But my skepticism hasn't stopped a Toronto-based company from competing with the big boys. Fbbin.com (short for Free Bargain Bin) launched in September and covers 357 cities in North America. They're making an extra effort to penetrate the Toronto classifieds space and currently show about 3,000 local listings and have about 1,000 Toronto users.

Earlier this week I connected with Dov Markowich, one of Fbbin's founders to find out more about the site. Our Q&A follows:

Out in the suburbs, it's performed really well. On both occasions that I used it to take the 112 West Mall bus to Kipling station, the bus pulled up within 2 to 3 minutes of the time predicted by the app.

But this weekend, my trials with the Dufferin bus proved to be quite different - the times relayed by the app weren't reflective of the reality on the road whatsoever. Predicted streetcar departure times on main routes on Friday evening rush hour also seemed kind of pointless when 8 minutes behind schedule, two streetcars arrived in tandem (a common scenario for most TTC streetcar users).

Ultimately, the app can only be as good as the TTC is at being on schedule. With that in mind, here are some usage tips to help make using the Red Rocket app a little more reliable.

According to the press release, Butterscotch will offer educational and user-friendly instructional shows designed to demystify technology for the average technology consumer. The site is broken down into two sections - original weekly or bi-weekly shows and daily instructional tutorials. One of the former is a new Amber Mac vehicle (embedded above) called The A List.

So far, so good for Byte Club. The style of the shows remind me a bit of Mahalo Daily. They're well edited and the host has the needed spunk. I'll be watching closely though for a bit of surprises beyond the predictable profiles. The local tech scene can sometimes be a bit incestuous with the same people and companies being profiled time and again.

But like all good pranks, this one has come to an end with the website pulling the link to the interactive phone message application down permanently last night.

Luckily, I tried it before it went down... take a listen; timely Halloween prank or annoying telemarketing strategy?

Looking for local election results, I've found the best source for online vote tallies is found using the CBC's interactive map.

Each party has a fairly decent website (if you're interested, Conservative, Green Party, Liberals, and NDP) but this is hardly where to go for critical, unbiased, or generally entertaining political content. Instead I'm trying some of these more clever sites to help me decide where to place my vote.

Fortunately for me, Toronto has a unique, burgeoning tech scene of its very own.

Case in point, WordCamp Toronto: A two-day conference about blogging and the tools to make it happen -- in this case, WordPress. Those two days, I should point out, were this past Saturday and Sunday, so I had to ask myself: Was I ready to spend $25 and give up my weekend at Centennial College's Student Centre @ Progress Campus, to listen to people potentially go on and on about blogs and technology? You bet your bippy, I was!

I distract myself from the fact that the illuminated road sign ahead says "GARDINER MOVING VERY SLOW SOUTH KINGSWAY TO BEYOND DUFFERIN" (on a good day the word VERY is not included in the message). I ask myself questions that I never remember to follow through on, like "how does that sign know where and when there's congestion?"

Upon doing a little digging, I discovered that it's not just helicopters observing from overhead, and cameras scanning the road from utility poles. We also have sensors buried beneath the pavement that detect vehicle movement patterns and automatically report conditions back to the City and the public via road signs and the web and, if you feel that ten buckaroos is worth it, to your iPhone.

Created by grads and current students at York University, the web site is still a work in progress but ultimately plans to feature local artist profiles, info about grants and art focused events, news, reviews and event previews in all arts disciplines from poetry to dance.

Earlier today I connected with Senior Editor Carl Hiehn who filled me in on the Ruckus story and plans for the future. Our Q&A is below.

For one, I'll be there on Sunday talking a bit about this site and we don't use Wordpress. We use Movable Type. And the conversations promise to be about much more than plug-ins, development or software related discussions, but as well big topics like, say, the future of media, the web and the emergence of social networks.

The full schedule is here. It all takes place this Saturday and Sunday (October 4th and 5th) in the Student Centre at Centennial College.

Photos by michaelcummings and Doncha on Flickr