Coupons used to be boring, and a lot of work. Think of all those hours spent at the kitchen table searching for the perfect coupon, then searching for the scissors, and then cutting it out. After all that effort you had to stuff it into your already overstuffed wallet only to have a clerk shoot you a dirty look when you handed it over. Luckily we now have sites like Groupon injecting a little fun into the mix. They have taken something old and tired and turned it into a social force, they’ve actually made couponing fun.

Groupon has spread across the US, Canada and Europe. Marketers both big and small are experimenting with the site, trying to learn what catches the crowds’ attention. Global retailers like Gap are featured one day, and then Bob’s Local Deli the next. It’s clear that there is value in Groupon’s proposition, although not for everyone. But how much do we know about what works on Groupon? We looked a little closer at the results for Vancouver and Toronto to see if there was a pattern worth exploring. While not a statistically significant investigation, we did see some interesting results.

There does appear to be a sweet spot when it comes to the Groupon deal. Those promotions that fell between 50-70% off and were up to $25 had the best sign up rates.

Of course not all offers are the same. The GAP offer back in August was hugely successful, it received 8,964 purchases in Toronto alone, but it is a national retailer with lots of pull. How do other categories besides fashion fare? Most offers fall into one of three categories: activity, food/drink or health/beauty. It appears that local activities are on average more popular than deals in the other main categories of food/drink and health/beauty. Groupon could be viewed as a quasi city guide, encouraging people to get out and explore where they live. Or it could be argued that activities tend to have a wider appeal than a particular restaurant or spa. Whatever the reason, marketers can on average expect between 1,115 and 2,324 purchases in their respective categories.

Groupon is still growing and its users are constantly evolving. The patterns we see today will change rapidly, but for now it appears there are some rough parameters for success. If you keep your price below $25 at the 50-70% off mark, you may come out alright.

If Lady Gaga doesn’t do it for you, and if Justin Bieber makes you want to bury your head in the sand … if you’re looking for good, real music thats being made right in your backyard rather than rolling off the American Idol assembly line, check out The Roncey Boys (from the Roncesvalles area), ’cause they’re about as anti-pop as it gets. This “ragtime-dandy-piano-rock” musical act features Christian Aldo on vocals and Colin Edgley on piano. And that’s it. That’s all. Just two guys singing and playing their hearts out. There’s nothing fake or overblown here and their songs are sure to put a smile on your face.

They’ve been appearing around town at places like the Cloak & Dagger and The Press Club, and they’re building a devoted following. Right now the recordings are pretty, well, basic – integral to the appeal yes – but who knows what can happen down the road? It should be very interesting. (Someone should sign these guys if they’re not signed already – and fast.) So visit them on MySpace and have a listen. Or listen to these. If you like what you hear let ‘em know and keep your eyes peeled for shows in Now and Eye.

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Free Man

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Fun-loving Guy

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I'll Be There

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So Long

The Roncey Boys at McCready Studios

Sometimes being “the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be” just ain’t enough.

Many of you by now have seen our man, El Tabador, but you haven’t seen him like this…

Visit out our new Koodo YouTube channel  for a unique opportunity to “Get in the Ring” with El Tabador himself and make your move against the evil Bloatimus Contractimus.

Also check out “Man Behind The Mask”, a documentary about who El Tabador really is with never-before-seen interviews with the one-and-only Bret “the Hitman” Hart.

Check it out at  http://www.youtube.com/koodo and become fans of El Tabador on Facebook! www.facebook.com/koodo

Its not a lie. I’m late to the IgniteTo party. I know, I know shame on me for not keeping up but alas sometimes there are other things in my life that I need to do than hear smart people talk for 5 minutes about things I could or couldn’t care less about. More often than not, I like to hear interesting stories from smart and clever people, so it was without hesitation that I picked up some tickets to IgniteTo’s third offering.
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It’s been a couple of months since the last one, but we had our second TAXI Scotch Night last night. It was awesome to see lots of new faces out there who were brave enough to try scotch for the first time. Shout out to Gary for drinking it like a man (and not vomiting).

Key learnings of the night? Dalwhinnie is delicious. Té Bheag is unpronounceable (without sounding inappropriate) and tastes like rubbing alcohol mixed with gasoline. Thanks for the “advice” Shearer. You’re a jerk.

See more pics by “reading the rest of the entry.”

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I know this killer PSA has already had its day on the TAXI blog but I thought it deserved a wee bit of back story!  I have been an active committee member of The Boobyball for aproximately 5 years .  It is a fund raising event very close to my heart.  The Save the Boobs video was created to promote The 8^th Annual Boobyball which was held on October 2^nd 2009—where over 1000 people attended! This event was conceived by two close friends of mine, Amanda Blakley and Ashleigh Dempster of The Society Toronto. The event was started in 2002 to support one of Amanda’s very best friends—a vibrant, active young woman, Sarah O’Regan who was diagnosed at 23 years of age with stage 4 breast cancer. In 2008, they approached Rethink Breast Cancer to create a new grant through funds raised via the Boobyball. They were looking for a project that was aligned with Rethink’s goal of filling the gap in services and resources for young women affected by breast cancer.  Thus THE BOOBY INNOVATION GRANT was born. The objective of the Booby Innovation Grant (BIG) is to encourage and provide support services for newly diagnosed young women with breast cancer and to empower young breast cancer survivors.  click here for more info on the Booby Innovation Grant .

To date, the Boobyball has raised just shy of a million dollars for the breast cancer cause. The Save the Boobs PSA has allowed The Boobyball the media attention around the world, which it is so deserving of.

Civilization

This is an installation done for the Standard Hotel by Marco Brambilla and Crush depicting a journey from hell to heaven using stock footage, original and movie footage. This plays in the elevators and it is quite a ride!

Way back some time a co-worker of mine left for NYC to head back to school. Upon his return he spoke of a service called dodgeball that a friend of his had been working on. a SMS based service that would let you check into different places and let your friends know where you were once checked in. I though this service sounded rad and was quite disapppointed that it was only available in select US cities. A short time later some company named Google swept up Dodgeball and then did nothing with it. Some time around SXSW last year the Dodgeballl people were free to do their own thing, Google had shut the doors on Dodgeball. Foursquare came out of the closing of DB and with the gaining momentum of GPS enabled mobile devices Foursquare was a hit at SXSW. A native iPhone app and old school sms were used to get the service going again. My hopes were high that it would come to the north, I kept begging my friend Mark to find out when it was going on.
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Familiar with Google street view, but don’t live in the good ol’ US of A? Be sad no more! Looks like Google have been driving around our fair city snapping photos along the way. You should check it out. Fire up http://maps.google.com and put in an address of interest, then look for the little orange guy above the zoom tools. If hes orange your in luck, not so lucky for people in Bowmanville where he is a lovely shade of grey (means they haven’t scoped out your neck of the woods).

Drag that little dude to a street on the map and you’ll get a nice street level view, complete with virtual roads overelaid on the image with arrows you can click to move down the street. Keyboard arrow control of “driving around” and “click and drag” to look around functionality.

Already are the links pouring in of places mid garbage strike from this past summer. Find a lucky snap from the Google van? Please post a link in the comments.

Last week, for one day only this ad dominated the top masthead of wired.com Funny enough I missed this until somebody tweeted about it since I get my wired news in the form of RSS. Made me realize how much I depend on other sources for cool one day off massive ad buys. In case you missed it, I ran a screen cap of the whole thing. sized down mind you but this sucker was full bleed and loaded extra super fast. Its not bad to look at either.