Village Gamer

Vancouver – Tasktop Technologies, creators of Eclipse Mylyn and the task-focused interface, have announced the release of Mylyn 3.1 and the enterprise ready Tasktop Pro 1.4. New features in Tasktop include the highly anticipated capability to automate time tracking by synchronizing actual time spent working with JIRA, Bugzilla and other popular issue trackers, saving developers from needing to manually create time sheets. Tasktop 1.4 also includes new integrations such as Microsoft Exchange server support, and the ability to work with threaded Outlook and Gmail conversations alongside their issue tracker within the IDE, even while offline. A major new feature in Mylyn, the open source foundation of Tasktop, is integrated wiki markup editing for authoring both tasks and user guides.

“With Mylyn, we have laid the foundation for ALM integrations with the Eclipse IDE.” Said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and Mylyn project lead. “This release of Tasktop demonstrates the breadth of ALM solutions that now support the task-focused interface’s benefits such as offline editing and the focusing features that make it so much easier for developers to work on large systems. It also shows how making tasks central to the IDE enables new developer productivity features such as automatic time tracking. The ecosystem of Mylyn integrations is starting to create a network effect where productivity gains are multiplying as more tools and languages are integrated with the task-focused interface.”

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Voice actors take note! The finalists for the 2009 Voicey Awards, sponsored by Voices.com, have been revealed

Toronto – After much waiting and anticipation, finalists of the 3rd Annual Voicey Awards recognizing voice talent have been announced. Voice talents record various projects for organizations, companies, and institutions requiring voice over services including commercials for radio and television, promos, movie trailers, audio book narration, podcasts, videos, animation, videogames, telephone recordings and more. Theirs are the voices of the unseen narrator, heard but not seen.

The only awards show of its kind to exclusively honor voice-over professionals, the Voicey Awards features 9 categories of significance and prestige, including Best Male Voice, Best Female Voice, Best New Voice, Best Child Voice, Best Teen Voice, Best Voice Team, Best Foreign Voice, Best Personal Branding, and Lifetime Achievement. Similar to awards such as the Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, honoring actors and filmmakers, the Voicey Awards recognize voice actors and voice talents for their contributions and efforts over the year in the voice over industry.

“The finalists for this year’s Voiceys, organized by category, and in no particular order are…”

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Vancouver International Partnering Forum and New Media BC’s Digital Media PopVox Awards return with bigger outreach and expanded programs

Vancouver – New Media BC announced its second annual Vancouver Digital Week will be held May 11-14, 2009 at the brand new Vancouver Exhibition and Convention Centre. Partner events include the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Canada, marking the first time the famed gamers meet up has come to Canada; Cossette West’s Convergence Conference, a digital marketing and social media gathering; and nextMEDIA’s first Vancouver event. New Media BC will present its own Vancouver International Partnering Forum and its People’s Choice PopVox Awards during Vancouver Digital Week. For a full list of events, visit: www.vancouverdigitalweek.com

“British Columbia is a global leader in digital media”, says Kenton Low, President of New Media BC. “Vancouver Digital Week is a partnership of top notch events focusing on digital media that brings attention to the world class talent and companies we have here in BC.”

The Vancouver International Partnering Forum (VIPF), to be held from May 12-13, 2009 was first launched in 2004 by New Media BC and continues as a significant annual event for leading Canadian digital companies to meet international decision makers, to explore partnership opportunities and negotiate deals. The forum attracts high calibre delegates from all over the world including the UK, USA, France, Germany, Korea, Australia, China, Singapore, Thailand and Japan. 2009 ushers in a new two day format allowing participants more networking components and the opportunity to double the number of business meetings during the hand-picked B2B sessions. Companies that have confirmed interest to attend this year’s forum include Google, Disney, Nokia, Rainmaker, Mediasense and Next Level Games. On-line registration is open at: www.vipf.ca

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Congratulations to the team at Quebec City’s Beenox Studio, winner of the Quebec Chamber of Commerce’s Fideides Award for Best Team at a middle to large sized company.   This award recognizes the excellent work atmosphere and human resources policies at Beenox.

Coming on the heels of the Mass Effect2 announcement, Bioware’s Mass Effect has been named to the list of Xbox 360 Classic titles.

QuickPlay Media of Toronto has been named as a finalist in the “Most Innovative Mobile Service” category in the 2009 Andrew Seybold Choice Awards. Established by Andrew Seybold, the Choice Awards recognize products and services that reflect the initiative, ingenuity and influence of wireless industry organizations in business and society. QuickPlay Media is being recognized for its role in powering the Bell Mobility Media Player.

High definition streaming video is now just a click away for online viewers across Canada. CTV.ca, Canada’s online destination for news, sports and entertainment, is bringing high definition video to the computer screens of Canadians with the launch of the CTV HD Beta Player. CTV becomes the first Canadian network to deliver HD quality content on the web.

Think Services has announced an open call for speaker submissions for its 2009 Game Developers Conference Europe (GDC Europe), taking place August 17-19, 2009 at the Cologne Congress East Center in Cologne, Germany. The pan-European conference – dedicated to the art, science and business of creating games – is soliciting session proposals now through April 30th via the official GDC Europe website.

GenieKnows today announced the latest release of its local search engine, GenieKnows 2.0. This newest release gives users the ability to sign up and add their own personal reviews on restaurants and other businesses across Canada and the USA. Business owners can also leverage GenieKnows.com by adding or updating their own business data through a simple business submission form. GenieKnows provides business owners with the opportunity to connect directly to consumers and generate leads and have a visible presence on the Internet as GenieKnows business listings feature prominently in sites such as Google, Yahoo and MSN amongst others.