Village Gamer

Netflix has made it easier and more fun for Canadian kids and families to instantly watch a huge range of kid-friendly TV shows and movies with its new “Just for Kids” experience. Although the “Just for Kids” experience is currently available only via the Netflix website, similar functionality will come to the Wii, iPad, Xbox, Playstation and many other devices over the next year.

Members in Canada can now click on the “Just for Kids” tab at the top of the Netflix home page and find a newly-designed section featuring content perfect for children 12 and under. Kids will now be able to click on an icon of their favorite characters – from “SpongeBob SquarePants” to “Dora The Explorer”, and from “Arthur” to “Pingu” and “Thomas and Friends”- and find a deep selection of great TV shows and movies featuring that character.

Kids, parents and caregivers will also be able to scan through row after row of movies and shows organized by easy-to-understand genres like superheroes, princesses, dinosaurs and girl power, featuring clear and simple descriptions of the plot of each title. To develop these selections, Netflix used ratings and reviews from Common Sense Media, a non-profit provider of independent, trustworthy ratings, reviews, and information to help parents make great media choices.

“Kids discover and categorize movies and TV shows differently than adults,” said Todd Yellin, Netflix Vice President of Product Innovation. “Just as we have revolutionized the way people find the movies and shows they want to watch when and how they want to, we’re making it easier for kids and parents alike to have the best possible Netflix experience.”

Netflix designed the “Just for Kids” experience in recognition that kids are among the most ardent consumers of TV shows and movies. Almost half of the 25 million Netflix members in the United States and Canada have instantly watched at least two movies or shows made for kids in the last 90 days.

“Family movie night is a great way for parents to connect with their kids in our 24/7 media culture, and over the last few years, Netflix has recreated the concept, bringing kids and parents together around great, quality entertainment on multiple platforms,” said Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, president and COO, Common Sense Media. “We’ve partnered with Netflix for many years and our work informs the overall quality and scope of the “Just for Kids” experience, helping parents to make great media choices for the entire family.”

Heavy-hitting investors and business elite from across North America heard pitches from Canada’s youngest entrepreneurs yesterday, and are evaluating the first business ventures created through game-changing program, The Next 36. An initiative supported by more than 50 Canadian business leaders – including Galen Weston, Paul Desmarais Sr. and Jim Pattison as founding patrons – The Next 36 aims to transform the country’s most promising undergraduates into high-impact entrepreneurs and nation builders.

“For years, I have been looking for the best way to help young entrepreneurs,” explains Anthony Lacavera, a director of The Next 36 and Chairman and CEO of Globalive. “The Next 36 is the perfect formula.”

Yesterday’s ‘Venture Day’ marked the culmination of the program’s inaugural year. The accomplished young co-founders (aged 19 to 23) spent the last eight months working in teams and together with CEO mentors, top business school faculty, and others to seize opportunities in mobile application technology. These ventures include mobile apps relating to local bartering, customer feedback, exercise rewards, flirting and virtual clothing.

Monday’s graduation ceremony featured the presentation of three highly-coveted awards. The 2011 Valedictorian, selected by his peers, was David Berkal, a Peace & Conflict Studies graduate from The University of Toronto. Emily Dimytosh, who is entering her final year in Commerce at Queen’s, was chosen by the program’s co-founders as winner of the Satchu Prize, named in honour of Founding Chair, Reza Satchu.  “In terms of raising the bar, The Next 36 has taken me from varsity high jump to Olympic pole vaulting,” states Dimytosh.  The recipient of the Outstanding Venture Award was Tradyo, a swapping application that allows users to buy & barter on a local level through their smartphone.  Tradyo’s co-founders come from McGill, Western, Guelph and Toronto.

“Canadian prosperity depends on our ability to generate more seasoned entrepreneurs to drive this country forward.” said Claudia Hepburn, co-founder and executive director of The Next 36. “Entrepreneurs who see opportunities where others see challenges have the ability to change our community and our economy. We can’t wait to see how they build on this experience in the real world.”

As the first cohort of The Next 36 makes plans to forge ahead with their businesses – some while juggling their studies – the program is gearing up to welcome its next wave of students. The application process is open until October 7, 2011.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has given the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) permission to continue broadcasting analog over-the-air television signals in 22 markets until August 31, 2012. This decision gives the CBC an additional year to find solutions for viewers who may lose access to its over-the-air signals after the transition to digital television.

In 2007, the CRTC set August 31, 2011 as the deadline for broadcasters to complete the transition from analog to digital television. The transition is mandatory in 28 Canadian markets, including provincial and national capitals, metropolitan areas with populations greater than 300,000, and markets served by more than one local television station.

The CBC operates 25 local stations in mandatory markets whose over-the-air transmitters will be converted to digital in time for the deadline. The CBC also operates 22 analog transmitters that rebroadcast its stations’ signals into other communities that are also considered mandatory markets, but does not intend to replace them with digital transmitters. For example, under the CBC’s current transition plans, the signal of its English-language television station in Montreal would not have been available in Quebec City after the transition.

As the national public broadcaster, the CBC has a unique mandate to serve the entire Canadian population. A one-year extension is necessary to guarantee over-the-air viewers in some mandatory markets do not lose access to the signals of CBC television stations and have sufficient time to find alternate means of accessing them.

The CRTC will examine the CBC’s long-term plans for its analog over-the-air transmitters during the June 2012 public hearing to renew its radio and television licences.

Following the transition to digital television, the government has reserved channels 52 to 69 for public safety and advanced wireless services. The CBC must vacate these channels by the August 31, 2011 deadline by either moving its signal to a lower channel on the dial or switching to a low-power transmitter.

Viewers who watch local television stations using rabbit ears or an outdoor antenna may experience some change in the way they receive television signals. For more information, please see Canada’s Transition to Digital Television.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has given the CBC permission to continue operating 22 analog over-the-air transmitters beyond the August 31, 2011 deadline for the transition to digital television. The transmitters, which serve markets where the transition is mandatory, rebroadcast the programming of CBC television stations located in other cities.

Below is a list of the local television stations and the transmitters that rebroadcast their programming:

Calgary Scientific has announced a strategic partnership with the CyberSKA project. This project provides scientists and researchers around the world a platform to access and collaborate on the massive data sets coming from newer and bigger radio telescopes. CyberSKA is using PureWeb® from Calgary Scientific to web- and mobile-enable the astronomy viewer so the data can be analyzed without being moved and the results can be accessed anywhere in the world, on any device. It also allows researchers on different sides of the globe to interact and collaborate in real-time on the same information about the origin, structure and evolution of the universe.

“PureWeb provides the ability to analyze large multi-dimensional data sets from modern telescopes through our web portal without having to download these enormous files,” said University of Calgary Professor Russ Taylor, Director of the Institute for Space Imaging Science and CyberSKA Project Leader. “This eliminates the need to move these massive amounts of data to individual users, and provides the unique ability for researchers across the globe to collaborate with each other on the analysis of these data using whatever device they have – whether a desktop, laptop or tablet.”

Traditional approaches will not be able to process and move this massive amount of data as output will be in the range of 60GB per second – totaling terabytes in hours and petabytes in days. This includes the Square Kilometer Array – an international multi-billion dollar project to build the largest radio telescope in the world. With a total collecting area a million square meters (one square kilometre), it will be 50 times more sensitive and 10,000 times faster for imaging the sky than the most powerful telescopes today. Information collected will be shared around the world creating huge technical challenges.

“The partnership with the CyberSKA project is another example of how Calgary Scientific continues to demonstrate that PureWeb is a powerful, enabling platform that can uniquely address the most challenging issues related to high performance cloud computing. This project faces the ‘big data’ issue on an extreme scale and PureWeb is the answer,” emphasizes Byron Osing, CEO and Chair of Calgary Scientific. “PureWeb also maintains the highest degree of security as the data is never copied or moved across any network to the user. This is true whether it is a single user or a large group collaborating in real-time with the same data.”

PureWeb is the first software platform that allows multiple users to interact with the same instance of an application simultaneously. This new capability allows geographically distributed users to access any PureWeb enabled application and collaborate with other users in real-time. PureWeb allows existing software applications to be used in new ways and places, for less time and money, while maintaining high performance and security.

Canadian funding for the CyberSKA project is provided by CANARIE, Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network.  Within Alberta, CyberSKA partners also include Cybera, a not-for-profit organization that spurs and supports innovation, for the economic benefit of Alberta, through the use of cyberinfrastructure.

A team of seven students in the Masters of Digital Media program at The Center for Digital Media have come together to create an all-new physics-based puzzle game for iPads and iPhones within an ambitious timeline of 4 months. These students have also created Digital Touch Games, a brand new Vancouver independent studio. Crash Craving is their debut title.

Crash Craving is designed with casual gamers and non-gamers in mind, making the game easy to play but difficult to master. The game features a lovable orange chameleon fittingly named Mango. Mango is in search for food and he comes across jars of flies in a… French Cafe? That’s a classy meal right there and Mango knows how to get it. If you enjoy wreaking havoc in a fancy cafe by swinging like Tarzan with a super long sticky tongue, you’ll love this game. There are 50 levels to play through which is sure to provide hours of fun for just a single dollar on the iTunes app store.

The Masters of Digital Media program is a professional degree designed to be a practical program in which students are set up to work for real industry projects with real clients as well as some high profile companies like Electronic Arts and Microsoft. On the last semester of the 20-month program, the students are given the chance to pitch their own project ideas to the directors of the school as well as industry judges in the style of Dragons’ Den to gauge the viability and profitability of what is being proposed. Making sure that they get a shot at creating a game from concept through development and production, these students endeavoured to have a marketable, polished game within a semester’s time.

Intertainment Media Inc. has announced that its social media, real time, experiential communications platform Ortsbo has begun beta testing of its Google Android platform for smartphones and mobile devices. This complements the recent market release of Ortsbo for iPhone (“Ortsbo 2Go” or “O2Go”), which in its first week of release received the highest level of product review, 5 Stars, from users. Ortsbo for Android, as part of the Ortsbo 2Go mobile suite, is expected to launch in the Android Marketplace by mid September.

The launch of Ortsbo’s Android beta testing is the latest in a series of mobile solution developments from Ortsbo as it continues to meet its milestone objectives for mobile offerings during Summer 2011. In addition to mobile solutions for Apple and Android, Ortsbo reported earlier that it has filed a patent for its “O2O” mobile platform for portable computing devices and expects that that product line will also be unveiled to consumers over the next 60 days.

With the purchase and integration of Commobility, Ortsbo is currently developing additional secured IP mobile and portable computing technology initiatives, including solutions for multi-lingual communications, location based and proximity communications solutions as well as additional device solutions for Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Details of these applications will be released as they become available.

The much anticipated arrival of the IKEA Catalogue landing on five million doorsteps across Canada is finally here. This year’s Catalogue, like the 60 before it, is full of smart solutions, inspiring rooms and insights into life at home. From the leading home furnishing experts in the world, comes a handbook to maximizing space at home.

The 2012 IKEA Catalogue will not only be delivered to homes across Canada, it will also be available through several digital channels. The complete Catalogue will be available on the IKEA Canada web site as of today. An IKEA catalogue iPhone  and Android application are also available today, with the addition of an iPad application in the Fall. IKEA is also introducing for the first time a Catalogue Widget that will allow bloggers and other websites to host the Catalogue (I couldn’t find a link for it, so this feature may not yet be live). Shoppers can also order a print copy of the Catalogue to be delivered via snail mail.

“No matter what size our homes are, none of us ever seem to have enough space,” says Kerri Molinaro, President, IKEA Canada. “There is no doubt that a small space requires creative thinking, but even big spaces can be challenging as our lives grow and we have more things to store.”

In the 2012 catalogue, readers will find a strong focus on the IKEA commitment to create a better life at home through:

Beautiful Design:

• Graphic patterns add interest and texture. Toss in a little style with the new EIVOR cushion (page 23, $12.99)
• Nothing says luxury like a gorgeous quality sofa. Sit back and relax in the new TIDAFORS sofa (page 25, $699)
• The new VARMLUFT paper shade (page 45, $5) is perfect for creating a light and airy feeling
• Celebrate the softer side of style with the new OPPDAL bed frame (page 170, $349/Queen with drawers). It is perfect for leaning back and reading a good book
• The shape of the ISALA series (page 71, coffee table $249) is inspired by older Swedish furniture, with modern twists like thicker legs

Smart Design:

• Building BILLY bookcases (page 27, $69.99) around a window or above a door is one way to use overlooked wall space and fit more in your room
• Double duty products that deliver more function such as the KIVIK sofa and seating series (page 57, loveseat and chaise $1179) offer built-in storage in addition to durability and good looks
• MELLTORP dining table (page 99, $39.99) goes from compact to ready-for-friends when paired next to the NORBERG wall-mounted drop-leaf table
• Combine traditional looks in a cozy workstation – HEMNES secretary with add-on unit (page 245, $275 for grey/brown) complete with built-in cable management for collecting cables and cords out of sight – that fits right in with your living room

Sustainable design:

• Innovative production techniques call for fewer resources and help reduce waste.  The materials for STUVA storage boxes (page 275, storage bench with box $119.00 each) are produced using the innovative “board on stiles” production method, making them not only faster to manufacture but also lighter in weight, resulting in fewer shipments and more savings passed along to the customer
• Speaking of savings, our new expanded LED lighting range, including our TIVED work lamp (page 347, $29.99), help reduce household energy use (LED lighting is about 85% more efficient than incandescent lighting)

Canada ended the second quarter of 2011 on a high note as one of the top 10 countries for corporate technology mergers and acquisitions, with numbers increasing from 21 deals in Q2 2010 to 30 in Q2 2011, according to Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update.

“Average global deal value skyrocketed to US$194 million in the second quarter of 2011, and the numbers here at home were just as strong,” says Tony Ianni, leader of corporate finance in Ernst & Young’s Transaction Advisory Services practice. “Canada saw the second-highest number of cross-border deals, behind the United States — an uptick in volume and value we’ve seen developing over the last several quarters.”

Big-ticket deals drove the total value of global tech M&A to US$52.1 billion in Q2 2011, nearly doubling the deal value from an already strong first quarter. Global cross-border deal volume also increased 16% from Q1, while domestic deals declined by 11%. Not only that, cross-border deals showed a 32% increase over Q2 2010 numbers.

The total value of global deals with disclosed values increased by 92%, from US$27.1 billion in Q1 to US$52.1 billion in Q2 — a 69% increase from Q2 2010 (US$30.8 billion). While 61% of all disclosed value was concentrated in the top 10 deals, there was also significant deal-making strength at the opposite end of the spectrum, in deals of less than US$100 million.

This surge was powered by industry consolidation and ongoing disruptive innovation in the following areas:

• Cloud computing
• Smart mobility
• Internet and mobile video
• Smart grid and solar energy

“New waves of innovation, especially around smart mobility, cloud computing and social networking, are driving large and small deals across the globe,” says Ianni. “Not only did Q2 have the highest quarterly average since the first quarter of 2000, it also had the 20th-largest global technology deal ever by dollar value.”

Technology companies that continue to stockpile cash will have the flexibility to act when strategic M&A opportunities arise. Cash and investments held by the sector’s top 25 companies grew to US$591 billion by the end of Q2 2011 — an 18% year-over-year increase from US$499 billion at the end of Q2 2010.

“Interest in the technology sector continues to rise as information technology evolves into an increasingly valuable component of all products and services,” says Ianni. “But the question on everyone’s mind is whether deal-making will lose momentum or continue to overcome increasing divergence between buyers and sellers over valuation, geopolitical unrest and global debt issues.”

Mobilicity has introduced the industry’s first $25 unlimited talk, text and data plan, as well as steep savings on popular Android smartphones to make going back to school more affordable and enjoyable. The new student plans, available for a limited time at Mobilicity stores in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary as well as authorized dealers across Canada, underscores Mobilicity’s commitment to provide Canadians with a smarter, more affordable way to use wireless.

“With Mobilicity, Canadians can talk, text and use data like a king on a student’s budget,” said Chief Customer Officer Anthony Booth. “Students can afford to get everything they need from a mobile device and still have enough money to enjoy a rich life on campus all year long.”

Mobilicity’s Student Plan is a great deal for anyone who wants to stay connected with friends and family without breaking the bank. It offers unlimited local calling, unlimited local text and picture messaging, unlimited data, caller ID and unlimited Mobilicity-to-Mobilicity calling for only $25 a month.

For students looking for the most bang for their buck, the company launched the Ultimate Unlimited Back-to-School Plan, which includes all of its $25 Student Plan features plus unlimited North American long distance, unlimited Canada/US text and picture messaging, unlimited global text messaging, voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding and 3-way calling – all for only $40 a month.

In the spirit of sending students back to school in style, Mobilicity is also offering up to $200 off select handsets, such as high-end Android smartphones, like the Samsung Nexus S and HTC Panache. With these savings, consumers can also purchase a name-brand Android smartphone for under $100.

“Any student can look like a big shot on campus,” said Booth. “With savings of up to $200 on incredible Mobilicity smartphones, like the Samsung Nexus S and HTC Panache, buying an Android is well within reach of Canadian students.”

The Samsung Nexus S (now $349) combines the latest hardware with the fastest, most powerful version of Android to deliver a responsive and fluid experience all in a uniquely slim profile that fits comfortably in your hand. The HTC Panache (now $299) packs a host of unique features, based on the HTC Sense user interface, which allows users to customize, stream contacts’ social network updates and instantly silence the phone ringer with a quick flip.

The Motorola Spice (now $99) is a sleek Android smartphone with its sliding QWERTY keyboard and large multi-touch screen with multi-touch support allowing pinch-to-zoom and fluid flick navigation making it super easy to send messages on the fly. The Samsung G-Touch (now $99) is an outstanding messaging device and features a full touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard making texts messages simple and intuitive.

Following a successful preview, The City of Calgary today announced the official launch of the new search-based calgary.ca. The website, which uses Microsoft SharePoint and Google search technology, was available for public preview from August 8 to 12. During the preview process, Calgarians were able to test the new site by typing in keywords to find relevant information. Public feedback during the preview process was exceptionally favourable with very few problems reported.

“We were incredibly impressed with the amount of feedback we received. Comments on social media indicated this was a move in the right direction for the City of Calgary” said David Watson, General Manager of Planning, Development and Assessment and Project Sponsor.

“Microsoft is pleased to be part of Calgary’s long term strategic vision to deliver innovation to its employees, citizens and businesses,” said Mike Tremblay, Vice President, Public Sector, Microsoft Canada. “We congratulate The City on the launch of calgary.ca and are delighted that Microsoft SharePoint 2010 was selected as the unified platform to help streamline its government services and foster collaboration between Calgary and its citizens and local businesses.”

Through a competitive bidding process, The City of Calgary hired Infusion Development to complete development work on the website. “The goal from the onset was to ensure that citizens could find information and services quickly and easily.” said, Bill Baldasti, VP Canadian Sales, Infusion. “For this, a custom feed-engine to enable smart searching was developed. On top of this, we built an extensive mapping suite, a completely optimized mobile experience, and online forms that all together will enable revolutionary new ways for the community to interact with their local government.”

The new website marks a movement towards eGovernment and a shift to providing more services and information online. “Our citizens have said this is how they want to interact with their municipal government,” said Watson. He adds, “The upgrades we’ve made to calgary.ca have built the foundation for The City to support future advances in technology and will allow us to better serve and communicate with Calgarians for years to come.”