Village Gamer

The Hot Wheels® Colour Shifters™ Road Trip currently making its way across the country is taking a detour into Edmonton and Calgary to unveil its life-size colour-shifting Mustang. The cool, state-of-the-art Ford Mustang and the Hot Wheels® Colour Shifters™ Trailer has been zooming across the country visiting festivals, camps and family events in various towns and cities. The Road Trip runs all summer long from July to September, giving Canadians of all ages a chance to experience help changing the colour of the car themselves. Kids who attend the event can help change the colour of the car, play with Hot Wheels® toys and will also receive a special Hot Wheels® collector booklet, T-shirt and more.

Edmonton Stops:
August 10th: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM at the Jamie Platz Family YMCA 7121 – 178 Street
August 11th: 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM at the William Lutsky YMCA 1975 111 Street

Calgary Stops:
August 12th: 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM at the Mid-Sun Community Centre 50 Midpark Rise SE
August 15th: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM at Toys “R” Us 10450 MacLeod Trail SE
August 18th: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM at the Southland Leisure Centre 2000 Southland Drive SW
August 18th: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM at the Village Square Leisure Centre 2623 56 Street NE

Staying in Alberta for a bit, iStockphoto has launched a redesigned version of the world’s most popular stock multimedia marketplace. The new site offers a clean, contemporary look and feel, and reflects more than a year of customer-focused usability research and design. The new site was built using an innovative back-end architecture laying the framework for several future enhancements including a new search interface being unveiled before the end of the year.

The new site structure has been designed specifically around each type of audience that frequents the site, allowing faster, easier access to content. A revised navigation scheme, with a renewed focus on the customer, divides the site into three distinct segments: shop, participate and help. The work of exclusive contributors will be more prominently featured throughout the site via large “hero images.” iStockphoto has also noted this will be the last version of the site to support Internet Explorer® 6.

“iStockphoto has experienced exceptional growth since our inception,” said Kelly Thompson, COO of iStockphoto. “We’ve grown to over 6 million members, expanded globally and introduced many new products such as video, audio and our popular Vetta Collection. The new site not only meets the needs of our rapidly growing community, but will also grow with us in the future, supporting features and enhancements planned through the next several years.”

To celebrate the launch, iStock is offering its members 25% off all credit-pack purchases starting Monday, August 9th until Sunday, August 15th, 2010 (coupon code iLOVEF5).

Canadian Tire is voluntarily recalling the Mustang and Corvette branded 1/10 Scale Radio Controlled Vehicles (product No. 50-4009), as it has been determined that this product may short circuit during operation posing a potential safety hazard. Customers who have bought this product are asked to discontinue use and return product to any Canadian Tire store for refund.

The Game Creators have teamed up with Intel to offer game developers the chance to win some amazing prizes for developing new games for netbooks in their international competition (void where prohibited). There are several fantastic prizes on offer with the top prize being an all expenses paid vacation worth up to US $5,000!

We’ve all been there, on the road on vacation with the family and our trusty old netbook is ready at the go to Facebook, Twitter and surf the web. But after all the chatty time, aren’t you really just itching to have a death race, zap alien ships, and kill zombies on your netbook too?

Well Intel wants your help, and has partnered with The Game Creators to seek out, recognize and reward excellent game development for netbook devices. So, if you’re on your summer holidays, on a break from work or just simply love to develop games, The Game Creators and Intel want you!

The Game Creators’ Financial Director, Rick Vanner, said “This competition is aimed at empowering the many talented amateur game makers that love to spend their spare time coding games and demos. The Intel AppUp store will give them a direct channel to market and sell their small game apps to millions of users worldwide. By using Dark Basic Professional or Dark GDK they can create games in a very short time scale. We have a very creative community and it will be very exciting to see what they develop.”

For this competition there is a deadline of 3rd October at 12PM GMT so those looking to enter need to check the rules and then get cracking on an entry now!