Is taking Sparky out for a walk starting to feel like all business and no pleasure? Dog Park Finder Plus can help you locate new and interesting dog parks, wherever you happen to be.

How it works: The app uses GPS technology to track your current location and find dog parks close by. For example, if you want to give your dog an opportunity to run off some of that pent-up, tied-to-a-post energy after your stop at Avenue Road’s Whole Foods, it’ll tell you that you’re just a short walk from Ramsden Park. The left side of the screen plots your nearest dog parks on a map, and the right side has a scrollable list of them. Clicking on any of the parks, either on the map or on the list, will lead you to a screen that provides the vitals for each location, including the address and whether the off-leash area is fenced or unfenced.

Helpful features: The “get directions” tab on each profile automatically generates driving, transit, or walking directions to the park. Users can add their own photos and reviews, share information with friends, and even add new parks or dog-friendly businesses. Currently, however, there is limited user-generated information available for Toronto’s parks, beyond the basics (the Withrow Park review mentions the incident in 2004 where dogs were poisoned by pesticide-laced hot dogs, and a review for Sherwood Dog Park states that it is “always full of poorly behaved dogs”). But without many alternatives, it hopefully won’t take too long before the app marks its territory in this city. According to information in the Apple store, Dog Park Finder Plus, available for the iPad and iPhone for $1.99, covers over 6,000 dog parks and beaches and 12,000 dog-friendly restaurants across North America, which means that it’s also great for canine road trips.

This Thursday, all day (I’m talking 8 a.m. until 6:30 p.m.; pack right), a five-years-in-the-making conference-cum-expo-cum-cool-hang called Crossmedia Toronto will bring 26 “innovative companies and creators” from gaming, advertising, publishing, mobile, and “motion” to the Toronto Reference Library. Gavin McGarry, the co-founder of Jumpwiremedia, which is presenting the event, describes it as such: “It would probably be one of the best things to go to if you’re someone who doesn’t work in media,” although he also wants “to bring together the different ‘silos’: What I really want is television people talking to gaming people, and advertising people talking to radio people, and tech people talking to everyone.” (The Grid is a media partner, but I didn’t know that until after I got psyched about the unusually inclusive scope of the event, and spoke to McGarry, sooooo relax?)

“Everything is moving and changing so quickly,” McGarry says. ”[Crossmedia] is a little snapshot of some of the things that we think are really innovative, and of the people who have interesting things to talk about.” To that end, McGarry describes it as “a combo of TED meets DemoCamp meets CaseCamp,” meant for people, pros or otherwise, who are “interested in where technology is going, and how human beings interact and behave with technology.”

The presentations are 10 minutes long—seven for the presenter to talk; three for a Q&A—instead of the 17 minutes of TED (too long) and the two to five minutes of DemoCamp (too short). McGarry likens the format to a “theatrical presentation … We want people to get some insight, understand what [the topic or theme] is, see lots of different speakers, and explore and heighten it online.” (The hashtag for the event is #cmto13.) But he emphasizes that the IRL aspect of the event is particularly important. “You want to see the person in 3-D, you want to see them in real life. You can get so much information online that you don’t need an hour-and-a-half of people sitting onstage like talking heads. There are no panels; it’s all about energy and frequency.”

McGarry chose the speakers based on who he wanted to hear, and, “selfishly,” who he wanted to meet. He says, more than once, “I want them to talk about the data of what they do.” Most of the event’s speakers were pre-vetted by video; all of them come with some kind of serious media or tech or whatever-else bonafides. Some of the most interesting include the general manager of Reddit, Erik Martin; Andrew Macdonald from Uber, “which is disrupting the taxi business in every city they’re in,” and who will be speaking about what Uber is doing in Toronto; Peter Vessenes from Bitcoin; and local Jeffrey Remedios, who runs the Arts & Crafts label. All of them will be on the same clock, so, the often-boring discursive nature of most tech-ish, media-ish events—TED included—will be necessarily avoided, although “networking” remains on the schedule, along with food and coffee (which blessedly comes free with the $257.24 regular registration fee).

There is also considerable emphasis on Toronto-based and Canadian talent. Says McGarry, “Dr. Roel Vertegaal, our main keynote speaker, has invented bendable tablets; he was the darling of CES”—i.e., the enormous, annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas—“and it turns out he’s from Queen’s University.” Asked about the tech industry in this city, McGarry calls it “very, very exciting” and says “it is absolutely exploding. Some of the best developers are in Toronto. This is game central—there’s some really innovative stuff coming out of here.”

He adds that a lot of those developers, Canadian or otherwise, aren’t interested in a move to Silicon Valley. “They like the healthcare here.” McGarry points out that Canadians watch more video online than anyone in the world, and says of Jumpwiremedia, “We test everything in Canada. There’s so much exciting stuff going on here. Canadians have been the leaders, at the forefront, of things that are happening online.” (There is also an important and considered approach to ensuring that women are involved in the event, like Ipsa Desai from Google and Deborah Hall from TorStar Digital. McGarry says, “Women are doing some incredible stuff, but still, the tech genre is very male-oriented.”)

McGarry, and therefore Crossmedia Toronto, is interested most of all in “data, data, data” and how that influences and creates human change. By way of demonstrating how data is shaping experience, he says “Netflix actually decided to cast House of Cards based on data”—Kevin Spacey and David Fincher were chosen for the recent Netflix-original series based on how much Netflix users seemed to like films starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher. Says McGarry, “This, we love: the data side of that sort of stuff.”

Register for Crossmedia Toronto here. Grid readers can save 25 per cent off the $250 registration fee by entering promo code GRID25. Limited amount of tickets remain.

We can hardly believe it happened again. For the second year in a row, The Grid has been named the world’s best-designed newspaper for our circulation size by the Society for News Design.

Founded in 1979, the Society recognizes excellence in visual journalism, and we’re deeply honoured that they like us so much. Out of 9,300 global entries, The Grid won 3 silvers out of only 36 awarded. The win is also kind of historic: we won both world’s best-designed newspaper and were awarded the only silver in the best overall magazine design category (they don’t award a world’s best in that category).

Here’s what the panel of judges had to say:

The Grid is the perfect reflection of the community it lives in. We would describe its personality in six words: FUN, intelligent, bold, authentic, sophisticated, and young.

The consistency from page to page and week to week is just staggering. And yet the staff finds ways to reinvent their formula each week. They’re able to seamlessly shift gears between numerous storytelling formats and devices, always delivering a smarter edited experience.

The Grid’s young and energetic color palette not only ties the publication together but also is based on press limitations, sticking with pure cyan, magenta and yellow.

The Grid really connects with its audience by including their voices and opinions, opening a window on the people and reflecting their life in Toronto. We are jealous of the readers who get to read this publication each week. It’s addictive.

Ambitious photo shoots like the food trucks are evidence of a mighty tabloid making big things happen. Food pages display real, authentic dishes you want to eat.

Clever asides, bonus elements and hidden gems reward you for spending time with The Grid. Nice touches include mini-map locaters, hypertext explanations in the margins, clever thumbnail graphics, and fun little points of interest. They might be fun, but they’re not decorative gimmicks; they’re storytelling elements.

The Grid has excellent stories to start with, but the designers have the ability to take those stories to new levels.

The Grid boldly plays with its brand in subtle but fearless ways. As an example, the cover about “Toronto’s Hardest-Working Dogs” nails the concept by changing its logo to read “THE GRRID.”  Seeing this cover made us all smile and imagine how much fun their brainstorming sessions and work environment must be.

The Grid feels ahead of its time when many newspapers lack freshness. It knows exactly what the readers need and expect, and it goes deep in the search for stories.

We must say that if a publication wants to be the best in the world, it would do well to remember the rich value and high IQ of The Grid.

You can read more about our win, and the other winners, right here.

This Friday (Feb. 8), two wildly different but equally inspirational women will be in Toronto to give their respective versions of “a talk.” Uptown(-ish), the New York Times best-selling self-help author, speaker, social-network founder (of herfuture.com) and, of course, life coach (yes, “life coach”—get into it) Gabrielle Bernstein will “lead a lecture” and sign books at the Manulife Centre Indigo at Bay and Bloor from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m.

Downtown(-ish), writer, constant party-pic presence, documentary subject (of HBO’s 2010 Martin Scorsese-directed insta-classic Public Speaking) and professionally incomparable Fran Lebowitz will be at Massey Hall at 8 p.m. (tickets range from $17.50-$57.50), where she will be “in conversation” with CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, and then take questions from the audience. Bernstein and Lebowitz, very conveniently, make up an almost perfect yin-yang of magnetic New Yorkers, seeking light in the dark, who also trade on their relative and relatively nichey iconoclasm.

Bernstein, who is 32, is especially revered by twenty-and-thirtysomething, super-high-achieving professional women whose often-towering anxiety and fear requires some kind of instructive outside influence, but who are resistant to the cornier paradigms of mainstream self-help. Her work, pejoratively or otherwise, has been described as “femme-fabulous pop spirituality.” I called her “myth-y and magic-y” when I first interviewed her, for my Grid column, Thirtyish. Bernstein is, crucially, a peer: a former addict who experienced the ennui and identity crisis familiar to many Millennials. While her books (Add More Ing to Your Life: A Hip Guide to Happiness; Spirit Junkie: A Radical Road to Self-Love and Miracles and the new one, May Cause Miracles: A 40-Day Guidebook of Subtle Shifts for Radical Change) cover much familiar territory, like meditation and positive thinking and self-care, they are written with an urgency and closeness that is weirdly and almost-always missing from other books about feelings.

Lebowitz (a writer who very famously no longer really publishes, though she is also a New York Times best-selling author, of Metropolitan Life and Social Studies) is a member of an uncorrupted and thoroughly cynical old school; she is best known for her beyond-divisive social and cultural criticisms, and for the rarest form of consistent, catty realness. Writers (if only she wrote!) of such commentary tend to bend and break, eventually, with time or money or obligation; she doesn’t, and never did. (Maybe if she wrote more?) Lebowitz is not, though, talking just to talk, even though what she seems to do mostly is talk, and even though she remains committed to parsing the world around her in a way that most people—most writers—don’t. In an interview with Stephanie Verge that ran in The Grid last fall (this upcoming talk was originally scheduled for Nov. 2, but was postponed due to Hurricane Sandy), the computer-less, Twitter-less Lebowitz said, “I do believe men looked better when they wore suits because men look better in suits than shorts. But life for women was worse when men wore suits. If you have to choose, it’s better to have more freedom for women and have men who look terrible. Because it doesn’t seem like we can get both at once.” An important, and perfect, distinction.

Former Torontonian and eternal media wunderkind Tyler Brûlé, back in town this week for a (free) talk, is maybe better known for being the most divisive culture-maker going (he is a curator, but we can’t say that anymore) than for any of his individual products or projects.

Now based in London, England, the editor-in-chief and founder of Monocle magazine (and its seasonal newspapers, distributed only in select resorts), CEO and chairman of the branding and design agency Winkreative, and “Fast Lane” columnist for the Financial Times’ weekend edition, returns to Toronto to speak at OCAD on Tuesday at 5:3o p.m., as part of the President’s Speaker Series. (Brûlé, the Winnipeg-born son of a football player and artist, went to Ryerson.)

His career as an entrepreneur and tastemaker has been expansive and widely reported on, and has included an “Editor of the Year” award in 2011 and a “Lifetime Achievement Award” which Brûlé won in 2001, when he was 33. In 1996—which if you’ll recall was a creatively abundant and profitable era for publishing—Brûlé founded Wallpaper*, a design magazine so enduring and cult-ish that carefully preserved back-issues maintain a currency shared only by, say, pre-buyout Sassy, Raygun and that brief moment of Details when it was perfect.

In 2007, which was a much less welcoming moment for print, Brûlé launched—again, successfully—a publication that calls itself a “global briefing” but is really a business, travel, and lifestyle magazine that brings together the worldly concerns of the new-money jet-set (or whoever identifies with them) with the niche-ness of design-driven specialty magazines. Monocle has several international bureaus and now includes smartly branded spin-off projects (like the new-ish Monocle store in Toronto, at 776 College St.).

Brûlé is also very busy being Tyler Brûlé. He’s the rare media figure whose personal interests and perspectives imbue his publications so thoroughly. Most articles or images published by other famed media bosses, even Condé Nast all-powerfuls like Graydon Carter and Anna Wintour, can’t be identified as easily as Brûlé-affiliated work, which is fantastically powerful in such a saturated market. As the hotelier-and-Uma-ex André Balazs told the New York Times, “I’ve rarely met anyone who is more of an embodiment of the lifestyle that they espouse.” The Brûlé-cum-Wallpaper-cum-Monocle aesthetic—really, more of an all-consuming sensibility—is concerned with style, utility and quality; every “Monocle” product and topic is up for evaluation or redesign, from travel scarves to hotels to airlines to cities. The total self-seriousness and insistent aversion to youth-culturey notions of coolness are rare qualities for a publication that is also so wholly instructive and realized.

All of this is alternately revered by aesthetes and made fun of by the internet. Without caring either way, it’s obvious that Brûlé’s brands’ apparently humourless pretensions are as compelling as any new take on a suitcase; it’s also obvious that a tall, perfectly-groomed poppy—and from Canada?—is more fun to kick around on Gawker than someone else who is less character, less quasi-cartoon. A satirical website and Twitter account called “Being Tyler Brûlé” are sometimes indistinguishable from Brûlé’s style, but, he works with purpose. Decide what you think for yourself tomorrow night.

How it works

When your Instagram feed is getting too literal—all blurry burgers and brunches—turn to the photo-sharing app 500px, which filters out throwaway snaps and offers careful, inspired photography without the digital Febreze of quick-and-dirty retro filters. It’s a standalone app that complements the long-running Toronto-based developer’s 500px.com site. As with other photo sharing apps, you add friends, like posts, and comment, but that’s where the similarities end. With 500px, you can’t even share photos directly from your phone. That’s by design: It forces users to stop and think about what they’re posting. Contributors don’t have to be professional photographers to participate, but they will need a computer. However, VP of business development Dustin Plett isn’t ruling out a future change once there’s a meaningful and appropriate route to edit photos from something smaller than a laptop.

Who should use it?

Anyone who wants to enjoy carefully crafted pictures: Users clearly spend a very long time perfecting just one picture, and 500px stays fresh by offering curated and vote-driven streams. You can even browse the settings and type of equipment people used to create their photo—a handy feature if you’re still working out what shutter speeds and apertures are used in what conditions. The comments are also filled with helpful advice for anyone trying to up their photo game.

When will 500px sell your photos?

Only when you want them to. 500px was founded by photographers for photographers, so there’s no fear of your digital rights getting Zuckerberg’d (as with Instagram’s attempted rights-swipe). Instead, 500px offers photographers a marketplace where they can sell shots from the app.

Any hitches?

Seemingly out of nowhere, 500px was removed from Apple’s app store this week because the updated version allowed users to search for nudes. “We’re working with Apple right now to get the app back in the store,” says Plett. “I’m confident it will be back shortly and this is just a hiccup.”

Why haven’t I heard of it?

As sometimes happens with Canadian talent, fame comes from afar before it reaches home. Germany, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. are all strong centres, helping 500px hit half a billion views each month. The app’s 2.0 version, out since late November, is already at 300,000 downloads, so plenty of people are finally getting the picture.

Have you used 500px to post photos? How well did it work for you? Let us know in the comments section below.

1. The broadcast premiere of the History Television program Treasure Trader lured thousands upon thousands of the show’s viewers to our article on star Billy Jamieson—many of whom were unaware that the Toronto-based antiques collector had passed away suddenly just after the show completed production.

2. The same laws that apply to the rest of the internet apply here as well: People like looking at pictures of naked women.

3. There’s only thing The Grid’s readers enjoy as much as eating at The Burger’s Priest—and that’s reading about it.

4. Though the Toronto real-estate market cooled off a touch this year, houses are still very expensive, especially in desirable neighbourhoods. So we suggested buying in a few that may not be on your radar.

5. The only rational response to yet another underwhelming year in Toronto pro sports? Drink your sorrows away.

6. Nowadays, when you hear about Torontonians moving to the west end, chances are they’re not talking about Parkdale.

7. Our city may be currently enamoured with gourmet, VPN-certified pizzas, but we’re still keeping tabs on the place that likely served many of us our first slice.

8. Hoping to lose a few pounds in the new year? Read this.

9. As The Grid’s resident political analyst Edward Keenan observed this year, the only thing more dispiriting than having Rob Ford as your mayor is watching him try to save his job.

10. And finally, if you’re reading this, chances are you’re a self-absorbed, video game–addicted slacker who’s living rent-free in your parents’ basement because you’re too lazy to get a proper job. Just kidding. Happy new year!

December’s here, 2013 is around the corner, and the most special and important day of the year is upon us. No, I don’t mean Christmas. December 13 is International Day Day, a holiday celebrated by Redditors that commemorates…well, nothing. But is that really any different from the countless other days (or even months) of awareness we ostensibly—but don’t actually—observe every year?

Look, apart from Earth Day and Black History Month, I couldn’t tell you the name or date of a single secular observance, and I doubt the average person could do any better. Can you blame us? With nearly every single day of the year dedicated to one cause or another (and sometimes several at once), it’s next to impossible to care about them all, let alone mark the occasion with real, tangible action. (Bake sale, anyone?)

That kind of indifference is a shame when it comes to something like Human Rights Day (Dec. 10, which you totally knew, right?). But you start to wonder when your tally of observances starts to sound more like a to-do list (Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month, Library Card Sign-Up Month, Update Your Resume Month) or a Tex-Mex dinner menu—May is Hamburger, Salad, and Salsa Month. I love peanut butter as much as the next guy, but do we really need a Peanut Butter Lovers’ Month? (Not to be confused with Peanut Month.)

So, in the interest of saving our support for causes that actually deserve the attention, let’s stop declaring days for turtles, ballpoint pens, and talking like pirates. If the UN doesn’t recognize your symbolic occasion, we can probably just scrap it altogether. With one exception, of course: Shark Week stays.

Flower of the Month Club
Still catching flack for that time you forgot your two-month anniversary? Have an arrangement of fresh flowers sent to your significant other year-round courtesy of this upscale Etobicoke florist. $50 per month, Vanderfleet Flowers, 270 The Kingsway, 416-234-0550, vanderfleet.com.

DVD of the Month Club
Appease the cinema buffs in your inner circle with film fest–approved movies and DVD shorts, mailed monthly, for them to critique over popcorn from the comfort of their own couch. US$135 per year, Film Movement Canada, filmmovementcanada.com.

Wine of the Month Club
If “develop my palate” shows up on your friend’s New Year’s resolutions list, arrange for home-delivery of two bottles of newly released, expert-selected Ontario wines, sent in red-white, red-red, or white-white pairings each month. $40–$50 per month, Winery to Home, 416-492-3102, wineofthemonthclub.ca.

Hot Sauce of the Month Club
Know someone who puts that you-know-what on everything from crackers to cardboard? Top up their supply with a monthly supply of two hard-to-find gourmet sauces from all over the globe. From $28 per month, Amazing Clubs, 800-772-9175, amazingclubs.ca.

When it comes to any karaoke outing, your decision-making process may hinge on the agonizing struggle of trying to remember which bar has added Carly Rae’s “This Kiss” or “Losing You” by Solange to their song list. But Bar+ Karaoke Lounge’s free smartphone app all but eliminates this problem, giving you more time to let your inner Susan Boyle shine.

How it works: The app’s simple interface allows you to search the bar’s extensive list of English and foreign-language songs by title or artist. The list is updated monthly with 50 to 70 English songs added, on average. Since you know you will always belt out Ratt’s “Round and Round” or LeAnn Rimes’ “Can’t Fight The Moonlight,” the app can store an ongoing list of favourite songs for your next visit (Bar+ is located at 360 Yonge St., 2nd floor).

Why it’s so useful: As the bar’s manager Jacob Suh notes, the app eliminates the somewhat unappealing karaoke ritual of “searching through thick, often sticky binders of thousands of songs.” (They’re also looking into having a tablet computer inside each of the bar’s private rooms instead of a beer-soaked songbook.) The app also allows you to queue songs directly from your smartphone to your room, so that playlist you made on the streetcar can blare from surround-sound speakers within minutes of your arrival.

Why it’s popular: Suh has noted that the bar’s business has picked up lately, but isn’t sure if it is due to their app. With close to 400 Android and BlackBerry downloads in the past two months, however, the mobile song search option certainly seems to have found favour among Toronto’s karaoke enthusiasts. Ultimately, the Bar+ app succeeds in its objectively limited mission: It takes a silly, fun activity and makes it even easier to enjoy.

UPDATE, 4:44 p.m.: The original version of this story did not include a link to the app. The link has since been added.