, Spike TV, mtvU, and Gametrailers.com will also provide content.

VH1's offeringswill include episodes of Flavor of Love, Surreal Life, and I Love NewYork.
BET's Networks' offerings will include some of its biggest shows,including Beef, DMX: Soul of a Man, Comic View and recent smash hitAmerican Gangster.

Also, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics will be providing full-length feature films from its catalog of classics and recent releases.

This content isn't available yet. We're working hard on shipping, transcoding and feeding the P2P network (and no, despite malicious gossip to the contrary - engineering is not giving Star Trek or Ren&Stimpy top priority) it will all be there for our launch.
Stay tuned!
Dw. -- Dirk-Willem van Gulik, CTO, Joost.
[via Joost newsletter]

Why the hell aren't these shows on sale anywhere?
Amon is playing the following night at the Gramercy.
Anyone up for another trek to the NYC?

Fink (Live)/
Saturday March 10
Sneaky Dees, Toronto




Amon Tobin
Friday April 27th
Opera House, Toronto
Tickets:$21.50

Well ain't this a kick in the junk. I bought tickets for a Friday night show, and now I have sunday night tickets. Thanks to REMG for not giving original ticket holders access to the Saturday night shows.

AMY WINEHOUSE
saturday may 12, 2007
mod club theatre
19+doors 630pm::show 730pm
tickets on-sale thursday february 22, 2007

Sunday may 13, 2007
doors 830pm::show 930pm
SOLD OUT
___

February 16, 2007 Video killed the Television star? Hardly! When The Gilmore Girls take over your TV, all hope is not lost. [The WB] Jay, a.k.a. “The Cubicle Superhero”, is a self-professed tech junkie with a passion for music and culture Email Jay If you've been reading Tech Mates on a regular basis you know that for the past few articles I've kept things pretty educational. Today is different. Today I have a story to tell you. It's about a very important member of my family. My television. Don't laugh, because let's face it; most of us have a personal relationship with the tube. Recently I discovered the Television Listings module on my personalized Rogers Yahoo! Home. These listings have helped my relationship with my TV flourish, providing me with quick scheduling info on all my favorite shows allowing me to optimize my quality TV time. Prime-time bliss. TV Stevie would be proud. These TV listings are so easy to use that I came home after fighting traffic in the snow for two hours to find that my girlfriend had discovered a Gilmore Girls Marathon (and she was only in hour two!). Not exactly my kind of show and although my Rogers PVR was recording the shows I was missing, I needed a TV fix fast. Retreating from Lorelai's nattering, I immediately thought of my old friend the computer. DVDs look fantastic on my LCD computer screen, so why couldn't I watch TV on it too? Faster the better With video graphics and computer processor speeds advancing by leaps and bounds every year, Internet speeds have pretty much been playing catch up over the last few years. The technical truth is video is still an overfed kitty trying to squeeze through a mouse hole. Moving pictures and Hi-fi audio requires a huge amount of bandwidth to deliver the same experience you see on a TV screen. There are some very clever ways of compressing that data down to optimize the process. But the honest truth is if you're running a slower connection you may need to let that Transformers trailer (OK, OK, Dreamgirls trailer) buffer a bit before you watch it. A Series of Tubes I see video on the Internet as falling into a few basic genres: 1) High production value music videos, movie trailers and TV clips; 2) User-generated (or community) video; and 3) Recording or broadcast for self consumption, so-called "place shifting". In the interest of clarity, I'll cover each from a high level. Email me [Include MailTo link] if you'd like to see a more in depth follow-up piece on Tech Mates. I can't wait to watch the trailer for Transformers [DreamWorks SKG] Music, Trailers and Clips In the early days of the Internet watching and downloading film trailers was a frustrating experience, long wait times often only yielded postage stamp sized video. This has, for the most part, been improved by introducing integrated video players. Jerky start and stops still do occur on occasion, but pausing the video to allow the next bit of the clip to download generally smooths these issues out. A great place to start for movie trailers is Rogers Yahoo! Movies and for news and entertainment clips, click the Video link under the "More" button on your home page. The CBC and PBS have been at the forefront of the web video movement, they're worth a visit as well. The BBC also recently announced that they will be slowly releasing their video and audio archives to the net. Virals cause YouTube fever Although we're free and clear of SARS, you can't escape the growing popularity of "viral" video on the Internet. The term refers to the quick spreading popularity of clips by email, Instant Messaging or via blog posts. Most of these videos are hosted on community based video sites like YouTube or Yahoo! Video, where users can post short video clips for others to search, read and share. You can track the number of views each video gets, so when something takes off you'll know instantly! The Dancing Baby was one of the original viral videos! [Burning Pixel.com] I am Where I Am The most exciting addition to the consumer television marketplace in recent years is the concept of place shifting. Place shifting loosely defined is the ability to call up your home cable signal on your laptop or Portable Internet connection using devices or hardware to capture the video. First out of the gate with this is the expensive, yet elegant, Sony Location Free TV. The device allows you to control and change channels on a small touch screen LCD TV you can take with you on the road. Their newest offering now includes a software component, similar to Sling Media's SlingPlayer. For about $100 it allows you to view your Slingbox stream on a laptop. Sling Media has also released player versions for portable devices like Pocket PCs. Orb Networks has an interesting piece of software that allows you to stream the media you have already have on a base computer, out to your mobile devices. So, the next time you face the dreaded occupied TV set, fret not my friends, there are oodles of choices waiting for you on the web. Until next time, this is the Cubicle Superhero saying, "Don't sit so close, or you'll go blind!"

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http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2007/02/dance_dance_zom.php

Zombie Dance Dance Revolution

"Thriller" is having a moment. Last October, we reported the story of Thrill Toronto’s attempt to set the first Guinness World Record for Largest Thriller Dance (see the video at right) by recreating the choreography from Micheal Jackson's video classic. Then there was the much blogged Thriller Wedding Dance on YouTube, a Bollywood-style version and reports from London and New York of fitness classes that use M.J.'s zombified moves as a 13 minute workout.
Now the ghoul kids from Thrill Toronto are back with plans to Thrill the World. The plan is to stage a simultaneous dance of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" with thousands of dancers in over 100 cities on October 27, 2007. "Everyone asks why 'Thriller,' " says choreographer Ines Markeljevic, the driving force behind Thrill The World. “But everybody knows it and it’s very easy to learn." And the main purpose for the event is, simply, to get more people dancing.
While the Thrill Toronto's record for Largest Thriller Dance is still unofficial at 65 dancers (most of whom where untrained), the group now hopes to set another record of largest Worldwide Simultaneous Dance. To get all ready-undeady for the event, the group is holding a Thriller Night this Thursday at Footwork Bar (425 Adelaide St. W). The doors open at 9pm. At 10:30pm Markeljevic will teach a section of the dance and at midnight there will be a performance. “You don’t have to dress like a zombie,” she says, “But you can if you want.”
Seriously, what better way to make two childhood fantasies (being in a video and in the Guinness Book of World Records) come alive?

From the Torontoist

A few posts ago I was discussing solutions for mobile phone long distance.
For a lot of us, the celly is our only phone. The Bell Canada sign up and monthly service fees don't really make sense just for the convenience of having another phone number.
As an avid VoIP geek (having worked with Orbit, Canada's 1st National VoIP service) I would be amiss not to mention the very slick http://didww.com/, http://freeworddialup.com/ and of course Skype and Gizmo Project. Combining these services

For about a year and a half or so, I've been using the services of Unlimitel.ca and registering this using Xten's X-Lite soft phone on the road, and at home, using a Sipura SPA-1001. This device lets me register 2 lines across 2 services. One port I have on Unlimitel, and the other signed on to Pulver's FreeWorld Dialup. This gives me a geographically local SIP VoIP service provider with responsive support from Mr. Monette and free monitoring tools. Pre-paid ($50 pre-paid) costs, depending on destination, between 1.1 and 4 cents per minute. I have no complaints.

I've began playing with Skype much more since last year's road show madness. The free PC to phone calling (now expired) and super simple setup and reliable operation hooked me almost imediately. The fullscreen videocalls were handy calling back to the office.
I've sourced a solution that uses Skype as it's backbone, and offers the same flexibility as my home setup. The call quality may not always be 100% but the technical simplicity makes it a lot more attractive to new users.

Using DIDww.com I signed up for 6 months of inbound calling through a local Toronto phone number at $35. Last December, Skype had a promotion running for one year's worth of North American outbound calling for $14.95. The Skype-out unlimited calling package is now $29US.

Within the DIDww setup, you have the option of using "hunt groups" to roll your call to alternate numbers after specified timeouts. I chose to roll to a Gizmo Project account, I never have on. That trips the voice mail and messages are delivered to the email address stored in my profile.
These prices are USD so thats about $100CDN for one years unlimited incoming and outgoing calling. If you want to keep things simple, the Skype plan includes $2.50 of free international calling. You can also use this deposit to forward calls by setting the number in the software client. Roll that to a cellphone and you can field those important telemarketing calls anywhere.

I'll clean this post up after I get some rest, and add a review of the Vtech USB Skype phone that makes this all work.
For you Yahoo Messenger users, theres a few versions for you too.