We are delighted to announce the Public Beta release of 5 Blocks Out! This officially wraps up our “limited preview” phase during which hundreds of friends and family members helped us test and improve the site. 5 Blocks Out is now open for everyone to use. Hooray!

For those of you who are new, 5 Blocks Out makes it fun and easy for friends, neighbours, and parents to share helpful tips on local living. If you spend time in Toronto and love neighbourhoods, enjoy walking and biking to local stuff, have kids, or like supporting green and locally owned businesses, then 5 Blocks Out has something for you. Check it out here and see the tour to learn more.

For those of you who are not new, you can now do things you couldn’t do before. You can use the site without signing in, though of course it’s much more fun and helpful if you’re logged in. Over the last few months we’ve also added the Explore page, which shows an overview of what’s going on site-wide, the Bird Nest, which offers community-authored tips for parents with young kids, and hundreds of other improvements to the neighbourhood pages, destination pages, missions, and member profiles. We’ve been busy.

We currently support core metro area neighbourhoods in Toronto (see map). We live here, we love this city, and we think it’s a great place to start. We’ll expand to new geographies over time, based on feedback.

There’s more to come, of course. “Beta” means “work in progress”, and we have a long list of things to improve. Your feedback will help us prioritize what to do next.

A huge thank you to all of the 5 Blocks Out Insiders who’ve helped us learn and grow. Your feedback, encouragement, and inspiration has been vital, and we very much appreciate your help.

Game on!

Katrin and Osh

A big thanks to everyone who helped us prepare for the demo, and to all who signed up afterwards and shared such great feedback and suggestions.

Onwards!

It should be a good opportunity to show what we’ve done so far on 5 Blocks Out, and to get feedback and engagement from a broader set of folks in Toronto’s tech community.

If seeing interesting slices of  Toronto’s tech activity sounds good to you, check out DemoCamp, and in a similar vein and spirit, Ignite Toronto.

It’s geared at parents with young kids. The newsletter will explore local places, resources and tips to make parenting even more enjoyable.

Check out the first issue here. And subscribe to the Bird Nest Press here. We plan to publish every 3 – 4 weeks.

The first issue has a very useful presentation on H1N1 vaccinations. Forwarding it to new moms will be appreciated…believe you me.

Toronto Open Data kicked off in earnest yesterday and today at the Toronto Innovation Showcase event. I attended the Open Data Lab on day 1, and took part in a panel discussion hosted by Mark Kuznicki with David Crow, Jay Goldman, and Greg Wilson on day 2 (today). It was a lot of fun, and the buzz and positive energy was palpable. See the Twitter backchannels here and here. I was particularly inspired to meet so many smart and can-do city employees.

If you’d like to get involved in requesting and using open data related to the city, check out DataTO.org, where you can put your wish lists. I put ours (place name location data) on the site, so go vote for it now!

The panel webcast will be archived at some point on toronto.ca/toshowcase, so check back there if you’re interested.

Recently I walked along Bloor Street east of Symington and took in the paintings adorning this railway bridge underpass. The walls were painted by local artist Richard Mongiat as part of a project sponsored by the City of Toronto. The north wall portrays summer nature scenes and the south side shows winter scenes. I find this project really beautiful and the context particularly interesting. The industrial qualities of the concrete and rusty bridge provide a lovely contrast to these serene images.

If you haven’t checked out the West Toronto Rail Path, you should – it’s fantastic.  It’s a beautiful tree lined urban path that runs from Dundas and Lansdowne all the way up to Dupont Avenue. It’s great for a walk or an outing on the bike.  It also makes a wonderful north-south commute route for some lucky cyclists who ride to work.

Originally the path was going to connect with the waterfront, which would have made it even more useful for commuting.  Now that the polluting diesel trains are a ‘go’ there is apparently a shortage of land to finish this plan.  It would be a pity if it didn’t get to expand to its full potential; these types of paths tie the city together in a wonderful way and allow those of us on bikes to have a safe and relaxing trip from one neighbourhood to the next.

This is one of my favourite graffiti walls in Toronto. It is done by none other than Elicser.  I could spend days looking at all the intricate details and forming a storyline around these images.  You can see them live in the alley south of Queen Street West, West of Bathurst Street.

Check it out when you’re in the area.

One of the many interesting people we met through the Roncesvalles street festival is Matt Greenwood, the local artist behind http://takepicturedontsteal.com.  Take picture don’t steal features a collection of photos taken randomly by people around the city that come across a disposable camera on their path. Attached to the camera is note that says ‘take picture don’t steal’. The result is a set of images that are a very honest depiction of people in their element. Matt describes: ” The main thing that comes across is how natural people are in the photos because they are often with their friends and loved ones. …Toronto is an interesting city for this project because of it’s diversity & distinct neighbourhoods. I like the idea of making a portrait of the city.”

Check out the website.  If you come across one of Matt’s cameras you’ll have the chance to contribute to his evolving portrait of the city.

See also my notes below from a mini-interview with Matt.

- – -
1) What motivated you to do this project?

I had an old disposable camera sitting around & wanted to do something cool with it.
I saw this youtube video last year – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWQR36dW0GA

and found it interesting how people react when faced with a camera, but no cameraman.
I also wanted to do something local about Toronto because it’s a small enough city that people can feel a strong connection with the different areas.

2) Are you from Toronto? If not, have you done this in your home town? How is Toronto different?

No, I’m from England but live here now. My brother still lives in the UK and agreed to put up a camera in a park in Birmingham.
Its hanging up there now..hopefully it survives!

I’ve got a few cameras out in various countries around the world through friends who are traveling/living abroad.
Today I dispatched a camera to NORTH BAY, Ontario. I have no idea what goes on there.

Toronto is an interesting city for this project because of it’s diversity & distinct neighbourhoods. I like the idea of making a portrait of the city.

3) Do you see any interesting trends in the photos?

The main thing that comes across is how natural people are in the photos because they are often with their friends and loved ones.
Plus the fact that it’s a cheap disposable camera helps. If they had to go into a booth with a digital HAL lens staring at them, people wouldn’t be nearly as candid. I tried to get the cheapest, crappiest looking cameras I could find.

I sometimes hang around in the background after I put up the camera just to see how people react to it. They seem to immediately get it & feel comfortable with the whole thing.

oh and another trend is people sticking their tongues out.

4) Have you ever had a camera not work out?

Well, a few stolen. More than i expected actually…at first i found it kind of interesting to think why someone would steal a disposable camera half full of pics of strangers & have to pay $10 to get it developed, but now it’s just annoying! I’d think I’ve had about 5 stolen so far. Bay st was the first casualty.

Thanks to Matt Greenwood for sharing this project with us.

Good times on Roncesvalles Ave

(In case you were wondering, you don’t have to be Polish to participate. In fact, the Polish contingent may have been in the minority. Polish food and music, however, were there in abundance. Hooray!)

The event was a great success. We are inspired by all the wonderful people we met, both from Roncesvalles and many other parts of town. Thank you to all those who stopped by our booth to talk to us. We will be sending those of you that were interested an invitation to join 5 Blocks Out in the next few days.

We did a raffle, and we’d like to announce the winners here:

1st Prize — $100 to spend at any local Roncesvalles business or charity — goes to: Kalyna Bo

2nd Prize — a limited edition Roncesvalles T-shirt — goes to: Nicole Ysabet

3rd Prize — a subscription to Spacing Magazine — goes to: Anthony Mohamed

Congratulations to our winners!

And a big thank you to our volunteers!  We couldn’t have done it without you.