Village Gamer

Brampton – Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning’s top-priority capital project has received significant funding from the federal and provincial governments. Together both levels of government are providing a combined $31.23 million in new infrastructure dollars toward building a college campus in Mississauga. The creation of Sheridan’s third major campus will mean that Mississauga, Canada’s sixth-largest city, will finally have a college.

“Thanks to the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario, Sheridan is going to be able to fill a big need for students and businesses in Mississauga,” said Dr. Robert Turner, President and CEO, Sheridan Institute. “The Mississauga area is home to over 55 corporate head offices in finance, insurance, real estate, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and logistics. Everyone has told Sheridan a college presence is essential to fulfilling their workforce needs. Thanks to this new funding, we’re going to be able to pay big dividends to the Mississauga community.”
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Montreal – Vantrix, the leading provider of content adaptation and optimization solutions for converged wireless, broadband and cable networks, today announced Vantrix Media Profiler has been recognized by Network Products Guide — the industry’s leading publication on information technologies and solutions — as a winner of the 2009 Best Products and Services Award. The highly competitive annual award honors products and services that address the rapidly changing needs of technology end-users. Media Profiler rose to the top among nominations from all over the world to take top spot for software in the “Best in Convergence” category.

Vantrix Media Profiler helps drive consumer adoption of premium multimedia services such as mobile and web TV, user generated content and video on demand, while helping operators overcome the challenge of managing multimedia services across multiple screens. Media Profiler is a complete solution for the introduction, provisioning and management of multimedia content/services. It enables operators to manage subscriber services through an intuitive single point of operation, administration, maintenance and provisioning. Media Profiler facilitates a common user experience on any device and any network, promoting the agnostic delivery of content to converged services. This increases service stickiness and adoption while reducing churn, and delivering considerable OPEX and CAPEX savings as more multimedia content is delivered by network operators.
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Vancouver – At this month’s ACM SIGGRAPH Vancouver seminar, animation director Eric Darnell shared his journey from Pre-Med student to animated feature film director. Who would’ve thought that problems with Organic Chemistry and watching a televised football game would lead to becoming the director of animated hits Antz, Madagascar and Madagascar 2, with a third and final Madagascar installment currently in production.

Eric Darnell

Throughout the seminar, which was a fire-side styled chat with Glenn Entis, Eric shared some of his early, experimental work with the audience. While I did enjoy the innovative styling of the collage-animation done for REM’s “Get Up” music video, my personal favourite was animation short Gas Planet, seen below. Eric has a knack for capturing just the right expressions in his characters, to the point where dialogue is simply not required in getting the point of the animation across. Gas Planet was the recipient of the Ottawa Animation Festival’s Special Jury Prize.

I think that the one, most valuable piece of advice which Eric had for aspiring animation directors was using whatever personal time they had to create their own experimental pieces. He stated that by pursuing such interests, “the experience will make your future, paid work better, and can take you to places which you never imagined. Real life experiences make you a better director – seemingly unrelated events help you bring more to the table.” Eric also went on to state that “as the director, you are the caretaker of the story, and it is important that you have very strong writers on your team.”
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Ottawa – The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has announced the launch of a new web site designed to open dialogue in regards to proposed Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). The site features a collection of essays by leading academics, lawyers, researchers, activists and industry professionals, and is designed to serve as a resource on Deep Packet Inspection. According to information on the site, it grew out of a desire at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to understand more about a technology that has application in network traffic management, behavioural advertising, and law enforcement.

Jennifer Stoddart

“The prospective uses of DPI technology raise serious concerns about individual privacy,” said Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada. “DPI technology has the potential to give ISPs and other entities wide-ranging access to vast amounts of personal information sent over the Internet. Canadians spend a significant amount of their lives on online as consumers, professionals, and citizens. They are entitled to privacy protection pursuant to Canadian telecommunications policy, as set out in the Telecommunications Act, and under privacy laws of Canada. We respectfully submit that before DPI technology is employed, careful consideration should be given to what impact it may have on individual privacy.”
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Banff – “Beginning with the comedy troupe ‘Kids in the Hall’ Mark McKinney’s original characters and unconventional sketches have become a part of pop culture,” comments Peter Vamos, Executive Director of BANFF. “Whether as

Mark McKinney

creator, producer or actor in many memorable comedic productions, Mark has made an impressive contribution to the international film and television comedy landscape.”

Mark McKinney was first known for his work on the long-running sketch comedy troupe “The Kids in the Hall”, which ran from 1989 to 1995. Following that series’ success, Mark went on to star in “Saturday Night Live” from 1995 to 1997, and in 1998 wrote for Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night.” He later co-created the acclaimed mini-series “Slings and Arrows”, which he wrote and starred in for all three seasons. Mark then went on to both write and act on NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” As well, he directed and appeared on the CBC Radio post-apocalyptic comedy “Steve, The First” and its sequel, “Steve, The Second.”

Mark has also appeared in several films including the Kids in the Hall movie “Brain Candy” and the SNL spin-offs “Superstar,” “The Ladies Man” and “A Night at The Roxbury.” Mark had a leading role in the Spice Girls’ movie, “Spice World,” and also starred opposite Isabella Rossellini in Guy Maddin’s acclaimed tragic comedy “The Saddest Music in the World.”
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Calgary – Mob4Hire today announced that it has been selected as a winner of the Red Herring 100 North America Award. The Red Herring editorial team deploys a detailed process to whittle down a pool of 1,000 eligible, promising companies to the 200 Finalists and in a last round decided for the top 100 winners of this important North American award. Evaluations are made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The Winners, elite executives and venture capital leaders from North America celebrated the Top 100 Privately Held Companies in San Diego, May 11-14, 2009.

“This is a great validation for Mob4hire and our business plan” states Stephen King, CEO Mob4Hire. “As the mobile application market matures, we hope to be to be able to make mobile software better through our unique crowd-sourced platform. There is no effective way to test on a foreign network unless you are on that network. It is a location specific problem which plays perfectly to the strengths of our crowd-sourced methodology. We have an elegant solution to a large problem in a massive industry, and we are thrilled to be recognized for it by Red Herring, especially as we enter our first round of financing”
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Vancouver – Join CATA-WIT’s recently established BC Chapter on June 2, 2009 for a lunchtime event featuring vignette presentations by women leaders in BC’s technology sector, followed by interactive breakout and networking sessions:

SPEAKERS/FACILITATORS

* Catherine Boivie, Senior VP, Information Technology and CEO, Inventure Solutions
* Cybele Negris, Co-founder and COO of Webnames.ca
* Maria Pacella, Investment Manager: Information Technology, GrowthWorks

TOPICS

* Climbing the Corporate Ladder
* Women Entrepreneurs in Technology
* Securing Financing
* Working Effectively with Recruiters
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Vancouver – Paradox Interactive and Kerberos Productions today announced an expansion to the critically acclaimed 4X space strategy game series Sword of the Stars.

The new expansion, Argos Naval Yard, can be combined with either the original game or any of its previous expansions and will provide players with:

• 19 new technologies, including advanced drones, over thrusters, two new satellite designs, defensive interceptor micro-missiles, and polarized plasmatics which will unlock a new weapon type
• Over 75 new ship sections to build
• 10 new weapons, including the new inertial cannons, kelvinic torpedoes, and the fearsome rail cannon
• 3 new scenarios
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Ottawa – The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) and its umbrella association, CATAAlliance, have formed a partnership with the Strategy Institute to host the Optimum Broadband Strategies for Cities Summit and offer their members a 15 per cent discount on registrations.

The event, hosted on June 23 and 24 in Toronto, is of special interest to Internet service providers (ISPs), public safety and security stakeholders, equipment vendors, application/service providers, and city management executives.

“The importance of high speed Internet access and broadband infrastructure to innovation and public safety and security can not be understated,” says John Reid, President of CATAAlliance. “We felt it was crucial to support this event to increase our understanding of the current state of broadband while providing exclusive benefits to our members.”
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Toronto – The Adventure Company, a leading publisher of interactive entertainment software in North America, today announced the adventure game Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper for Windows® has shipped to retail stores in North America.

The Sherlock Holmes franchise has proved to be one of the top franchises in adventure gaming, with top-selling titles such as Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened and Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy, titles known for their impressive graphics and challenging puzzles. This terrifying new game pairs Sherlock Holmes against one of the world’s most famous serial killers, Jack the Ripper. Players will have the opportunity to step into the shoes of one of the greatest detectives of all time, accompanied throughout the game by his faithful companion, Dr. Watson. The game offers both a first person view and a third person view for a truly immersive adventure gaming experience and players will be able to use their gathered clues to test out their theories throughout the game using a unique crime scene reconstruction feature.
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