Village Gamer

Roaring Penguin Software Inc. has released CanIt 8.0.8, which adds a major improvement to the CanIt Archiver software, including the ability to take a search expression and generate a zip file containing all archived messages that match.  Also, CanIt may be configured to zip up archived mail just before it expires from the archive.

For the CanIt-PRO and CanIt-Domain-PRO anti-spam software, improvements were made to the Bayesian Analysis.  The removal of old Bayes databases has been automated.  An “old” database is defined as one that has not been trained in a given timespan (by default, 365 days.)

CanIt Archiver, “The Uninterruptible Email Supply”, is a highly-configurable email archiving solution focused on email continuity.  CanIt Archiver ensures that email is accessible in the event of a mail server outage and queues email to ensure that it is delivered when mail service is restored.  CanIt Archiver is also available as a Hosted Email Archiving Service.

CanIt 8.0.8 is available as:

* CanIt-PRO, an anti-spam software solution suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.
* CanIt-Domain-PRO, spam filtering software for MSPs to host anti-spam for their customers.
* Hosted CanIt, a fully outsourced, hosted anti-spam service.
* CanIt Archiver, email archiving software.
* Hosted CanIt Archiver, a fully outsourced, hosted email archiving service.

Big Blue Bubble Inc. has announced that the will be releasing 5 new titles across iOS and Android devices, PC, Mac and Facebook in the next business quarter. Not all titles will be available for all platforms, please see individual titles for details.

“We’re excited to see our next round of amazing original IP be released simultaneously and across multiple platforms.  The range of genres covered will further cement our standing as Canada’s top gaming company.” said Bryan Davis, Director of Business Development of Big Blue Bubble.

Burn The Rope: WORLDS, the sequel to one of Big Blue Bubble’s most successful games, brings totally new and unique gameplay mechanics combined with the well-known gameplay and visual style.  Burn The Rope: Worlds is a challenging game where players try to burn as much rope as possible in each level, but there’s a catch – naturally. The fire only burns upwards, leaving the player to tilt and turn the phone to keep the flame alive.

As the player progresses through the levels, he will encounter bugs crawling along the rope. Different bugs have different reactions to the flame. For example, burning the ant changes the color of the flame so rope of the same color can be burned, and burning the spider shoots out a web bridge so the player can access parts of the level that were inaccessible before. Burn The Rope Worlds will launch in September 2011 for iOS, Android, PC and Mac.

Fling a Thing is a simple game where you shoot your Thing in the air and collect all the bubbles.  The player advances onto the next level when all the bubbles are collected.  The player has a limited amount of shots and when they run out, the round ends.  The Thing is shot in the air by touching and pulling it back like a slingshot.

Once released it bounces around the screen collecting bubbles and power-ups. The goal is to collect as many bubbles as possible and beat your last high score. The player needs to pay attention to the Suckies’ Hunger Meter because when it’s empty they can head on over to the “Feeding Ground”. As the player taps the bubbles, the Suckie jumps up and collects them, filling their Hunger Meter. Fling a Thing will launch in September 2011 for iOS and Android devices, PC, Mac and Facebook.

Dark Incursion is a side scrolling hack and slash game that gives the player a full stereoscopic 3D experience. It takes place in an alternate reality in the late 1800’s, amidst an industrial revolution and a world war.  The player is the character, Anya, who is one of the few who know about a secret military laboratory developing biological weaponry that could devastate the entire planet if it got out of control.

The player has a multitude of melee and ranged weapons at their disposal to eradicate the abominations from the city. Weapons and attributes are upgradable to best suit their play style. The deeper they get into the secret bunker the more advanced and powerful these monsters become. To top all of this off, the player must complete their mission before the government gives the order to send these bio-soldiers on to the battlefield where there will be no stopping them. With a vivid steam punk art style using new 3D technologies, the creatures will literally jump off the screen. Dark Incursion will be released in September 2011 for iOS and Android devices, and will be available for PC and Mac in October 2011.

Hamster Cannon is a physics-based puzzle game in which the player combines and launches various hamsters out of cannons to collect Golden Noms.  The player will select three different hamsters out of a possible eight – each with their own special skills.  The player will use angles and bouncing to navigate the levels with a myriad of different surfaces that can react differently depending on which Hamster is being used.

The points awarded for collecting Noms can be traded in the In-Game Store to unlock different upgrades. Hamsters are fired out of the cannon at a high velocity, and the player has the ability to adjust the angle of the cannon to maximize the special skills of each hamster. Hamster Cannon will be available for iOS and Android devices, PC and Mac in September 2011

iOracle is one of the most unique trivia games out there! It has players predicting actual real world events, in order to earn the admiration of their fickle followers, who come and go based on the accuracy of the player’s predictions.  The more questions they get right, the more followers they will earn. There will be new questions asked every day, with answers being supplied on the following day.

Players will have their own temple which they can decorate to attract different types of followers. Each follower type asks a different variety of questions – sports, movies, weather, etc. In-app purchasing will also be available to help players get past tougher questions, decorate their temple, or customize their avatar. This will all contribute to the players goal of accumulating more followers.  iOracle will launch in October 2011 for iOS and Android devices as well as Facebook.

Destiny Media Technologies Inc. is pleased to announce that a provisional patent application was filed on August 17th for a new invention that renders video to web browsers on all computers and devices, including mobile, without requiring advance support or permission from that device or manufacturer.

Because there is no standard format for online video, content owners currently have to provide a separate version of their media file to support each device and operating system.  This transcoding process is labor intensive and expensive and requires multiple copies of the exact same content to be stored redundantly in different formats.  Compression artifacts are cumulative, so transcoding causes a progressive loss of quality with each successive generation, known as digital generation loss. Destiny’s invention provides a cacheable, cross platform standard compatible with all web servers and browsers, saving up to 90% on bandwidth costs, while ensuring a nearly 100% playback rate without any effort from the consumer.

Comments company CEO, Steve Vestergaard, “The summer of 2011 has seen a flurry of activity surrounding the so called “smartphone patent wars” being waged in the US and elsewhere.  Some of the largest technology companies in the world have been buying up patent portfolios and stepping up their efforts to enforce their IP rights against their competitors, so we’re very pleased to file an application for an invention in the space which we believe will be very valuable commercially.

Online video for mobile is growing rapidly, but because of a lack of standards, it’s costly for publishers to create content that works cross platform.  Either customers don’t have the right CODEC or plug-in player installed or their device doesn’t provide support for that format at all.  The proposed HTML 5 standard, which will eliminate the need for maintaining and updating plug-ins, will make the process somewhat easier for consumers, but video producers will still be required to create multiple copies of the same video in proprietary formats to support various browsers.”

Popular video players such as Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Flash are implemented in different versions for each operating system and CPU and in the case of mobile, can require that they are explicitly supported ahead of time by the device.  In a heartfelt letter posted to Apple’s website in April 2010, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, explained why he will not allow the most popular video format, Flash, on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  Flash also doesn’t play on Windows Phone 7 and Android 2.1 or less devices.

Destiny’s invention will enable publishers to create a single high quality video which will confidently play on any device and operating system that can access a web page.  A commercial version of Destiny’s solution is expected to be released by the end of the year.  Destiny’s current streaming video solutions, branded as Clipstream®, require Java to be included as part of the browser, so although they are cross platform, devices which don’t support Java, such as the iPhone and iPad do not support them.  This new solution will work on all operating systems and devices.