While most of the information needed to assess a development site in Ottawa is already public, finding that info across zoning maps, planning documents and city databases is another matter.
When the University of Ottawa went into lockdown a few months ago, no one knew what was happening.
“There was no information,” said local tech entrepreneur Scott Annan, whose wife works on campus. “Was there a shooter on the loose?”
I sat down at a small restaurant a few blocks from my hotel, somewhere west of the Bund in a Shanghai neighbourhood where I didn’t see any other tourists. There was a laminated QR code on the corner of the table, so I opened AliPay, scanned the code and a menu translated into English opened on my phone.
For years, Natasha Tardioli kept a spreadsheet tracking romance books. Every novel she finished got its own row. Every book she wanted to read went on a list. She tracked it all year by year and, by the end of each year, she got to see how many books she had read.