Village Gamer

Burnaby/Kitchener-Waterloo – Desire2Learn Incorporated (Desire2Learn) a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise eLearning solutions, today announced that the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has become one of the newest client partners to implement the Desire2Learn® enterprise eLearning solution as their Learning Management System (LMS).

Beginning with their “power users,” BCIT has rolled out the Desire2Learn platform for the Winter 2009 term using an escalated phase-in. Full, campus-wide implementation of the Desire2Learn eLearning environment will take place by the Fall 2009 term with the five main campuses and 18 ancillary campuses all coming onboard. More than 55,000 students, including both full-time and distance education learners, and all six Schools will use the system. BCIT expects to ramp up dramatically as they plan to implement the Desire2Learn system in numerous ways from distance education courses through to competency models across its Schools which span a diversity of curriculum from Health Care to Construction and the Environment.

“The Desire2Learn platform’s power, flexibility, reliability and efficiency are what has really impressed us. The system is extremely intuitive for both students and faculty,” said Bryan Fair, Educational Technical Advisor & Supervisor of BCIT’s Distributed Learning Services team. “We can’t say enough good things about the Desire2Learn team; they have partnered with us every step of the way to ensure a successful initial implementation. The pilot is advancing extremely well. We are able to move forward with confidence and assurance that we have a robust and leading-edge platform from a company willing to work with us as a partner on an ongoing basis.”
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Montreal – NDi Kids is proud to announce that its’ own property, Hans Hans the Biking Viking, has found a home with Nickelodeon Kids. Hans Hans was originally conceived by Meinert Hansen and developed further with the creative team at NDi.

Hans and friends will appear on Nick’s in a puzzle game called Leaving Loki’s Lockup. Hans Hans, Freya and Thor must coordinate their unique powers to solve Loki’s crazy conundrums.

Montreal – Audiokinetic Inc., the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry, announced today that its audio pipeline solution, Wwise®, will be used in the development of EVE Online, the critically-acclaimed massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) developed by the award-winning virtual world developer CCP.

EVE Online is a science fiction-based MMOG in which over a quarter of a million players inhabit a vast, persistent world as starship pilots in pursuit of fame, wealth and glory. First launched in 2003, the latest free expansion, EVE Online: Apocrypha, was released on March 10, 2009. Noted for its fervent use of cutting edge technology, CCP’s server architecture makes large-scale fleet battles a reality, with upwards of one thousand participants engaged in epic conflicts for control of resources and strategic regions of space.

Sound plays an important role in the immersion factor for these intergalactic gladiators. There were numerous advantages to having Wwise tools available to the CCP Audio team during the development phase for Apocrypha as described by Audio Director Baldur Baldursson.

“Ease of use was one of the key factors in our decision to choose Audiokinetic over other middleware solutions we tested,” said Baldursson. “Audiokinetic seems very serious in creating powerful tools that actually work for sound designers and musicians. We were able to focus on designing the sounds themselves instead of having to worry about technology issues – and integrating the actual sounds was fun.”
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Sault Ste. Marie – The Future Play 2009 conference on gaming and design is pleased to announce that seminar topics for this year’s conference have just been finalized.

Says Rick Mahoney of Cinetik, the Conference Co-Chair of Future Play: “I think we have been able to capture a very interesting spectrum of topics with the seminars we have selected. I feel that there is a good balance between technical ‘how-to’ seminars and presentations that will be more philosophical in nature.”

The full list of seminar topics is as follows:

Making Deep Games: presented by Doris Rusch

Game Audio Education – Adding Audio to your Games Courses and Games to your Audio Courses: presented by Karen Collins, Bill Kapralos, Leonard Paul and David Kerr

Designing Effective Exercise Video Games: presented by Nicholas Graham, Tadeusz Stach and Regan Mandryk

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Vancouver – A “voice powered virtual assistance company” Bvocalized Systems Inc. introduces the very first hands-free web information access and outsourced assistance entirely through voice. User can connect with the service by dialling a toll free number from any phone device within North America. The system will actually listen, understand and respond within minutes of service request by an automated phone call in spoken natural language.

The Bvocalized Voice Assistant™ provides more than just information and answers, it also handles secretarial tasks. Users can send email, dictate notes, get directions, find people, order goods, request reservations, set appointments or record transactions, to name a few – all without touching the keypad of their phone or having live agents online. It’s like having a two way conversation with the Web when there is no Internet.

While the system is highly automated, it fully utilizes valuable intelligent human resource. The caller’s voice is instantly transcribed into text (speech to text) for analysis by a Bvocalized specialist. The specialist then submits a text response to the system, which generates a spoken-word (text to speech) reply along with a corresponding email for the caller.
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Toronto – Stealth.com Inc. (Stealth Computer) a leading ISO 9001 manufacturer of industrial rugged computers and peripherals has released the new Model LPC-625F, a rugged, small footprint, fanless computer for industrial and mission critical applications.

LPC-625F Fanless Mini PC

The LPC-625F is a breakthrough in micro computing with its rugged, small form, noise free design that utilizes Intel’s powerful Penryn family of Core 2 Duo Mobile processor technology. Stealth’s mini PC offers tremendous power in a tiny package that measures only; 7.9″(W) x 7.9″(D) x 2.4″(H). The Mini PC is only slightly larger than the size of a hard cover novel yet surpasses the performance of most industrial and embedded PCs available today. Designed without cooling fans the rugged extruded aluminum chassis acts as a heat sink to dissipate internal heat and provide noise free operation. Its sturdy small size and fanless design make it ideal for applications where space is critical.

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Victoria – ParetoLogic have recently released a whitepaper, ParetoLogic DriverCure: The Quick and Easy Way to Update Drivers and Software (PDF), which presents a complete overview of the popular program, featuring valuable background information on drivers and how DriverCure can help. Drivers exist for every piece of hardware, from digital camera drivers and scanner drivers to USB device drivers and Ethernet drivers. They provide a translation from the ‘language’ of the computer to the ‘language’ of the hardware, and back again. When driver problems occur the translation is interrupted, and error messages or malfunctions tend to ensue. DriverCure gives users the ability to update drivers, quickly and easily. With the whitepaper, says Gregory Amlin, ParetoLogic Vice-President of Product Management, “users can be better equipped to understand their PCs, and take steps to keep them running at their best.”

DriverCure updates device drivers and software, and in doing so, repairs error messages, prevents hardware problems, and provides new features. The software scans the user’s system and works in tandem with a database of drivers and software. The driver database expands constantly, with printer drivers, sound card drivers, video drivers, graphic drivers, monitor drivers, and everything else that needs a driver. The software database also grows quickly, and users can expect updates for many well-known brands such as Adobe, Java and Microsoft. Much of the process is automated, says Amlin, because “our goal was to save users’ time in finding the right drivers for their specific computers.”

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Vancouver – Yummy Interactive Inc., today announced that its software protection solution, SoftwareShield, has been selected as a finalist for the 2009 SIIA CODiE Awards in the Best Digital Rights Management category. SoftwareShield addresses the increasing demand from software publishers worldwide for an integrated Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution which offers a wide variety of flexible licensing and unmatched security options with options to completely automate product activations online.

The CODiE Awards recognize outstanding achievement and vision in the software, digital information and education technology industries, as determined by journalist and a peer review process.

“It’s truly an honor to be recognized among such an accomplished group of industry leaders. SoftwareShield is the most powerful tool for protecting Intellectual Property and promoting incremental sales available. This acknowledgement by the CODiE judges supports our assertion that software publishers are pushing for rights management software that exceeds basic protection. We will continue to innovate with SoftwareShield in order to meet our customer’s needs and the needs of the digital marketplace,” said Christopher Hennebery, Director of Software Distribution for Yummy Interactive.
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Vancouver – The launch of Hecterra.com gives students the opportunity to research and compare every educational institution in Canada and even globally. The network offers profiles and information on institutions that includes opportunities, tuition costs, program descriptions, and more.

In development for five years, Vancouver Librarian Erez Segal has sought to create a one-stop shop for educational and career opportunities in Canada. The network is organized through region, institution-type, and educational field, providing an answer to any question regarding Canadian education.

Not ranking schools and programs, Hecterra lets students make up their mind based on facts and information provided by the network. It also features a comprehensive database of thousands of Canadian organizations offering employment opportunities on their websites
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Ottawa – Sarance Technologies, the leading supplier of high speed interconnect Intellectual Property (IP) technology, announced today the immediate availability of HSEC (High Speed Ethernet Core), the world’s first commercially available Media Access Controller (MAC), Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS), and Multi Lane Distribution (MLD) IP conforming to the emerging 40Gigabit Ethernet (40GE) and 100Gigabit Ethernet (100GE) standard. Sarance Technologies has been an active member of the IEEE 802.3ba High Speed Ethernet (HSE) working group since its inception, and is one of the original contributors to the definition and implementation of the new architecture for 40G and 100G Ethernet protocols. The HSEC IP conforms to Draft 2.0 of the IEEE802.3ba standard and has been tested by major networking and service provider vendors in system laboratories and validated in field trials running over a trillion of error free Ethernet frames over a live 100GE network. The HSEC IP has also been proven to interoperate with a major test equipment vendor.

“With end user applications driving demand for bandwidth in the transport core and the data center, service providers understand the need for quick deployment of 40GbE and 100GbE.” said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at The Linley Group. “Off-the-shelf IP Cores from vendors such as Sarance Technologies reduce development time and enable interoperability across multiple implementations, allowing service providers to build-out 40GbE and 100GbE in the core of their network.”
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