Members of the Chinatown Community Development Center youth groups, spent months faithfully re-creating the San Francisco neighborhood in the world-building video game.  A lot of the re-creations were built from images found on Google Images and Google Maps, where crowded streets of Chinatown often obscure certain details these kids are trying to render; in a way, they’re rebuilding the Chinatown of the recent past to keep its tourist aesthetic in the present.

A partnership between the University of Alberta, City of Edmonton, and Digital Main Street, is helping local businesses create and maintain an engaging online presence. Funded by the City of Edmonton and Western Economic Diversification Canada, the free program connects business owners with a consultant who can work with them for a maximum of 12 hours. Services could include learning how to update Google listings, creating websites or accounts on social media channels, and work on branding. The program will run until September, or when they reach a total of 630 businesses. So far, approximately 400 businesses have signed up.

Founded by Amina Gilani and her husband Thusenth Dhavaloganathan, Sociavore is an all in one e-commerce platform for food and beverage businesses with such features as online ordering, gift card sales, menu managers and reservations.

The Edmonton Public Library is taking some of its operations outside to give the city’s homeless a place to read books and magazines, use a laptop computer or participate in adult classes. Called EPL on the Square, the pilot project has three designated areas in Sir Winston Churchill Square for outdoor library services. The initiative is a collaboration between EPL and the City of Edmonton, was launched five days after the Edmonton EXPO Centre closed as a temporary drop-in day shelter. The city, social agencies and the province have been working on a plan to find hundreds of physically distanced spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic since the EXPO closed.

The Halifax Public Libraries have made changes so working outside is more attractive. This includes pushing the public WiFi out into the fresh air and providing seating to reduce the likelihood of congestion; allowing borrowed electronic devices like Chromebooks and iPads to leave the building. “When they sign that iPad out, they can actually go take that outside now, and they can sit outside and use the free WiFi and use the library’s iPad to access information, or to watch a film or read an ebook,” says Kachen.

Toronto Public Library (TPL), in partnership with Renewed Computer Technology and with support from the Toronto Public Library Foundation, recently launched its Internet Connectivity Kit program. The initiative provides vital connections for some of our city’s most vulnerable residents by equipping them with a free laptop and WiFi hotspot with four months of unlimited data. Participants will keep the laptop and Wi-Fi hotspot at the end of the program.

By giving restaurants the tools to do it themselves, restaurants avoid the hefty commissions of current food delivery apps.