Today the Gorilla Cheese food truck parked outside the kitestring studio for lunch! Their team served up some delicious gourmet grilled cheese for our friends, neighbours and community members.

Their menu features 4 sandwiches and a homemade tomato soup! Rumour has it this won’t be the last time they’ll stop at 65 Walnut Street South! Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by, Gorilla Cheese!

To find out where the truck will be stopping next, follow them on Twitter & Facebook.

Ben the Intern is growing a Movember ‘stache in support of Prostate Cancer Canada. To find out what colours and styles Ben the Intern’s moustache will grow to be, sponsor him with a pledge on his MoBro Page here.

Help Ben the Intern grow his ‘stache with by sharing it! Tweet (@Ben_the_Intern) and link on Facebook to encourage others to get involved!

Watch this video: Ben the Intern’s Movember: Day One

It’s time again for kitestring’s holiday  pageant and after party: Christmas Spectacular!

Everyone is invited for all the fun! New this year: A festive holiday pageant!

Come share holiday greetings, gorge on goodies and be entertained by a super fantastic show featuring local artistic talent! Performers will be announced as the date gets closer! Ooo, exciting isn’t it?!

Our goal is to have 100% of the ticket sales go towards benefitting Culture for Kids in the Arts, a wonderful, local non-profit that makes arts education accessible for so many children in Hamilton! Tickets will be available online soon!

One ticket to Christmas Spectacular pays for eight weeks of after school arts programming for one inner city child in Hamilton! Pretty awesome to know how you’re helping out, eh?

This past Sunday, Chris and I attended the Hamilton Hive‘s first annual Hive X conference at the Sheridan Hotel in downtown Hamilton. Bringing young professionals, from all over the city, together to discuss Hamilton’s future for business and creative development, the day started off bright and early but was full of great conversations and seminars.

Some highlights included Ryan McGreal and Peter Topalovic‘s workshop on Transportation. McGreal and Topalovic discussed the importance of urbanization and looked at Hamilton’s streets both past and present. After comparing Hamilton’s transportation to other cities around the world, they opened up the floor for discussion. The room was buzzing as the audience talked of the importance of Light Rail Transit, making Hamilton more walkable and connecting the upper and lower city.

In the afternoon, we attended Ryan Moran’s talk on youth retainment and attraction. The room was similarly abuzz with discussion.

kitestring’s friend and popular social media and technology expert, Amber MacArthur, spoke during the lunch time keynote. Amber Mac’s charming presentation had the audience thinking about their use of social media to leverage online success. Highly entertaining, Amber Mac even mentioned kitestring in her presentation! Such a pleasant surprise!

You can read more about Hive X and Amber MacArthur at The Hamilton Spectator. Overall, it felt great to be a part of many valuable discussions and in a room full of like-minded people – you could almost feel Hamilton changing at the tip of your finger tips.

Just a warning. I’ve had a few people ask me about some random phone calls from a guy in “tech support” telling them that they have a virus, and asking them to let them fix their computer.

HANG UP ON THEM, or string them along for fun (like have them walk you through what they need on your Windows 3.1 computer), but DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT do anything they ask. Just stay away from your computer altogether in case you’re tempted to do anything silly. THIS IS A SCAM. They will take over your computer, and they will steal any and all information you have on it. If you don’t pay for tech support, then you don’t get tech support. Hell, anyone who has tech support knows that even if you do pay, you don’t really get tech support!

Instead, get a good Anti-Virus program. You can buy one like Norton or McAfee. Another great option for Windows is Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s free, and I have found it very good and up to date. Download it here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows/products/security-essentials

Also note, Mac users may be safer, but not completely immune. They can just as easily take over your fancy Apple computer if you let them.

If you know you have a virus, there are other things you can try, like the online scanner at Trend Micro – http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ – You will have to download a small file to run it, but it is good at cleaning. Please note, this is not an anti-virus program, it just tries to clean your computer, so you should always have one of the above programs running too.

Other recommendations:

1. Do not download anything from a source you are unsure of.

2. If you don’t know what you’re doing, stay away from Bittorrents! Yeah, I’m talking to you pirates out there. Whenever a friend asked me to help them with their computer, the first thing I looked for was a program like Limewire, or uTorrent, and once I saw one of those, I knew instantly that I was in trouble. Most of the time I just wiped their computer to teach them a lesson.

3. These hackers and spammers may be bad people, but they are extremely clever. NEVER click on a link in an email that seems suspicious. PayPal will NEVER email you with an e-mail that says “Dear Customer”. If they do email you personally at all, they know your full name. Apple is also not giving away thousands of iPads because Steve Jobs died. A good trick is to hover over any links in an e-mail, you should see the link appear at the bottom of your e-mail program. The link should be some weird name (note, it could have the name of the institution in it, like http://paypal.thisisascam.com, the actual website is the last part, the “paypal” part means nothing). Be smart about things, use common sense, and remember, nothing is free.

4. Spammers and Hackers feed on a variety of things: ignorance, trust, greed, fear, so keep those in mind when you get anything in your e-mail or over the phone.

5. Never give out personal information, and DON’T keep your passwords in a text file on your desktop called “mypasswords.txt”. You can use a password manager program like some of them seen here: http://lifehacker.com/5529133/five-best-password-managers - I use one called Pocket, that syncs with my phone over DropBox, so that I have them anywhere I go.

6. Use common sense.

Has anyone else gotten this phone call yet?

I only get to see my immediate family three to four times a year. They live in Kingsville, a small town outside of Windsor. Basically, every Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and once in the summer. I wish I could see them more, but I work a lot and they’re far away. You do the math.

The last time I was home I was chatting with my brother and he seemed a little upset. I asked what was getting his panties in a twist and he blurted, “You haven’t even asked me how I’m doing in school!”

My brother started school in September,  at Fanshawe in London. And he was right. I hadn’t asked him how he was doing. Actually I didn’t ask him anything about his life. Nothing about his girlfriend, his new job or the cat he just adopted. I felt horrible. I apologized. He forgave. But I still felt kind of crappy. What kind of brother was I? I’m a caring person. Sometimes a little self centred (maybe more than a little) but I still care!

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I actually had time to think about what had happened. I figured out the culprit to my jerkiness. His name: Facebook.

I knew exactly how my brother was doing. I knew he loved school. That he and his girlfriend were enjoying their new apartment in London. And I knew very well that my brother didn’t care for the behavior of his cat. I knew all this from his status updates. I knew what he was up to, but how was he to know I knew all this. I use my feed as a daily personal paper. I don’t “like” everything. And I don’t “comment” on everything. But, for the important people in my life, I check all updates.

I love facebook (not as much as twitter) and I use it for my business. It’s a great tool that works well to stay connect to my friends and clients.  I’m also happy I can use it to keep track of the family I love but only get to see 3 times a year. I can’t imagine my life without it. But it doesn’t replace the phone call. Doesn’t replace the hand written letter or card. And it sure doesn’t replace a conversation with my little brother, especially when he’s sitting right in front of me.

I’m gonna call my brother today to see how he is doing. Right after I check my farmville crop.

JUST KIDDING!!!!

Chris

It’s been a busy fall here at the studio. Many new branding projects!. So much so, we haven’t had time to update our portfolio. Sad face alert. : ( But it’s in the works. We thought we would give you a sneak preview on some of the brands we have been crafting. Take a look at some of the logo identities below. More updates to come! Happy face alert. : D

Hey, everyone! The whole team at kitestring creative branding studio just got back from a great morning of bisque painting fun at Crock A Doodle in Dundas! We each painted another team member a mug inspired by their personality! So much fun!
(Brandon and I are obviously stoked about getting ready to paint^)

(Margaret did a wicked job of a #fail whale for Chris!)

(Josh and Ben had a great time, but were kind of sad to leave)

So, the mugs are going to go in Crock A Doodle’s kiln and then the colours become really vivid and the pottery is glazed, so what we’ve painted can be used to drink coffee at the studio! Awesome, eh? Crock A Doodle has all kinds of pottery to paint, like doggie bowls, huge serving platters, and Christmas decorations. All the more reason to to head back again soon!

kitestring loves Twitter as much as Ben the Intern loves Ketchup Chips. That’s a lot.

Chris from kitestring is going to be presenting at the Tweetstock Social Media Networking Conference in Brantford on Thursday, November 10th.

All the twitteratti will be there including a surprise virtual appearance by the entire kitestring gang! I was going to tell you more about it, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise!

Atomic Spark did a wicked job on the above promo video featuring a duet with Chris and Ben the Intern in front of the kitestring studio.

Tweet, tweet!

This past Saturday, some of the kitestring team took in the soulful voice and rockin’ guitar pickin’ of Matt Anderson. We loved every second of Matt’s rock, coutry and blues performance! Plus, he sounded that much more fantastic backed by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra!

Some of our favourite tunes included One Size Never Fits and his cover of The Impressions’ song, People Get Ready in which he had the whole audience ooo-ing, aw-ing, toe tappin’ and singing along!

Matt Anderson performed with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their 2011/2012 Pops Series. The Series continues next month when Chantal Kreviazuk joins them to sing some of her most popular hits! For more dates to see the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra check them out here.

And did you know, if you’re under 30 you can see the HPO for only $10 with their HPOgo program! Go Check them out!