Village Gamer

Blackspark Corporation, a Toronto-based provider of business traveler payroll compliance solutions, today announced that its borderFile application will be available in the new Concur® App Center from Concur, a leading provider of integrated travel and expense (T&E) management services. Unveiled yesterday in Las Vegas at Fusion, the new app center will help businesses and travelers discover applications that deliver significant value to the enterprise as well as to the business traveler.

borderFile replaces the costly manual processes within customer organizations that are required for business traveler payroll compliance. For both international and U.S. domestic state-to-state travel, borderFile automates the collection of travel data, the calculation of compliance metrics and the sharing of reports and dashboards with key stakeholders in the company.

For Concur customers, borderFile leverages the existing T&E environment and provides the tools required to execute payroll for employees that cross country and state borders. Once deployed, borderFile begins synchronizing historic and upcoming booked travel immediately. Graphical dashboards and reports are then automatically kept up-to-date as employees book new travel.

Key features of the Concur integration for borderFile include:

• Rapid deployment by the Concur Administrator (does not require linking individual Concur user accounts)
• Real-time synchronization of historical and upcoming booked travel
• Threshold-based dashboards highlighting employees’ workdays in all U.S. states with payroll compliance requirements
• Tools to execute U.S. multi-state payroll allocation
• Customizable reports and dashboards for international travel
• Automated workflows enabling employees to verify and sign-off their travel data for payroll compliance
• Secure, enterprise-class architecture with 24/7 on-demand access globally

“We chose to partner with Concur because the Concur T&E Cloud is the leading platform for customers with large populations of business travelers,” said Blackspark Co-Founder, Ramon Tavares. “Therefore, customers already have the travel infrastructure needed to meet multi-state and international payroll compliance requirements; all they have to do is turn on borderFile and begin using the reports and workflows.”

“We are focused on creating an ecosystem of partners with innovative new products and services for our customers and their employees,” said Tim MacDonald, EVP of Platform and Data Services at Concur. “The new Concur App Center will deliver seamless integration via Concur’s open platform and we are thrilled that Blackspark’s borderFile will be among the esteemed apps in the Concur T&E Cloud ecosystem.”

Independent game development studio Minority Media has announced that its acclaimed adventure game Papo & Yo is now available for PC through Steam, Amazon and other direct download platforms. Originally released in 2012 for PlayStation®Network, the game, which was inspired by creator Vander Caballero’s childhood, features a boy, Quico, journeying through a magical world to save his best friend Monster from a terrible danger: himself. Monster is addicted to poisonous frogs, and eating one causes him to fly into a fiery rage from which no one is safe. As Quico, players will confront their conflicting emotions about Monster’s problem in a deeply touching, emotional video game experience. Read the rest of this entry »