Village Gamer

Toronto – This year marks the 10th anniversary of DesignThinkers, Canada’s largest annual design and communications conference. Presented by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (RGD), DesignThinkers 09 will be held November 3 – 5 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where creative professionals will gather to celebrate strategic design thinking.

“More timely and relevant to a broader audience than ever before, design is now the great differentiator and key to engaging customers,” says Lionel Gadoury R.G.D., president of RGD. “Design thinking, brand experience and conversations on creative innovation are occurring at leading companies.”

The speaker lineup includes Ben Blumenfeld, communication design manager at Facebook; Conor Brady, senior vice-president and chief creative officer of digital marketing agency, Organic; John Bredenfoerder CMG, design director at Landor Associates; Robert Brunner, author of Do you Matter? How great design will make people love your company; Matthew Carter, principal of Carter & Cone Type Inc.; Marty Neumeier, best-selling author of The Brand Gap and Zag; V Sunil, creative director at Wieden + Kennedy Delhi and Gael Towey, chief creative officer and editor-in-chief at Martha Stewart Living.
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I see many valuable uses for this application and its updates – kudos to Techneos

Vancouver – A significant upgrade will soon be available for Techneos® Entryware™ mobile survey software, opening up new capabilities for mobile research. Featuring a new survey engine for Windows Mobile® devices, this July 8th release will also provide an enhanced user experience for conducting mobile surveys on Windows® 98/XP/Vista, Palm OS® and webOS™ devices.

The Entryware platform for mobile research handles long, complex questionnaires with ease, enabling sophisticated consumer feedback on mobile devices ranging from entry level PDAs to the latest Smartphones and Windows-based Netbooks. With support for over 200 languages, Entryware software is ideal for face-to-face interviews, mystery shopping and diary studies.

Building on the unique notification system and scripting language already used by some of the world’s leading research organizations, the new release of Entryware software provides new capabilities to support self-completed research such as consumer diaries. Photo support and “lockdown” mode, already available for Entryware customers on Palm OS devices, are now available on Windows Mobile as well, allowing researchers to turn a wide range of PDAs and Smartphones into personal survey appliances. Enhanced project automation is also provided to simplify the user experience for self-completed surveys.
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Ottawa – Zip.ca and California-based Sonic Solutions® today announced a partnership to provide Canadian consumers access to high-quality digital movie downloads. As part of the alliance, Zip.ca will introduce a digital movie service powered by Roxio CinemaNow®, offering movies and TV episodes that can be instantly downloaded and enjoyed on PCs. In addition, the service will be embedded in consumer electronics (CE), enabling consumers to stream premium video entertainment directly to a range of home and mobile devices.

The partnership and introduction of digital movie delivery enhances the Zip.ca subscription service, which currently offers Canadians access to over 72,000 DVD titles via mail. It will also mark an important expansion for Roxio CinemaNow, which will gain a strong foothold in the Canadian marketplace and the ability to offer CE device partners a more flexible, multi-region enabled solution.

“Our collaboration with Sonic will allow Zip.ca to provide subscribers a new, flexible way to digitally access high quality entertainment in addition to the full catalog we currently offer by mail,” said Curt Millar, CEO, Zip.ca. “We are already Canada’s leading DVD rental service; now we hope to fuel membership and growth by becoming consumers’ destination for seamless digital movie access – a one-stop Entertainment shop.”
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Montreal – Ubisoft has today announced that it will reinforce its partnership with Metaboli, the European leader in the digital distribution of PC games. Its titles will be available as download-to-own via GamesPlanet in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) territories at the beginning of June, and via GameTap in the U.S. Ubisoft was one of the first independent developers to build commercial relationships with Metaboli in 2001 through its subscription-based services.

“We are very pleased to pursue our partnership with Metaboli. This fruitful collaboration will offer users the opportunity to purchase digitally a large range of our most successful games,” states Stéphanie Perotti, chief operating officer EMEA.

“There are 47 Ubisoft titles available in the catalogue and they have been particularly popular with our users. Several games including Assassin’s Creed®, Rayman Raving Rabbids®, Prince of Persia®, Far Cry®, Brothers in Arms®, Rainbow Six® and the Splinter Cell® series have performed consistently well across our subscription-based platform,” comments Pierre Forest, VP content at Metaboli. “These games will undoubtedly achieve the same success through our download-to-own model, especially since they will now be distributed in the U.S. market following our acquisition of GameTap.”
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I missed this news due to a death in the family, and I know that several other sites have already reported this development, but I feel that it would be remiss of me if I didn’t at least mention that Electronic Arts has restructured their MMORPG games development process, uniting but not merging Mythic Entertainment and BioWare Corp. under one umbrella. BioWare’s co-founders take over the leading roles, with Ray Muzyka as the Group General Manager and Greg Zeschuk as the Group Creative Officer. There will be no changes at BioWare, however Mythic’s co-founder and General Manager, Mark Jacobs parted ways with EA on June 23rd. Rob Denton, Mythic’s other co-founder and former Chief Operating Officer, has become General Manager of Mythic Entertainment, and he will report to Ray Muzyka. As a Mass Effect fan, I will be very interested to see what developments emerge from this meeting of the minds responsible for such other great titles as Dragon Age: Origins, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online.

Burnaby – Electronic Arts Inc. announced today that the highly anticipated Fight Night Round 4 is now available in retail stores worldwide. Recently named the Game Critic Awards “Best Sports Game of E3 2009”, Fight Night Round 4 is developed by EA Canada under the EA SPORTS™ brand. Fight Night Round 4 is the latest entry from the critically acclaimed Fight Night franchise, and is the first title ever that will allow players to pit “Iron” Mike Tyson against “The Greatest” Muhammad Ali.

Designed with a revolutionary physics-based gameplay engine, Fight Night Round 4 replicates the sweet science to an unprecedented degree of realism. Witness gloves grazing off an opponent as he dodges at the last second, or watch as a vicious uppercut rips through the block of a boxer who turtles for too long. With realistic physics, height and reach become major factors in how each boxer approaches a fight. Shorter fighters, like Tyson, will look to weave inside and deliver punishing hooks to the head and body, while taller fighters, like Ali, will use their reach advantage to pump their jab while staying out of range of their opponent’s punches.
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Victoria – The TCS Bootcamp, being held on Tuesday September 15, is a full day event being offered by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service in partnership with VIATeC.  This event starts with a morning seminar that first teaches you what California investors are looking for, then helps you to polish your pitch.  The morning session is open to any individual who wants to learn how to access investors. The seminar will be held at the Vancouver Island Technology Park Conference Centre in Victoria, BC

In the afternoon you will pitch your company to a panel of California investors and local judges.  You will receive instant feedback from the panel on your product and presentation.  All ICT (Information and Communication Technology) emerging tech companies are eligible to apply for the limited number of presenter spots available. Applicants will be juried before the event.

After the presentations in the afternoon, the 6-8 Vancouver Island ICT companies who stand the best chance of success in California will be invited to the next round of presentations in Silicon Valley and San Diego.
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Toronto – A PayPal survey released today revealed that over half (56 percent) of online shoppers have abandoned their online shopping due to higher than expected shipping charges. The average cost of abandoned goods in Canadian shopping carts is C$156.

The need to be more up-front about the entire online shopping process is of critical importance since almost all the shoppers had the intention of buying the product if their needs had been met. Only three per cent of Canadians (it was the same for Americans) said they had no intention of purchasing the item online after filling up the cart and proceeding to the checkout.

“Transparency is increasingly important to buyers,” said Darrell MacMullin, country manager for PayPal Canada. “One of the main reasons people click on the checkout button is to get information that is not provided by the online merchant such as shipping costs and other important fees such as cross-border duties and handling fees. To reduce cart abandonment, merchants should provide this information sooner in the checkout process.”
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Hamilton – WeMuv is the new virtual world travel adventure game and social network that keeps you on the Muv! Developed for kids ages 6 and older, WeMuv promotes a balanced, healthy lifestyle while having fun with the technology and gadgets that keep kids excited.

The online multiplayer game promotes physical activity via the use of a specially encrypted pedometer. Kids play the adventure game online but in order to advance to new levels and have their WeMuv character stay healthy, they must leave the computer and engage in physical activity while wearing their pedometer. By getting Muv-ing kids earn steps on their pedometer but they never know how many steps they’ve earned until they upload their pedometer at the WeMuv site. The step “currency” they’ve earned can then be spent to unlock new adventures, advance to new levels and buy nutrition to keep their WeMuv character healthy.

“WeMuv creates what most parents want, balance in their children’s lives and healthier lifestyle habits” says WeMuv Co-Founder and CEO Lisa Savelli who is a family therapist, anti-bullying expert and celebrated children’s book author. On the WeMuv online platform kids travel throughout the real world online and learn about other countries and cultures, making new friends and sharing positive interaction all with the safety and security of parental controls and limits.
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Ottawa – Today, Corel Corporation announced it has been selected as a 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards winner as Global ISV Consumer Partner of the Year. The company was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft partners for delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.

“Corel employees share a passion for finding new ways to expand our customers’ creative possibilities, so we welcomed the opportunity to work closely with Microsoft throughout the development cycle for Windows 7,” said Jimi Duff, Senior Director, Strategic Alliances and Partnerships for Corel. “It’s an honor to receive this award as our team is working on all-new creative products that will showcase the benefits of Windows 7 and Windows Touch and provide consumers with more natural, interactive and enjoyable user experiences. Paint a picture, make a movie, share your snapshots – Corel’s software can help make your PC the creative center of your home.”
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