Village Gamer

Ottawa – NGRAIN, a leading provider of interactive 3D equipment simulation solutions that maximize the effectiveness of training programs and maintenance support systems, today announced it is opening an office in Ottawa. The NGRAIN Ottawa office, which will accommodate a regional staff of business development, sales, project management, instructional design, 3D modeling and customer support professionals, expands NGRAIN’s reach across Canada. The Ottawa team will provide direct support to NGRAIN’s local and east coast customers and partners.

“NGRAIN has been working closely with the Canadian Forces and leading systems integrators since 2002 to deliver innovative training and maintenance support solutions that incorporate 3D equipment simulations to improve job performance,” said Paul Lindahl, CEO, NGRAIN. “The opening of the Ottawa office is the natural next step in our corporate expansion. We are looking forward to becoming a part of the Ottawa community.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Montreal – Today Ubisoft® announced that it is collaborating again with Olympic Gold Medalist Shaun White in Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage. Developed by Ubisoft Montréal, the game will be available exclusively for the Wii™ system from Nintendo and will be on store shelves for the holiday season in 2009.

“Working with Shaun on the first title was an excellent experience,” said Antoine Guignard, producer of Shaun White Snowboarding : World Stage at Ubisoft. “The great public reception of Shaun White Snowboarding and the wonderful collaboration with Shaun made it a slam dunk for us to reunite to create a fun, new adventure for fans.”

Players will hit the slopes with Shaun White and his crew, but this time the stakes are higher as you pursue the world’s top competitions from a half-pipe in the middle of New York’s Time Square to the most prestigious competitions of France, Canada and Japan.

“Ubisoft has been a great partner, and I’m excited for World Stage,” said action sports phenom Shaun White. “It’s cool to give people insight on what my life is like on the competition circuit.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto – A group of six Canadian-based companies have come together to form a new alliance called The Committed to Growing Small Business Coalition or Committed. The coalition is focused on developing and offering resources to assist Canadian entrepreneurs and small business owners in building, maintaining and growing their companies.

Committed includes organizations from various industries and includes STAPLES Canada, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co., Intuit Canada, Rogers Cable Communications, Citi Cards Canada and Silver Lining Ltd., a business development company for small businesses. Silver Lining is the catalyst behind this new coalition, which was assembled with the belief that the six companies are stronger together than apart.

“History has shown that small businesses are the engine that can drive economies out of a recession,” said Carissa Reiniger, founder and president of Silver Lining. “We realized that now is the ideal time to bring this group of established companies together with the objective of giving small businesses all the resources and training they need to flourish in these tough times.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Ottawa – Ladedo Visual Concepts picked up the Buyer’s Choice Award for portable displays and exhibits at the Exhibitor Show 2009 in Las Vegas. This new Glide exhibit offers a ground breaking new solution for the exhibitor with smaller spaces. Glide can also be used for interior solutions, providing large LCD screen capabilities to catch attention and tell the clients story.

Ladedo’s new Glide exhibit also combines the best of both portable displays and custom displays as it provides multiple options. The beautiful oval banner is sure to draw the attention of exhibition attendees and the large screen capabilities will keep the clients attention.

Instead of lightweight banner stands or pop up exhibits without weight bearing capabilities, Glide now offers a great way to present messages on a large screen with all its visual and audio benefits.  When creating designs, they can create a corporate presence on the large graphic banner and header, while designing specific messages to be presented on the large screen for maximum impact. No other portable can handle a screen this large.  You can dramatically cut your messaging costs. Tell your story with easily changeable digital content, instead of having to change printed banner graphics.

Canada – Following its successful Canadian introduction last year, Flip Video™ introduced its full line of easy-to-use, portable camcorders into Canada today. With both high-definition and standard-resolution models, the complete line offers consumers the simplest and most affordable way to capture and share high quality video. Canadians can now enjoy the all-new Flip Ultra™ and UltraHD, as well as the remarkably slim and customizable Flip Mino™ and MinoHD.

“Flip Video has changed the way people capture and share video because it makes it simple, accessible and fun for everyone,” said Jonathan Kaplan, senior vice president and general manager of the Consumer Business Group at Cisco, which recently acquired Pure Digital Technologies, makers of Flip Video products. “The arrival of the complete Flip Video line, along with our FlipShare™ software, means that Canadians can now capture and share their stories with ease, even in stunning HD quality.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Ottawa – Rove Inc., leading developer of network administration software that provides smartphone-based management of IT systems and infrastructure, today announced the latest highly anticipated version of its flagship product. Mobile Admin now supports Nagios Monitoring, the leading open-source system, network and application monitoring solution, and Symbian S60 smartphones.

Through Mobile Admin, IT Administrators can view host and service details, view problems and acknowledge events raised by Nagios, at any time. Administrators can then directly access the affected host or service and rapidly address the issues using Mobile Admin. With this release, these administration tasks can be performed on Symbian S60 smartphones in addition to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices that Mobile Admin has traditionally supported.
Read the rest of this entry »

Burnaby – Teradici® Corporation, the industry leader in delivering a true PC experience over standard IP networks, has optimized its groundbreaking PC-over-IP® (PCoIP®) technology for wide area network (WAN) applications. The new PCoIP release dramatically improves the user experience with support for multimedia and 3D graphics over long distance networks enabling consolidation of any desktop and allowing enterprise to realize significant operational savings.

Key PCoIP WAN capabilities include:

* Regional and continental desktop consolidation for flexible access to desktop resources in the datacenter.
* Secure computing for remote workers and contractors including digital content creation, architecture, and 3D CAD/CAM applications.
* Pandemic preparedness for business continuity via remote access for home workers.
* Lower TCO by increasing PC/workstation utilization and reducing desktop portal appliance power.

The WAN optimized PCoIP release has been enhanced to deliver the best user experience in scenarios such as satellite or branch offices where bandwidth to the remote user is limited. In addition, optimized PCoIP protocol for WAN now supports latencies in applications reaching thousands of miles, and improves system responsiveness so users working remotely will experience no lag or delay when they move a mouse cursor connected to their desktop portal device.
Read the rest of this entry »

Vancouver – Live to tell the tale of becoming a notorious pirate captain or suffer a fate of eternal damnation. Disney Interactive Studios today announced the development of Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned, an epic, action role-playing game (RPG) from Propaganda Games, Disney’s video game development studio here in Vancouver.

Armada of the Damned is an entirely new experience within the Pirates of the Caribbean universe. The game takes place before the events of the blockbuster films. Players will take on the role of a pirate and embark on epic land and sea adventures. Numerous moral and character choices will need to be made that affect their character and the original story within the world. Players will explore a massive open world while fighting enemies, mystical creatures and Mother Nature, both to gain experience and stay alive. Supernatural elements familiar to the Pirates of the Caribbean world will also affect their character’s story and influence their choices.

“Armada of the Damned is a dynamic action role-playing game that captures all of the franchise’s excitement, unpredictability and action while delving into narrative elements never before explored within this unique universe,” said Dan Tudge, vice president and general manager, Propaganda Games. “Our team’s collective experience with industry-leading RPGs and action titles provides a strong foundation for us to create and build a compelling action role-playing title.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto – The National Film Board of Canada is proud to present the world premiere of Chris Landreth’s The Spine, a bold new film whose dazzling artistic style pushes the limits of animation. Landreth’s latest is the eagerly awaited follow-up film to Ryan, his 2004 Oscar winner for best animated short. From the same creative team that produced Ryan, The Spine is entirely computer animated and features the voices of Gordon Pinsent and Alberta Watson. The Spine uses bizarre but strangely believable imagery to tell the story of an ordinary married couple whose lives are in turn tragic, absurd and beautiful. It premieres at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival (June 8-13) in Annecy, France and will have its North American premiere at the World Wide Short Film Festival (June 16-21) in Toronto, Canada.

For The Spine, Landreth joins forces again with producers Steve Hoban (Copperheart Animation), Mark Smith (Copperheart Animation) and Marcy Page (National Film Board of Canada), who had collaborated with him to make Ryan. The Spine is a poignant story of redemption that takes us into the relationship between a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction. Dan and Mary Rutherford, married 26 years, sit unhappily in a couples’ group counselling session. Angela, another troubled participant in this group, wonders why their marriage has become so lopsided, so twisted. But when Mary leaves Dan, he undergoes a beautiful transformation. What will happen when she returns? Director and scriptwriter Landreth has created an insightful and daring look at the ways individuals evolve, adapt and break.
Read the rest of this entry »