Author Archive

Tom’s Best of 2012 Indie Mix

I’ve been sitting on this one for too long. Well not so much sitting, as bopping in my chair. The dog’s been looking at me funny. You will be too. I mean the bopping, more than the looking funny. You are beautiful. I swear. So much good music this year. And I just have to [...]

Gluten-free, Spicy Dark & Stormy Oatmeal Cookies

First I hired a gastroenterologist to help figure it out. This disagreement I was having. His name was Dr Man, very nice guy. Though secretly I wished his name was Magnum. Then I could say that Magnum GI was on the case. It at last came to this because my own belly and I of [...]

Toronto: Get Wired, Get Hydrated, Get Your Robot On

Some of my dearest Toronto friends Leila Boujnane and the crew at Mozilla Toronto are putting on an event combining two of all of our favourite things: robots and hackathons. I wish I could go! But alas the west coast is a little out of the way. So I need your help to help me [...]

What’s In My Backpack

A snapshot in time of my current glass pancake stack. One iPad 1st gen, one iPhone 4th gen for iOs demos and prototyping. One Android tablet (Nexus 7) and phone (HTC One X) for demos and prototyping. One old Samsung Infuse Android work phone I hadn’t got rid of yet. Now I’m using the HTC. [...]

I’ve just about had it with QR codes

I dunno why I’m talking about airplanes again. But I thought it’s funny. Though they’ve been around forever, and sortof indifferently hyped by airlines for years, I’ve never got around to trying to one of those mobile/QR/paperless boarding passes. Until today that is. Ya that was a error. Imagine your typical looong line at the [...]

How to get upgraded on Air Canada

It’s that time again. The last few days of February. The season where Canada’s favourite national airline rewards its loyal fliers by deleting all their accumulated upgrade points. Use them or lose them. So here’s my guide to burning those AC e-upgrades anytime or especially timely this time of year. Step 1: Collect air Canada [...]

Tom’s Best of 2011 Music Mix!

It’s back! Thomaspurves.com’s traditional regularly irregular mix of awesome and slightly irregular music. Basically here’s a track from all the bands that kept my earbuds spinning this long year. As usual the list is autobiographical more than canonical. I’m never one to color perfectly amongst the lines. It’s already a few days past 2011 and [...]

Book Review: the Impulse Economy

Nevermind the hype, the ongoing explosion of mobile could either be the best or worst thing to hit ordinary retail business since the internet. Imagine you are in the business of selling things at retail. What does it mean when you see your customers predaciously roaming the aisles armed with smartphones and suddenly better informed [...]

Gone West: Heading to San Francisco

Probably time I should mention this. In a few short days I’ll be heading west. For a longer trip this time. This October I start a newer, bigger gig with Visa Inc. at the head office in San Francisco. I’m pretty excited about the big move. Of course, lots of daunting little details still left [...]

Circle overload and the trouble with Google+

Google+ is about 1 week old and people are already posting stuff like “G+ for noobies guides“. I, for some reason, find this hilarious. On the other hand, I’m already starting to struggle with this wünder-socialnet myself. The big problem right now is friend management. Google has this concept of circles. It’s based on this [...]

DemoCamp Toronto 29 WrapUp

Cross posted from StartupNorth.ca Last night marked amazingly the 29th event of Toronto’s increasingly supernumerative DemoCamp scene. To warm up the crowd we had a little help from legendary Canadian investor and the man with a few more twitter followers than you, @howardlindzon. In case you didn’t make it, here’s my notes for you, of [...]

Is this the future look of augmented reality?

I have this vision of nerds everywhere staggering around the city with big slates in front of their faces only seeing the world through shared web tablet camera experiences. I’m guilty of looking something like this in public myself, even hoisting a tablet onto my shoulder boombox-style to make skype calls. And that’s a part [...]

ANNOUNCING: PowerPoint Karaoke Toronto 3

It’s back! Once again, to close out Social Media Week Toronto, we are going to be hosting a rocking session of PowerPoint Karaoke. The rules of Powerpoint Karaoke are simple. A set of presenters and local social media luminaries will be asked to play the role of an earnest expert speaker on classic topics like [...]

Tom’s Best of 2010 indie music mix

This is what happens I fail to publish my “seasonal” podcast mix, the list I keep in iTunes just gets longer and longer. With a little time over the holidays and the clock on 2010 having officially run out… I present you with Tom’s best of (mostly) indie 2010 mix. As usual the list makes [...]

Pizza Libretto as transformative mobile business model

Pizza Libretto doesn’t take reservations. What they do do is make some of the most delicious Neopolitan style pizza in the city. Libretto finds themselves smack in the middle of the (for the moment) uber-trendy Ossington strip of hipster bars, restaurants and galleries in the west end of downtown Toronto. As a result, demand for [...]

Visa Debit rolls out in Canada

This is a project I’ve been working on and involved with in one capacity or another for a long time, including building the first business case and running the product development for CIBC as far back as 2005. More on the launch of Visa Debit in Canada: Toronto Star: CIBC rolls out Canada’s first Visa-branded [...]

Kodak update: when all else fails, sue the iceberg

A lovely visualization by Design language that’s been making rounds connects a couple dots from recent posts on this blog. Somewhat randomly, I had been musing both about how Kodak had the foresight to invent a “consumer” digital camera 35 frickin’ years ago and yet how did the whole camera industry completely miss the boat [...]

The dawn of mobile in retail

One big idea I’ve been focused on a fair bit lately is what I call “Augmented Retail”. Augmented retail is about the potentially disruptive outcome of the inevitable convergence of mobile technology, ubiquitous connectivity and retail. Mobile technology is not necessarily good news for your average retailer. I’m sure by now almost all of you [...]

 

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