If you’re looking to explore the city of Toronto you’ll find a fantastic guide within App Central. Each week I take a mobile app and test it out in the wild. Being based in the city, we’ve done all the research in finding cool places and exceptional people to partner with and are happy to share that list with you for your own adventures. Be they as fun and memorable as my own.

 

Toronto Music Garden

Episode One

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Stretched along the city’s harbourfront is this wonderful garden complex designed by cellist Yo Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy. It’s called a music garden because it’s inspired by Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007, but visit it during the summer months and you’ll find it full of birds singing and bees, blissful in working the flowers.

During the winter it falls silent and picturesque, making it the ideal location for my afterlife review of Papa Sangre, a video game made up completely of sound.

www.harbourfrontcentre.com/thewaterfront/parks/musicgarden.cfm

 

Canadian Air & Space Museum

Episode Two

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Situated within the original home of de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Inc., this massive space is filled with historic airplanes spanning between the 1920’s and 1960’s. It makes for a very unique museum experience when the exhibits are so large and you’re allowed to get so very close. From carefully crafted wood-and-fabric biplanes to the majestic might of modern bombers, each aircraft has a presence that will simply floor you.

Note: I was given special permission to climb up onto the wing of the Canadian CT-114 Tutor Snowbird after special preparation and precautions were taken in order to test out the fitness-themed app Push-Up Wars. Please do not attempt this yourself.

www.casmuseum.org 

 

Ontario Science Centre

Episode Three

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A veritable hive of engaging fun, the Ontario Science Centre is a multi-level complex of hands-on experiences, interactive landscapes, and cool social programs. In recent years they have turned heads with a constant supply of blockbuster exhibits including Harry Potter, Mythic Creatures, and Whales. They’re also home to an IMAX Dome theatre and Toronto’s only Planetarium.

The Ontario Science Centre was kind enough to let me bury myself within their Nature Unleashed exhibit to test out the disaster-based app Rescue Me Phone.

www.ontariosciencecentre.ca 

 

Earth Rangers

Episode Four

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Offering mesmerizing encounters with animals whose species are suffering habitat loss, the Earth Rangers and their animal ambassadors perform live shows for kids that help explain the important issues concerning bio-diversity. For kids it’s a memorable chance to get up close and personal with exotic animals including a Serval Cat, Pine Martin, and even a Bald Eagle.

They often travel to schools and community events, but we caught up with them at their permanent studio at the Royal Ontario Museum where Cosmo the Ring-tailed Lemur was kind enough to participate in our test of high-speed photography app Muybridgizer.

www.earthrangers.com 

 

High Speed Imaging Inc.

Of course an iPhone’s camera can only go so far, and so our challenge with Cosmo was given a great educational boost (not to mention a wow factor) thanks to Jeff Gregg who captured Cosmo’s lemur jumps using professional-grade camera systems. Click here to watch his video gallery of cool high-speed movies.

www.hsi.ca 

 

The Golf Lab

Episode Five

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One of the world’s leading golf performance analysis facilities, The Golf Lab is built upon the idea that the best way to understand your swing is to simply let the numbers do all the talking. A 5-camera system gets the angles, a force plate captures your footing, while a Doppler radar system and a 3D body motion capture system help you understand what’s right and what’s wrong with your motion. The results are handed to you simply on a USB key or e-mailed to your mobile phone. They’ve taken the systems used by the professionals and made them accessible to the public.

They were very generous to let me bring in what is, in a way, a competing product with Tiger Woods: My Swing for comparison.

www.thegolflab.ca 

 

L’Unità

Episode Six

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A much-loved Toronto trattoria, L’Unità’s mixture of osteria and wine bar has a comfortable rustic feel and the food, handmade pastas and fine grilled meats, is sweetened by the owners flair for being engaging hosts. As a geek I love the Edison light bulbs, Bugatti posters, and old work machines. Their cannolis are hands-down, without doubt, the best in the city.

Most Chefs aren’t eager to discuss the calorie count of their menus and so I’m very grateful L’Unità helped us test out MealSnap, which can tell you how many calories a dish has just by scanning a photo of it.

www.lunita.ca 

 

Casa Loma

Episode Seven

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Home to secret passages, ghost stories, and many eccentricities of a once-rich lifestyle, Casa Loma is indeed a castle of impressive proportions. Expect to spend most of a day just walking through its many chambers, towers, and underground tunnels thanks to the shocking level of access the current caretakers offer. Every nook andcranny is open to your curiosity, it’s a wonder some people don’t go missing, but then maybe that’s where the ghosts come from.

We couldn’t have chosen a better place to test out the architectural app MagicPlan, which can create room plans using your camera.

www.casaloma.org 

 

Capsule Music

Episode Eight

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If you love guitars there’s no better hang-out than Capsule Music, a small, but packed shop specializing in collectible instruments and a repair lab devoted to making wood and steel sing. Their wall memorabilia is famous for covering every inch, including the ceiling, and their experts are loved by both fans and rock stars alike.

It turned out to be the ultimate place to test out Microsoft’s panoramic app Photosynth. You can view the results here.

www.capsulemusic.com 

 

Mountsberg Raptor Centre

Episode Nine

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A beautiful long-term care facility for Canadian birds of prey that have been affected by habitat loss, the Mountsberg Raptor Centre has to be seen to be believed. It’s an impressive wildlife complex that offers nose-to-beak encounters for kids and adults. Book an appointment with them and you can enjoy the unforgettable privilege of having an owl rest upon your forearm. Just remember, the birds have sensitive eyes, so no flash photography.

The staff are among the coolest people you’ll ever meet and couldn’t have been better in helping us explore Science Spy, an app for recording and sharing discoveries in the wild.

www.conservationhalton.on.ca/ShowCategory.cfm?subCatID=1455

 

 

ASIMO the Humanoid Robot

Episode Ten

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Honda’s humanoid robot has come to represent science’s efforts to duplicate human motion through robotics. ASIMO isn’t a native to Toronto (its Honda’s ambassador from Japan) and has only made two visits, but both are the kind of blockbuster events offered by the Ontario Science Centre as I mentioned above. Honda’s website offers the fascinating story on science’s battle with creating machines that can walk like humans, well worth the visit.

In 2002 I was allowed to do something very rare with Honda’s multi-million dollar robot, to dance with ASIMO (now against their security policy) and was happy to join up again to try out their own Run With ASIMO app which pits your ability to walk against the robot’s.

asimo.honda.com 

 

Chevrolet Camaro 2010 SS

Episode Eleven

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The Camaro may have been overshadowed by the Mustang during the late 60’s, but it’s made a fierce head-turning comeback recently and proved to be the ideal muscle car for us to put Dynolicious through its paces. The auto app uses the iPhone’s sensors to record performance analytics which we used to test speed, braking power, and lateral-Gs.

I can’t responsibly reveal where we did our tests, nor can I reveal much about our mystery driver, Brad Muir (although if you work for the police, feel free to run his plates), but to say that if you get the chance to ride in a modern Camaro, take it, and please, please, only use auto apps under safe conditions with an experienced driver.

www.chevrolet.com/camaro-family 

 

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Episode Twelve

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If your health should take a turn for the worse and you end up at Sunnybrook Hospital, know that you couldn’t be in better hands. Of course you could just as easily find yourself a visitor for educational reasons as the centre is a leader in medical research who recently made headlines for using the Xbox 360’s Kinect sensor system as an imaging solution in the operating room.

For our exploration into the transfer of patient MRI’s onto mobile devices through apps like Mobile MIM, we couldn’t have been better guided by their staff who went beyond expectations in helping us safely record an MRI session without taking the machine away from a patient that needed it.

www.sunnybrook.ca 

 

Toronto Humane Society

Episode Thirteen

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Once you’ve been through the adoption centre experience - the luxury of the visiting lounge, the cat gymnasium, and the various care systems the staff have for the animals - you’ll be hard pressed to understand why anyone would ever buy a cat at the mall. It just seems so cheap in comparison. Visit, play, volunteer to bottle a kitten or take a dog for a walk, it’ll make your year.

We went to them with a very crazy idea, to test out the feline-oriented apps at GamesForCats.com, and not only did they not call us insane, but they helped us find the serious value in the exercise. Remember to give your cat a treat a play session, every hunt must have its reward.

www.torontohumanesociety.com 

 

Jungle Cat World

Episode Thirteen

It may look small from the highway, but once you pass through the secluded gate you’ll find a wildlife park of impressive diversity. Rabbits scamper across lush garden green lawns, peacocks roam the hills in confidence, and lemurs sun bathe in absolute bliss. The enclosures are large, landscaped with fauna to match the animals within who all are healthy, active, and have fully developed personalities.

The staff are incredibly knowledgeable and very active in conservation. They immediately understood the serious application for our crazy experiment to bring iPads to big cats, seeing it as an intriguing animal engagement challenge and found the results just as interesting as we did.

Please note: We had special permission to get as up close and personal with the animals as we did, taking several planned precautions, please don’t try to duplicate our tests yourself.

www.junglecatworld.com 

 

GEEP

Episode Fourteen

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While you won’t be able to visit GEEP in person yourself, there’s no reason why your old computer or smartphone can’t. The recycling facility has become Canada’s most environmentally responsible processor of end-of-life electronics, using high-speed shredders to keep their staff from handling unsafe materials and making sure that none of the material finds its way into a landfill.

We found the floor staff at GEEP very knowledgeable, professional, and management to be surprisingly candid and open to all of our questions.

If you have an old cellphone you’d like to recycle, try Bell’s Blue Box Program which is free, accepts any brand, and donates all proceeds to WWF Canada.

www.geepinc.com