» Starbucks – Front & Frederick: wi-fi works well most of the time; seats sometimes available

» Starbucks – Church & Adelaide: wi-fi is sketchy; seats are hard to come by

» Second Cup – Church & Jarvis: wi-fi works almost always; seats can be had most times

» Second Cup – Front & Church: wi-fi always works; seats can be had most times

» Starbucks – Front near Jarvis: wi-fi usually works; seats can be hard to come by

» Starbucks – Bremner & York (near Air Canada Centre): wi-fi works well; great large shared tables to work at

» Starbucks – Church & Shuter: wi-fi usually works; notorious for people with laptops

» Second Cup – King & Bay (Scotia Plaza): worked the one time I’ve been; seats available when I was there

» Starbucks – Queen & Logan: worked the one time I’ve been; seats very scarce

Where else? There are a bunch of Toronto pubs with free wi-fi as well. Below is a list of those that I’ve personally tested out.

» Betty’s – King & Sherbourne: wi-fi works most of the time

» C’est What – Front & Church: wi-fi works most of the time; password required

» Beer Bistro – King & Yonge: seriously sketchy wi-fi the one time I tried it there

» The Churchmouse and Firkin – Church & Maitland: wi-worked well the one time I was there; password required

» Fox & Fiddle – Wellesley & Yonge: wi-fi works super well the couple times I’ve been; no password required

» Ciros – Bloor & Lansdowne: wi-fi worked well the one time I was there; password required

» The Only Cafe – Danforth & Donlands: wi-fi worked well the one time I was there; password required

» Foggy Dew – King near Bathurst: wi-fi worked well the one time I was there; password required

» Tequila Bookworm – Queen & Bathurst: worked extremely well the one time I’ve been; password required

» The Abbot Pub – Yonge, North of Lawrence: worked extremely well the one time I’ve been; no password required

I’ll update this list as time goes on. Hope it helped!

1. plug in your scanner
2. go to Device Manager (Control Panel > Hardware & Sound > …)
3. find your scanner (Epson Perfection 610) and right-click
4. select Update Driver Software > Browse My Computer… > Let Me Pick From a List of Device Drivers
5. select Epson and Stylus CX3200

Install the driver… and voila! Your Epson Perfection 610 scanner will work with Windows 7. No, I didn’t figure this out on my own. Other online folk did, but I present it to you here @ freddie.ca.

» English Debate: Tuesday April 12th @ 7pm (until 9pm) Eastern Time – on CBC, CTV, Global (possibly others as well).

» French Debate: Thursday April 14th Wednesday April 13th @ 8pm (until 10pm) Eastern Time.

The debate will have Harper (Conservative Party), Ignatieff (Liberal Party), Layton (New Democratic Party), Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois) all face off. The English language debate will be moderated by TV Ontario host Steve Paikin.

Fortunately Google Sync solves this problem. It can sync automatically throughout the day (syncing your contacts and calendar items too, if you wish). I’m syncing with a Blackberry Bold 9700. Upon setting it up, Google Sync was creating duplicate contacts on both my Blackberry and Gmail upon every sync. We’re talking over 100 contact entries for each contact, before realized it.

To turn off the creation of multiple contacts, first go to your Contact settings on you Blackberry. Go to Options > General Options. Under Actions where it says Allow Duplicate Names select No. Upon doing this, Google Sync may say it can no longer sync contacts, however I’ve found you can override this. Try it again in a little bit and it will then allow you to (that’s all I can say — I can’t explain it). From then on Google Sync will no longer create duplicate contacts upon sync.

How do you then clean up your contacts? In Gmail go to Contacts > More Actions > Find & merge duplicates…. You may have to do that multiple times before Gmail snuffs out all the duplicates. Upon next sync, the duplicates should be removed from your Blackberry as well.