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13th April 2011

Two Days Left For Canadian Digital Media Industry Survey

Important Reminder: The April 15th deadline for the Pixel To Product industry survey is two days away.

Graphic Taken From Pixel To Product SiteWhether you’re a game developer, visual designer, HTML5 coder, design wireframes, make apps, teach or engage in social media marketing – if you work in any digital media sector – please take the time to participate in the Canadian digital media workforce survey. It only take 8 minutes to complete, and the final report will be made available free of charge upon completion in May 2011. Participants are also encouraged to provide feedback on what data in the survey is important to them, essentially giving you all a hand in the final look of the survey’s report. I can’t stress enough how important this survey is to our industry. Please take the time to answer the questions, and if you already have, send the link along to someone who hasn’t. You can check out a sampling of the data already collected on the project’s site.

JAC GeoDesignWhen Judith Chinn launched JAC GeoDesign in Nanaimo last year she had little doubt that her new 3D geo-modeling company would work towards excellence, achievement and innovation in her community. Little did she know that her community would extend beyond the rocky coast of Vancouver Island. She soon found herself involved in a number of international volunteer projects that would have her helping showcase Olympic host city London, England, recreating earthquake damaged L’Aquila, Italy, and supporting relief efforts in Saitama City, Japan. “I manage to participate on all of these projects remotely from my Nanaimo office,” says Chinn, who has become Canada’s first Google Certified Geo 3D Developer.

The Google Earth 3D geo-modeling community is a very active group of individuals and businesses. They host community 3D workshops, participate in school program, and participate in youth mentoring programs. When a colleague like British Architect, Barnaby Gunning proposed an ambitious project to build a digital 3D model of earthquake damaged L’Aquila, Italy to help stimulate discussion about its reconstruction, the 3D geo-modeling community responded by creating over 1000 3D buildings to help L’Aquila. “The images out of L’Aquila, Italy are shocking. Two years after the earthquake the city core is abandoned and citizens remain displaced,” says Chinn.

Locally, 3D geo-modeler Chinn has been busy participating in a number of youth mentoring programs like Science World’s Opening the Door Program that encourage high school students to pursue careers in science, and the National Geographic/ESRI GeoMentor Program that inspires volunteers who use geography in their work to work with teachers or youth leaders to help kids see, use and do more geography in and out of the classroom. “I try to include 3D models, 3D animation and videos into my geography and geoscience presentations. The kids love it, ” says Chinn.

Chinn recently supported the Rebuild Canada Pilot Project in Cumberland, BC. Cumberland Junior School students created 3D buildings from images of old buildings to help showcase the historical evolution of their community. The intention now is to roll out this program to other schools on Vancouver Island. Chinn also has her eye on Google’s Project Spectrum. Google created the program to give people with autism the opportunity to express their creativity and develop a life skill using Google SketchUp 3D modeling software. “Both of these projects would be excellent programs to develop on Vancouver Island,” says Chinn.

belzbergBelzberg Technologies, Inc. and Frontline Technologies Corp. have announced the closing of the acquisition of Frontline by Belzberg and the change in company name to Frontline Technologies Inc. The combined company will change its trading symbol to FLC which is expected to take place during the week of April 18, 2011.frontline

Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, the key elements of which were approved by Belzberg shareholders at a Special Meeting held on April 11, 2011, on closing, Hoss Astaraki, President of Frontline was appointed CEO and Chairman of the combined entity and Judith Robertson resigned as President and CEO and from the board of directors of Belzberg. Resignations were also accepted from board members Robert Forbes, William Gnam and Steve Scarff. New board members, Keith Harris, Richard Ness and Deborah Robinson were appointed. The Company would like to thank the resigning directors for their years of service and contributions to the Company.

playjamUK-based PlayJam has struck a deal with LG Electronics to bundle PlayJam’s games service with LG Smart TV for worldwide distribution via its own platform, Netcast™. The PlayJam games network will offer a rich and compelling casual gaming destination on LG Smart TV and Blu-ray players from April 2011 – but not until May in Canada, according to media spokesperson Diane Mckaye. Highly visible within LG’s own service platform Netcast™, PlayJam will use its existing world-wide billing, CRM and games servers to deliver thousands of social, casual and skill titles as well as tournaments, leader-boards, editorial, messaging and more.

LG Smart TV enables viewers instant access to the latest Hollywood releases, TV shows, games, news, weather and music. The PlayJam service will sit alongside notable entertainment offerings from Netflix, Roxio Cinema Now, Pandora and Vudu.

In addition to promoting their own titles, PlayJam is working with games developers worldwide to bring much loved and renowned titles to TV. PlayJam is a dedicated TV games publisher, delivering thousands of branded casual games to a global network spanning multiple connected TV vendors as well as digital TV operators Sky, Dish TV (US), Freeview and UPC. A pioneer in connected and Over The Top (OTT) TV games content with over 12 years’ international operating experience, PlayJam has generated over 6 billion downloads during the last 5 years.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Business News, Digital Products, National News, Peripherals, Research Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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