Village Gamer

Montreal – EA Mobile™ has announced five best-selling titles available immediately for Apple’s iPad. These include SCRABBLE, under license from Hasbro in the U.S. and Canada only, Tetris®, Need for Speed™ SHIFT, Mirror’s Edge, and Command & Conquer™ Red Alert™. In addition to these five titles designed specifically for iPad, gamers can access more than 40 EA titles already available on the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch. Any previously purchased iPhone or iPod touch game can run on iPad in its original size or can be expanded to fill the iPad screen. All games will be available in Europe with the worldwide launch of iPad later this month.

“As one of the leading publishers on the App Store, EA is delivering five games today that take advantage of the unique capabilities of iPad for a broad range of gamers, from the casual to the hardcore, and today’s product slate is just the beginning,” said Travis Boatman, Vice President of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “For example, with SCRABBLE, we have modernized this family favorite game by developing a fun, interactive ‘Party Play’ mode. For our more hardcore fans, Need for Speed SHIFT becomes the ultimate immersive driving experience. We are thrilled to offer EA games with the launch of iPad — a device that is like no other.”

SCRABBLE for iPad spells F-U-N! EA Mobile has created fans’ favorite crossword game, with a fresh interface uniquely designed for iPad that lets players pass ‘n’ play or go solo, in portrait or landscape mode. Social and multiplayer capabilities also enable players to challenge friends on Facebook, or through a local Wi-Fi network. In the all new “Party Play” mode, up to four iPhone or iPod touch players can connect their devices to be used as private tile racks and seamlessly play their words onto the iPad “game board” with a simple flick. And for newcomers, the exclusive “Teacher Feature” shows players the best word choice for the previous play.

Celebrating 25 years and more than 100 million paid downloads, the world famous Tetris game launches on iPad with all-new, high resolution graphics and exclusive features including highly anticipated D-Pad controls which give players the option to play the way they want and stay in control of the game. The iPad version also introduces an all-new “Endless” mode for the ultimate extension in game play. Tetris is a must have for any iPad user.

Need for Speed SHIFT races to the App Store with exclusive features, multiplayer capability, 18 unique tracks and a variety of race modes. Players can feel the adrenaline rush of an immersive experience when they choose from 28 of the fastest, hottest cars and enjoy physics-based 3D graphics optimized for iPad. New driving controls include the addition of visual accelerator and brake pedals, manual shifting, and a rearview mirror to see who’s coming from behind. The most visceral, aggressive simulation racing game on iPad will make hearts pound!

Mirror’s Edge debuts on iPad with a graphically rich, addictive experience, and 14 nail-biting levels of unrivaled 3D action. Unique to iPad is a multiplayer feature which utilizes a split-screen interface, letting players battle against each other face to face in two thrilling modes. Exciting gameplay has players running on walls, sliding down ramps and leaping between rooftops as they out-maneuver enemies in pursuit of their mission.

With more than 30 million units sold across the Command & Conquer franchise, Command & Conquer Red Alert optimizes iPad’s Multi-Touch controls, large screen and high-fidelity graphics to create an expansive experience. Three-finger, Multi-Touch controls let players select and maneuver their armies, manage inventory and make maximum use of camera zooming to navigate battlefields with photorealistic visuals. Players command units across a wide variety of maps and levels with different environmental conditions which add more layers of strategic depth. Players can challenge friends in Head-to-Head multiplayer mode via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth between iPad and iPhone devices.

Montreal – Online scheduling company Tungle Corp., has announced a strategic partnership with leading enterprise cloud computing and Google Enterprise Partner LTech. Through the partnership, LTech will offer the Tungle.me online meeting scheduling application to its clients as an integral part of the LTech cloud migration services and tools.

LTech helps organizations successfully migrate, integrate and operate cloud computing programs as a means of achieving strategic business goals. It offers a range of services and tools to a growing and diverse set of clients – from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies – making LTech a trusted name in enterprise-class cloud computing solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

DOS.  DDOS.  Zombie bots.  These terms likely mean nothing to most people out there, yet the effects of them can actually manage to affect the way most people today do business.

DOS stands for Denial Of Service (it also stands for “Disk Operating System”, but that’s not the definition I’m going to write about here).  It’s a form of attack on pretty much anything Internet Related… although primarily it was used to focus on websites and personal computers.  The basic idea behind a DOS attack was to send so much “garbage” information to a person’s computer or connection, that it would become bogged down by the data and cause legitimate requests to either become extremely delayed, or completely lost while waiting for its chance to get through the line.  This was, understandably so, an extremely effective means of attack on personal computers back when most of the population was using dial-up connections… when a person’s phone line can only carry 6KB a second (to give an idea of that speed, the average picture on a website would have taken 3 to 4 seconds to actually show up on your computer screen), it would not have taken much at all to bog that connection right down, and possibly even disconnect the user.

These days though, no one actually uses dial-up (allowing for the possibility of 4 or 5 people who still haven’t reached civilization, and only have basic phone lines running into their cave), so sending 6KB of data would do nothing more than make your modem light blink for a fraction of a second.  Enter the DDOS, or Distributed Denial Of Service.  It’s pretty much the same as DOS, yet instead of coming from a single source, it’s coming in from multiple sources – anywhere from two to millions, depending on the tactic used and the form of data being transmitted.  Sending 6KB a second from a single source would do nothing to pretty much any user or site these days, but to take that same 6 KB and send it from 2000 computers all at once, you now have 12,000 KB (or 12MB) of data all at once traveling through the wire to your home PC, or through the cable to that website’s server in Texas (or wherever) – something that most connections would choke under, or at the very least experience some extreme lag (lag is the amount of time it takes for a signal to reach you from somewhere else, and vice versa).

As some of you may know, we here at Village Gamer have in the past been the target of multiple DDOS attacks.  Our “ignored sibling” company (that’s Tami’s term) KillaNet Technology was a pet project for a packet kiddie from California for a number of years. Wait – what’s a packet kiddie, right?  A Packet is a way of measuring data traveling through the Internet. A packet kiddie is a less-than-endearing term used to describe a wanna-be hacker who uses someone else’s code to launch attacks on websites and people through the internet.  After much time was spent going through firewall logs, chat logs, data graphs, and so much lost sleep that I actually lost track, he was put before the California State Courts and found guilty for his attacks against us.  It was a small victory in the World of cyber-crime and DDoS perpetrators, but it still showed that justice could be achieved and that it is possible to survive DDoS attacks.

Most sites and users will actually pack up shop if they become a steady target of these attacks.  This is the worst thing someone can do, as it tells the kiddie that what he did is not only alright, but also successful.  Giving in to these people is the worst thing you can do. I attribute it to supplying a drug addict with more pills; they get the thrill from doing it the first time, and you handing over more just tells them that what they are doing is alright.  So how do you combat the attack?  Firstly, you have to keep your cool and ride it out.  There is nothing you can do to stop it from happening once it starts, unless you can actually go to the source and unplug each and every computer that is part of the attack, so no point stressing out over it or raging.  It won’t last forever, consider it a good chance to pull out that favourite book, or watch a movie with the family.  Your fight starts once the attack is over. Read the rest of this entry »