The TTC quietly released the beta version of it’s trip planner a few days ago. I’ve tried it and it seems to be pretty accurate. Give it a shot if you’re taking the TTC somewhere and need to find out a route.

The Toronto area got a recent update in Google Maps yesterday. Judging by the state of construction projects near my place, I’m judging the new maps were taken this summer.

Fancy yourself to create a new Google Maps Mashup, or mine some public data? The City of Toronto has given open access to several datasets that they have. It’s a new venture, so don’t dismay the lack of data  yet. I’m sure as people create some new and interesting tools with it, that demand will rise and they’ll put their more valuable data online.

I’m quite happy they are doing this. Spending a career in IT has led me to lament the “it’s MY data” mentality and the unwillingness to share it. For a City to open it’s data doors, even slightly, is a great first step.

Google has provided a mechanism for iPhone users to get Push Email functionality. Apple is still dragging it’s feet for allowing the iPhone to support it natively, so Google has enabled mail to be synced via the ActiveSync mechanism that is available on the iPhone.

However, there is one limitation. iPhone users that already have an ActiveSync account enabled (e.g. for work email) will not be able to use this option. This is because Apple only allows a single ActiveSync account on the iPhone. This is an Apple limitation, not Microsoft or Google.

Google Finance recently announced Google Investing Indexes. It’s an index based on keyword searches of the Google engine tied to an economic activity. For instance the Auto Buyers Index graphs the search terms “car, blue book, toyota, kelly book”.

What’s funny is how pervasive Yahoo Finance is. In the Google Finance and Insurance Index, “Yahoo” is one of the search terms. In the Google Investing Index, “Yahoo Finance” is used as a search term.

Yahoo still dominates the financial aggregation portals, with Google Finance lagging quite a bit. At least Google doesn’t try to hide this fact.

Lifehacker had a great summary article about how to access GMail when they are experiencing problems, such as earlier this week. The article goes into detail but there is a summary of links:

• Plain HTML version
• Safe Mode
• Old Version
• Without Browser Check
• Mobile Version
• iPhone Version
• iGoogle

The Toronto Star continues to have a great set of Google Map mashups produced each week. Over the past two weeks they’ve produced maps of the admissions into GTA universities by area – presumeably by postal code information provided by the university. Check out the maps below:

University of Toronto: St. George

University of Toronto: Scarborough

University of Toronto: Mississauga

York University: Keele

York Unversity: Glendon

Ryerson University

Today Google announced that they were going to create an operating system. It will be separate from Andriod and aimed at netbooks and low-powered computers – at least at first.

While everyone seems to make a big deal about this, I don’t really see a “Chrome OS” as having much of an impact. If Android is any indication, the operating system will be perfect for nerds, and useless for most everyday people. With poor a interface, bad design, and too many features that are “ok” and very few that are “great”. We already have an OS like this, it’s called Linux and has been available, for free, for ten years – download it now at Ubuntu.

This might sound negative, but Google’s software offerings haven’t been very good. I dare not run that privacy-invasive Google Desktop. The Android OS for mobile phones and the Chrome browser have had very little impact on either market. Very few people I know use Picasa, resorting to online sites like Flickr or using software from Adobe.

Good luck, Google.

Toronto is a multicultural city. I remember reading a few years ago that by 2010 the “minority” groups that make up the population will actually total more than 50% of the city by 2010 – that’s just next year. The Toronto Star produced a map (pdf) that shows the concentration in ethnic groups and where they live. The full article gives more detail as to how this has been shifting over the last few years. The article based much of it’s work from “Evolution of Ethnic Enclaves in the Toronto Metropolitan Area” soon to be published in The Canadian Geographer.