[ ](http://ottawastart.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ottawafestivals.jpg) Heads up: The Ottawa Festival Network has a brand new web site. It’s a big improvement over the old one – not only is it much prettier to look at, but the listing of festivals is easier to navigate and there’s more info as well. ...

We recently found a great local website called Ask Around. It’s a very useful resource that features a directory of businesses and services in Ottawa that have been recommended by other readers. The site is run by Wendy Stone, who also writes the Ask Around blog , and shares recommendations via Twitter . ...

We recently got this email from Michael McGoldrick, a local cycling enthusiast and the webmaster of the excellent " Cycling in Ottawa/Gatineau " web site: ** ** This is to announce that the web site "Cycling in the Ottawa-Gatineau area" ...

You should read this post from the Weighty Matters blog about a suggestion to post nutritional information along with recipes printed in the Ottawa Citizen: ** ** I wrote a letter to the editor of the Citizen "demanding" that the Citizen publish nutritional information for its Food Section recipes. ...

Eric Darwin has a great post on his West Side Action blog about some of the ideas and issues regarding interprovincial transit in Ottawa/Gatineau . ** ** He was at a transit study meeting earlier this week and made some notes. ...

Check out this video of 17-year-old Ashbury College student Julia Dales, who has qualified for the Beatbox Battle World Championship . We read about this in the Citizen - but unfortunately they didn’t provide a YouTube link. ** Related: ** Ottawa Music Guide

One of our favorite local bloggers, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, asked us to send this note along to our readers. Wondering if you might be comfortable publicizing my blog post from today regarding a need for overweight children for focus groups in Ottawa on food marketing. ...

The Larry O’Brien trial is keeping Ottawa court sketch artists busy. With cameras banned from the courtroom, we’ve seen at least three different sketch artists providing images from the trial for various media outlets in the city. CBC ’s artist ...

Here’s a link to a picture from Ottawa photographer Andrew Knapp titled Ignorance . It’s a mosaic of found items from Knapp’s daily walk: “My daily walk on this trail consists of passing by all of this. This is only a fraction of what was within this ~200m span of trail. ...

We’re jumping the gun here - still a lot of approvals, consultations, and financing to go through - but we thought it would be fun to start thinking about a name for Ottawa’s new tunnel. It needs a good nickname like the Chunnel (England/France) or even Boston’s “The Big Dig”. ...