Category: Canada

Retro Trends: “New and Improved” Telegram Service Launched as a Smartphone App

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Getty Images-Couple-FNT-Small.pngTORONTO – Within days of Belgium closing down its ancient telegram service, (one of the last still operating in the world, with only a handful of customers) a local software developer, Morton Underbraught, has designed and launched an application that replicates the original telegraph model of sending a long-distance message.  His startup company, headquartered in an Etobicoke business park, is setting up a firm to provide old fashioned telegram service to smartphone users worldwide.

“It’s an exciting time,” he said. “Most people today have even never heard the word telegram. “My app is designed to bring the electrical telegraph into the 21st-Century.”

Underbraught seemed surprised to learn that the UK, the U.S.A. and India had all closed down their telegraph systems years ago, citing a dwindling customer market in the age of the Internet and text messaging.

“Wow, that’s news to me,” he said. “I guess I didn’t get that telegram.”

The young software designer was also quick to discount the idea that his app might be just another socially-driven trend with a short shelf life. “Hey, people really value things from bygone days,” he said. “Why else would the scientists be working on reviving extinct species?”

The budding entrepreneur did admit to having to work a few more bugs out of his creation before it gained widespread commercial acceptance. “Of course every smartphone user will have to learn Morse code,” he said.

He also explained that he was having trouble hiring trained telephone operators and was in a hassle with the provincial labour people over the minimum age for telegram boys with bicycles.

Underbraught also shrugged off a negative report from a business analyst that speculated on the commercial viability of adapting and applying a one-hundred and seventy year old technology to today’s modern world.

“Hey, vinyl didn’t die,” he said. “Neither did bell bottoms or Polaroid cameras. Retro is here to stay.” Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: Essential Tennis, BBC News/Getty Images , The Economic Times

Ontario Bans Performances of The Nutcracker Ballet Following Nut Allergy Complaint

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The Nutcracker-FNT-Small.pngTORONTO – The Sugar Plum Fairy has had her wings clipped and her ballet slippers taken away by the Grinch who stole a Christmas tradition. Fans of The Nutcracker will not be able to see it anywhere in Ontario this season due to the heavy hand of the state.

In a bizarre rendition of the movie Footloose, legislators snapped into predictable action in a spectacularly progressive move, even for them, and banned all performances of the iconic ballet in the province, because a ticket holder in a Toronto theatre complained of a nut allergy.

The ban followed the spread of anxiety that escalated to a crisis, when the ticket holder, whose name is not being released for her own safety, looked at her stub in the middle of a performance and shrieked: ”Oh, my God! This isn’t Swan Lake! And I am allergic to nuts!”

The theatre was immediately evacuated and despite the panic there were no serious injuries except for the giant Fabergé egg replica, which came to grief when it was tossed out a second floor window and landed on the concrete sidewalk near the stage door.

A woman also fainted when someone said they had seen a stray peanut fifty feet away under a theatre seat. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance as a precaution, but it turned out to be low blood pressure because she had skipped dinner to see the ballet.

The nutphobia ban remains in place until further notice or until The Nutcracker is rebranded with a name change and its history scrubbed from the records.

Shirley Davidson, a bystander waiting to buy a ticket who was rudely shooed away from the window after it closed, spoke to FauxNews Today about the ban.  She said that although the government restriction was “typically Canadian” she felt that Ontario had been a little overzealous in its approach, not to mention behind the times.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “I mean, nut allergies were so 2009.”  Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: National ballet of Canada , Pinterest