Stories by Austin Blake

Spotify is seeing a surge in French-language streaming, and Quebec is leading the charge. The company’s 2025 Francophone Report, released on Monday, June 16, highlights a wave of local and global interest in French music, podcasts, and audiobooks—much of it powered by Quebec talent. In 2024, over 123 million users around the world listened to...

Walmart Canada says it has cut the prices of hundreds of grocery and household items this year, as the cost of living continues to rise across the country. Since February, the retailer has lowered prices on everyday essentials such as fresh produce, ground beef, cheese, bottled water, toilet paper, shampoo, and more. The company claims...

Apple’s next-gen Siri demo at last year’s WWDC wasn’t just misleading—it may not have actually existed in any meaningful form, according to multiple engineers inside the company. John Gruber of Daring Fireball says he’s spoken with trusted unnamed Apple software engineers off the record who were stunned by the 2024 keynote. Why? Because they’d never...

WhatsApp says it is adding new ways for users to follow creators and businesses—while also opening the door to advertising and paid content on the platform. The new features are rolling out inside the Updates tab, which already houses WhatsApp’s Channels and Status. Meta says there are over 1.5 billion people who use this tab...

Bell Media is ramping up its battle at the CRTC, filing complaints against both Rogers and Telus for what it says is unfair treatment of its rebranded TV channels. In separate filings, Bell alleges its rivals are favouring Rogers’ new Discovery-branded channels while downplaying or sidelining Bell’s own content, which includes renamed versions of former...

Telus-owned Public Mobile has just set an end date for its latest 5G Canada-US-Mexico promo plans. The 5G plans with bonus international minutes are set to end on Monday, June 16, 2025. It’s likely these plans will see international minutes come to an end and likely a price change or revamp. As for Public Mobile’s...

Apple is now targeting a spring 2026 release for its long-delayed upgrade to Siri, which means don’t expect it by the end of the year as previously reported. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. It marks another slip in the Apple's push to modernize Siri and show it...

Rogers has finished a $10 million internet upgrade that brings faster and more reliable service to about 3,000 homes and businesses across Pender, Mayne and Galiano Islands in southern British Columbia, just north of Victoria. The company installed a nearly 8km fibre-optic cable under the ocean to connect the Southern Gulf Islands to the mainland....

Quebec recently introduced a new bill to regulate streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify—but critics say it’s both legally shaky and likely to reduce what Quebecers can actually watch or listen to. Bill 109, introduced by Quebec’s Culture and Communications Minister Matthew Lacombe, aims to boost visibility of French-language content online. But it goes much...

Did you leave Telus-owned Koodo recently? If so, you might have luck with a special ‘winback’ plan to lure you back to the company. A customer who called the Koodo winback line at 1-833-896-0450 was offered a strong promotional deal after switching away from the carrier, as detailed on RFD. The offer includes 40GB of...

Wealthsimple is aiming to flip traditional banking on its head. In a new presentation titled The End of Banking today, the Toronto-based fintech unveiled a sweeping set of new features meant to replace many of the services Canadians rely on banks for — and then some. CEO Mike Katchen told over viewers that “Canadians deserve...

Apple is rolling out new features in its upcoming software updates to help parents better manage how kids and teens use their devices. Starting this fall with iOS 26 and other platform updates, parents will have more tools to ensure their children have age-appropriate experiences from the moment they pick up an Apple device. The...