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Back in 2010, when our main @VIAwesome Twitter account had only 3,750 followers, we called on the 9 mobile carriers who were operating in Vancouver at the time. We made THIS BLOG POST in which we joked that we were using an ancient 90′s brick phone (which wasn’t too far off from the truth), then we seriously pleaded the case for a telco to come to our rescue and help bring us into the world of smartphones. TELUS was the first to answer the call (pun intended), and we’ve enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership with them ever since. They’re an awesome Vancouver-based company that not only delivers great products and services, with ultra-responsive customer service (have you seen them on Twitter?) and also does a ton of COMMUNITY GIVING to charities and non-profits ($44,000,000 worth in 2012). Their business is really in tune with what we do over here.

It’s crazy how far we’ve come in the almost three years since they came on board as a Community Sponsor. We’ve increased our Twitter followers by almost 10 times (as I type this we have 32,197 Followers), we’ve placed as one of Vancouver’s top 3 Twitter accounts 2 years running in the Georgia Straight’s BEST OF, and TELUS has really helped us get here. And in that relatively short amount of time, the technology of the phones we use has also come a long way.

Pictured below are the phones I’ve used in the past 3 years with TELUS. Next to the Motorola Brick is the Motorola Backflip which is the first phone they connected us with, and which I used for about a year. I then went to the iPhone 4, which I also used for about a year until I discovered how incredible the Samsung Galaxy S3 was for Instagram (SUCH. VIVID. PHOTOS!). I dropped the S3 one day and the screen was totally destroyed, so I decided to give the new BlackBerry Z10 a chance, until I was offered the S4… which I jumped at.

The Brick, Motorola Backflip, iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S3, BlackBerry Z10… and the Samsung Galaxy S4

The craziest thing in this timeline, to me, is that when I got my second smartphone (the iPhone 4) I thought that was it. I figured it was the best thing going and that I would stick with it for as long as I’ve stuck with using a Macbook. As a creative director, I’ve been toting around different variations of Apple laptops for almost 15 years now; it’s just always been the platform that “we” use in the creative sector. When I initially made the switch from my iPhone to the Galaxy S3 my main concern was that I wasn’t going to be able to sync my calendar from my laptop to my phone, and that the operating system would be weird. As it turned out the calendar synced seamlessly (go figure!), and I ended up liking the Android operating system as much as IOS, some of the features even moreso. And getting onto that S3 really was the catalyst that set up my “Aha!” moment when I realized that I’m fairly agnostic when it comes to the operating system on my phone. Apple is not the end-all-be-all; I even took the BlackBerry 10 OS for a good spin for the last couple of months with ease, and I enjoyed it.

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Each week we sift through the nearly 8,000 entries that our friends at the Canadian Design Resource have made since 2005, selecting one particularly awesome Vancouver-centric design that they’ve featured and sharing it with you here.

Design: Unknown
Client: City of Vancouver
Date: 2010

In time for the 2010 Olympics and presumably for all the visitors from abroad, the city had these polite reminders to look in the direction of traffic to avoid walking into it unwittingly. More than two years later, this street paint has worn considerably, but is a reminder of our efforts to extend a warm and safe welcome to a mass of foreign travellers.

Once again we’re co-sponsoring Sam Sullivan’s Public Salon at the Vancouver Playhouse! As you likely noticed in the title, the former mayor of Vancouver is now a member of the legislature. I INTRODUCED you to the fact that he was running in the riding I live in a little while back, then Cory Ashworth INTERVIEWED him for his Vancity Fair project, and at the last Salon (which I coincidentally attended with Cory!) we noted that he didn’t mention it once while he was hosting. It was pretty classy of him, and it certainly didn’t hinder his efforts to get elected in last night’s provincial election.

And speaking of class, there are so many great speakers on the bill for the upcoming Public Salon on June 5th. Personal standouts for me include restaurant critic Alexandra Gill, Offsetters co-founder James Tansey, and historian Henry Yu. Tickets are available HERE. See you there!

Welcome to the latest series of Super, Neighbours blog posts where we highlight incredible travel destinations in British Columbia! Last summer during Tofino’s Feast BC celebration I went out on THIS salmon fishing adventure with a premium outfit called Cleanline Sportfishing who offer every type of guided fishing trip you could want. The previous April I went on what I deemed THE ULTIMATE FISHING EXCURSION with them. Cleanline has taken me on a couple of unforgettable trips on the water and this last one was no exception; here I learned that “ultimate” is entirely relative. This trip was actually the ultimate family fishing excursion in Tofino, which was also great from a sportfisherman’s point of view.

Our Christine McAvoy was in Tofino this past weekend gathering a Feast BC story to share, so I fiugured I’d better hurry up and write part 2 before we overlap!

So in PART 1 I brought you along with my wife, our 4 year old son and I as we brought up a crab trap then also a bounty of spot prawns. A couple of hours was all our little guy could muster, so we dropped him and my wife (and the haul of prawns and crabs!) off out the dock and headed back out onto the seas to drop some lines.

Our guide Blake on Cleanline’s primary vessel, holding a couple of our crabs

This was the second day that the halibut fishery was open for the year, and so far none of the local guides had reeled any in with their clients. There had been a gale warning for the area the previous day, and the same warning was in place the day we went out, so nobody could even get out into the deeper water where the halibut lurk. It’s my favourite fish to eat and I really wanted to bring one home but instead of risking a shipwreck we put out some lines for salmon fairly close to shore.
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Hey, actor and musician, husband to Mariah Carey, Nick Cannon! High five, Nick Cannon!

Nick was on Breakfast Television this morning talking about America’s Got Talent, Mariah & his upcoming Showtime comedy special that’s taping at the River Rock… and we got our pals over at BT to deliver this virtual high five for you! Check out our slew of other celebrity fives HERE.

We recently released a totally silly iPhone app with our friends at Company Policy and 49 Digital. Eyes on the World is entirely free, free of advertising, and it essentially allows you to add googly eyes to your photos, then share them. We all volunteered our time for this project because we feel it’s very important that you be able to add googly eyes to things. Like your cat. Or your friends. Or random inanimate objects. It is your right to be able to add googly eyes to things, and we want you to exercise that right with ease.

As long as people continue to use the app and share their photos with us, we’ll be running a weekly feature called Eyes on Vancouver. This week’s images came to us from a Vicky Swan who used the “Send to V.I.A.” option within the app to send us snaps of her parents. Thanks, Vicky!

Download the app HERE and be sure to share with us so we can share here on the blog!