Village Gamer

Vancouver – Microsoft Corp. today announced its intent to acquire BigPark Inc., which was founded in 2007 by a group of industry veterans who led the creation and growth of two hugely successful software companies, Distinctive Software Inc. and Electronic Arts Canada. BigPark’s founding team is composed of business leaders with over 80 years of collective experience in the video game industry, having produced or overseen blockbuster franchises including “Need for Speed,” “FIFA Soccer,” “NBA Street” and “SSX.”

The acquisition will bring BigPark’s talented developers into Microsoft Game Studios, where the team will continue development on an exclusive Xbox 360 game. Over the past year, Microsoft and BigPark have worked closely on this project, providing Microsoft with a clear view into the caliber of talent and innovation at BigPark.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mississauga – The Canadian Red Cross is the recipient of Microsoft Canada’s largest ever single software donation. Microsoft Canada will provide the Canadian Red Cross with more than $3 million in software and licensing to help them focus on disaster relief efforts and humanitarian aid in Canada and around the world. The donation also brings Microsoft Canada’s total donations to nonprofits and charities across Canada to more than $50 million since 2004.

“When dealing with disaster situations the difference between life and death can come down to quick and effective response” said Almin Surani, Chief Information Officer, Canadian Red Cross. “Microsoft Canada’s donation will allow us to store, share and analyze crucial data allowing us to deploy appropriate emergency solutions in a timely manner.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto – Rogers Wireless today announced the exclusive Canadian launch in June 2009 of the HTC Dream™ and HTC Magic™ smartphones, the first cellphones in Canada powered by the Android platform, allowing for fast and easy access to a wide range of Google™ mobile services, including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™ and more.

“Who else but Rogers would be the first carrier to offer Canadians the first chance to join the mobile revolution with a choice of not one, but two, handsets powered by the Android platform?”, said John Boynton, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Rogers Wireless. “The HTC Magic offers a responsive touch screen and the HTC Dream delivers both a touch screen and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. Both devices offer outstanding wireless internet search capabilities and a full suite of applications that run two times faster on Canada’s fastest mobile network.”

Toronto – Sony Canada today announced its Reader Digital Book models PRS-505 and PRS-700 are now available for purchase online at BestBuy.ca and futureshop.ca.

“Sony is at the forefront of the digital reading revolution in Canada,” said Ron Wilson, senior vice president of merchandising, Best Buy Canada Ltd. “Canadian customers are looking for the best digital reading technology available and the Sony Reader Digital Book models are easy-to-use with great functionality. Best Buy and Future Shop are always looking to bring Canadians the latest technology and with the growing popularity of digital reading this product is a great addition to our line-up.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Vancouver – Destiny Media Technologies, Inc., the industry’s leading secure digital media distribution company, is pleased to announce that Australian partner, The Shooting Star Picture Company has established a partnership with the Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) to provide media distribution services for Australia’s 300+ indie record companies through the Play MPE® music delivery software.

The deal sees the industry body enable all its members to join major independents Shock, Inertia, Remote Control, Liberation, Shogun and many more who are all using the system to service pre-release music to the media. With major labels Universal, EMI and Warner also utilising the system, Play MPE® has firmly become the industry standard for promotional music delivery in Australia.
Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto – Storage Appliance Corp., developers of Clickfree, the easiest-to-use PC backup solutions on the market, today announced two new products, the Clickfree Traveler and Clickfree DVD Transformer. Available May 7, 2009, both devices are PC and Mac compatible, and eliminate the confusing and time-consuming hassle associated with backing up irreplaceable digital data.

As light as a pen and the size of a credit card, the flash-based Traveler slips easily into a wallet, allowing business travelers, photographers, music lovers and others to carry up to 64GBs of data in their hip pocket or purse. The Clickfree DVD Transformer enables consumers to quickly and easily back up important data to optical discs, bypassing tricky CD and DVD burning software. Coupled with recordable CDs and/or DVDs, it’s an inexpensive yet foolproof way to back up important files.
Read the rest of this entry »

Vancouver – SwitchIn.net, a leading portal for casual 3d MMO’s has acquired the distribution and rights to the portal Armored Legion.

“By acquiring not only the rights to the distribution of the portal but also the key technology base of Armored Legion it allows us to grow in the more traditional RPG sector,” said Derek Young , President of SwitchIn. “This means we can continue to make great casual games but also some very exciting upcoming MMORPG games.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Vancouver/Swindon – Intrinsyc Software International, Inc., a leading provider of software solutions for mobile devices headquartered in Vancouver, and Ubiquisys, the leading developer of 3G femtocells based in Swindon, UK have today announced UX-Zone, an application that changes the appearance of the Android phone interface automatically as you enter your home or office. UX-Zonetm from Intrinsyc incorporates femtocell presence triggers from the Ubiquisys FemtoApps initiative.

Femtocells are tiny 3G mobile access points that plug in to a standard broadband connection in homes and businesses. They combine excellent mobile coverage indoors with very fast low cost data connections. As you arrive at a building with a femtocell, your phone automatically switches over from the outside network to the femtocell. Mobile operators are looking at ways of harnessing this combination of fast low-cost data and automatic presence to develop new services for their customers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Calgary/Toronto – Shaw Communications Inc. and Corus Entertainment Inc. introduce a new dimension to television viewing, to provide the largest offering of 3-D TV in Canada. A first in the marketplace, Shaw Video on Demand and Corus’ Movie Central will roll out a range of ongoing 3-D content – from box office feature films, family programming, sports, concert events and specials – directly into your home.

“We are convinced that 3-D is the next big breakthrough for enhancing the in-home entertainment experience, and we are committed to developing the content and advancing the technology to support this,” said Jim Shaw, Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chair, Shaw Communications Inc. “With the recent success of 3-D theatrical films at the box office and with an expanding lineup of live action and animated 3-D content in the works, there is clearly a growing excitement and appetite for 3-D entertainment and Shaw is at the forefront of this innovation.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Calgary – ICEsoft™ Technologies, Inc., a leading global provider of open source enterprise Java technologies and sponsor of the award winning ICEfaces® open source project, today announced a new addition to its open source product portfolio. ICEpdf®, ICEsoft’s Java PDF library and engine, is now available under the MPL open source license.

ICEpdf is a lightweight open source Java PDF rendering library that can be easily integrated within any Java-based client application or deployed on a server in headless mode as a PDF servlet (JSP or JSF). ICEpdf is ideal for providing PDF viewing and navigation as well as PDF content conversion and extraction without the hassles of Java-to-native integration issues.
Read the rest of this entry »