Need to know just the basics on a topic? Just the facts ‘mam? Try AllTop. I’ll admit I don’t read my favorite news sources as much as I would like, frankly because there are not enough hours in the day and I’d rather watch Family Guy. This is a lovely little RSS updated cheat sheet on major topics such as Politics, SEO Innovations to Beer. Gaked from one of my favorite gals The Barganista.

Mark Forbes was kind enough to introduce me to a neat little widget that I haven’t seen since its Beta version many moons ago.  Its a trippy thesaurus! Forget the analog and check out this cool tool when you need another word for the obvious.  Really handy when trying to find out another word combo for a domain name, as I was with new client TheHiddenGlobe.com (cool website and detailed info to follow in a few weeks).  Give Visual Thesaurus a try.

So today is an absolutely beautiful morning here in downtown Toronto.  The sun is shining - but not too much, and the temperature is warm - though not too hot.  Watching all the people slowly walk on by in Leslieville it’s really easy to want to take it easy, especially in light of all the other summer distractions that are available.  However, summer also provides a great opportunity during these slow times for entrepreneurs to catch up on working on the extras in your business.  Typically for most businesses summer is a bit of a slower time as many people are away on vacations or taking it easy in other ways.  Summer though is a great time though to work on the little extras that will make your business thrive.  Take advantage of these slower times to update your contact lists - specifically check in with them and see how they are doing.  Also this is a good time to review your business plan’s marketing and operations section.  It’s a bit like walking down memory lane to see where you thought your business was heading and seeing how things actually played out.  Maybe there are some great ideas in there waiting to be implemented that you have put aside for lack of time.  If so, take this slow period to have fun and get creative.

Its crazy tonight with the amount of things going on downtown.  So if you are in the city, hope to see some of you there!

Martin Cleaver has complied a great little listing of what’s going on where.

Two forgotton things from the 80’s looking for a comeback.  Dr.  Pepper apparently is so interested in getting Axl Rose to release a new Guns n’ Roses cd that they have offered to give the incentive of passing out free Dr. Pepper’s to the population of the US.  Well that’s unsusal. 

 Saw british phenom Adele live in concert at the Rivoli where she promptly broke my heart with an accustic version of Make You Feel My Love.  The concert itself was a bit too short for my taste, but no complaints were heard from the crowd leaving because every minute that she did perform was fantastic.  With her cute banter between songs she seems like someone you want to have a pint with or keep her in a little box where you take her out sometimes and hug and pinch her cheeks.  I know.  I am a bit weird.

Keep an eye open for fashion label Desperately Different designed by Katya Revenko. This line of quality women’s wear will soon release its Spring 08 collection to your favourite local boutiques such as Pho Pa and Model Citizen.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone and I hope that everyone is having a good ole time.  This day of the year something always comes to mind… Guinness.  After all I met my husband because of Guinness (long and not a very bad story) and one of my favorite companies to keep an eye on is Diageo.  They are the brewers of the number one selling stout in the world and overall one of the top recognizable alcohol brands in the world.

And for one day of the year, most of the population of beer drinkers around the world have at least one pint of it. 

I can only imagine what their corporate offices look like today.  It must be like Christmas morning with everyone waiting at their desks for all the final numbers to come in.

Its an image that is as olde school as they get - the State Farm Insurance logo.  Whithout doing an official poll, I feel comfortable in saying/concluding  that it is one of the un-sexiest logos out there.  Their new marketing campaign, which you may have seen in recent print publications is an evokative urban image of various situations.  The one I see most often, is a bike locked to one bike wheel hanging lonley at a downtown street corner.  The only text is that of nowwhat.ca

I love that this new campaign of State Farm attempts to connect to a new audience that are not so interested in insuring the family car and adding new drivers.  But instead are looking for insurance for their laptop while on the go as well as learning the insides and outs of content insurance when you are renting.

One of the fantastic things that I got addicted to at Podcamp Toronto last week has to be Twitter.  If you are already on - feel free to add me @michellejose. Now with the great plugin for Wordpress made at Twitter Updater I can keep everything up to date.

You know you are going to do it, even though you say you’re not. You will watch portions of the Oscar’s tonight. Somehow mystically your remote will land on it at some point - and you will be at least for some point in time mesmorized by the bright colours and big hair. So since you are anyway…might as well watch it somewhere fun right?

I hope you all can make it down tonight to The Rivoli on Queen West tonight for cocktails and scarcastic commentary.

The festivities start at 7pm. I especially hope that some of the wonderful people at Podcamp Toronto 2008 where I’ve spent my weekend make it down as well. For further info email me

More to come about Podcamp Toronto tomorrow.