Village Gamer

At The Vancouver International Partnering Forum 2008, 600+ meetings were reported in just one day by top executives from international digital companies at the popular one-on-one sessions

Vancouver – This year, the number of match made 1+1s may just double, with an additional full day of programming that includes hand-picked B2B sessions, an International Keynote Luncheon, International Breakfast, Digital Networker’s Cocktail reception and exclusive international networking events.

So if you’re a digital company exploring global connections in mobile, Games, VFX, Web 2.0, Social Media, eLearning, Animation or a traditional media business planning new ventures into digital space, here’s a prime opportunity to meet the players who matter and identify opportunities to co-produce, invest, publish, aggregate, source or outsource projects.

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Toronto – E1 Entertainment (“E1”) today announced that its film and television content is now available on the iTunes Store in Canada, the US and the UK. E1 will launch its presence on iTunes with the recent theatrical blockbuster Twilight, which is now available for pre-order in the iTunes Store. Twilight is distributed by E1 in both Canada and the UK, and Summit in the US.

“We are excited to be able to offer film and TV enthusiasts the opportunity to rent or purchase E1 content on iTunes,” said Patrice Theroux, President Filmed Entertainment at E1. “We are expanding our digital offering on a multi territory basis and with iTunes we can provide consumers easy access to our library of films and television programs.”  iTunes customers in the US, Canada and UK can now enjoy a varied selection of E1-distributed new releases and catalogue titles including:
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Vancouver – Absolute® Software Corporation, the leading provider of firmware-based, patented, computer theft recovery, data protection and IT asset management solutions, has announced the official launch of Computrace® Mobile for the BlackBerry® platform. The new solution delivers asset management, data protection and geolocation tracking for the popular BlackBerry line of smartphones.

The launch follows a successful beta program that allowed select Absolute customers to test Computrace Mobile for BlackBerry smartphones within their live IT operations. One beta test customer, John D. Halamka, CIO, Beth Israel Deaconess & Harvard Medical School, commented, “I depend on my BlackBerry® to run five different organizations, $100 million in annual budgets, and 800 emails a day. The Computrace Agent enables me to track my Blackberry® via its internal GPS. Also, it enables my staff to track my location to an accuracy of about 20 meters. Over my 60 days of testing, it accurately tracked geolocation 24×7.”

“Our customers have the competitive advantage of being able to manage their laptops, desktops and smartphones from a single portal, helping to reduce operational costs and losses due to theft and inefficient allocation,” said John Livingston, president and CEO of Absolute Software. “We continue to extend our platform to ensure organizations have the visibility and protection they need to get the most from their investments in mobile computing.”
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Vancouver/North Myrtle Beach – Thinking Studios, a small independent Vancouver studio, and Slam Dunk Studios of North Myrtle Beach SC, are proud to announce the new PC game “Raycatcher”, which syncs its gameplay with your MP3s.  Create custom playlists of your favorite music and play for as long or as short as you’d like. The goal of the game is to spin a colorful cluster of shapes to catch multi-colored rays. This causes the cluster to grow, evolve, and unlock 30 new evolutionary stages.

Raycatcher, which is due for release in March 2009, represents the first game produced by the coordinated efforts of Thinking Studios and Slam Dunk Studios. “Raycatcher represents a new twist on the play to music gaming genre.” “We believe Raycatcher will appeal to a broad age group.”

Thinking Studios was started by John Warner, an artist currently employed in the game industry, who has worked on such titles as Company of Heroes and Dawn of War II.

Toronto – Red Wolf Online proudly announces its Beta launch of MeetingMade™, a web-based calendaring tool that automates and simplifies the scheduling of meetings and events by removing the tedious ‘back & forth’ over the phone or email.

With MeetingMade, you and your meeting participants share your availability without disclosing or compromising personal schedules in an easy-to-use interface. MeetingMade then calculates the best meeting time for everyone.

“I was inspired to create MeetingMade shortly after I moved to Toronto from Vancouver about 12 years ago, “ said David Tessler, President of Red Wolf Online. “Most of my childhood friends are busy professionals who now live here and we found it really difficult to get together. Our joke was that the amount of time it took to schedule a ‘get-together’ was more than the time we spent together.”
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Vancouver – Big Fish Games™, the world’s leading online destination for games and interactive entertainment, announced today the release of Unwell Mel, an addictive puzzle game and the first title to come out of Big Fish Games’ recently opened Vancouver, B.C. studio. The Vancouver team – including artists and developers – allows Big Fish Games to more effectively expand its genre expertise without sacrificing the depth, quality and creativity that is the hallmark of Big Fish Games.

“Like all the games that we concept, develop and release, Unwell Mel is an original in its genre. It’s a creative twist on match-three games,” said Pat Wylie, vice president of Big Fish Games Studios. “I’m excited about our Vancouver team; their talent strengthens Studios, and as we grow the team we can ensure the continued production of great games.”

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A noted online author has put together a free online book that challenges common beliefs about how Google ranks web pages

Aldergrove BC – Daniel J Deyette spent the last 7 years analyzing his sites and client sites trying to understand the stories floating around the internet about how Google really worked. Like many in the internet marketing industry, he was always reading about the “Sandbox Effect” or about how some link strategy had banned a website.

“People still believe stories that were told in 2005” Says Deyette, author of the new book Google Myths Exposed. “I just wanted to find a way to express everything I’ve learned, following the experts, listening and leaning on every word Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Central websites said.”

While Deyette’s book is not created, authorized, or endorsed by Google, it does quote many Google authorized sources and offer’s an intriguing insight into questions that website owners and marketers have been asking since Google’s inception in 1998.

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Hosting companies can now integrate, manage, and sell BlackBerry Internet services along with Exchange Hosting services from one control panel

Vancouver – DotNetPanel, a leading Windows hosting control panel developer, announced today its new BlackBerry Enterprise module, designed exclusively for companies wanting to increase sales and revenue by offering BlackBerry services. The new BlackBerry Enterprise module integrates seamlessly with existing Exchange Hosting services, all within one control panel.

“Our Exchange Hosting module has been a tremendous success so now we can leverage the ability to offer BlackBerry Internet services as an end-to-end product for our customers to resell to their end-users,” said Feodor Fitsner, Director of DotNetPanel. “In addition to our latest Hyper-V virtualization module, hosting providers and SaaS companies have several choices available to increase their market share and stay competitive in the hosting industry.”

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Toronto – Viigo Inc., developer of the popular mobile content and services platform for smartphones, announced today that its award-winning application is the first third party application to be included in the BlackBerry Application Center for Vodafone.

Viigo is a free application that delivers a rich array of news, weather, sports, market data, personalised stock portfolios, shopping, social networks, movie listings, flight schedules, flight status and more, all customised by the user to suit their needs and delivered to them with unrivalled speed and simplicity.

Viigo, which is immediately available to all Vodafone Australia BlackBerry Storm customers, can be downloaded easily from the Application Center (which is found on the BlackBerry home screen), or by visiting http://www.viigo.com/en-au/vodafone

“People often call Viigo the most highly used application on their BlackBerry after email.” said Mark Ruddock, CEO, Viigo. “We’re excited by this initiative, and look forward to helping Vodafone deliver a truly differentiated BlackBerry smartphone experience, right out of the box.”

Live from Intel’s Booth at Mobile World Congress, LiveCast Brings International Scenes to WiMAX Video Wall

Vancouver/Barcelona – Live video from mobile devices pioneer, LiveCast®, today announced support for the world’s first WiMAX phone, in partnership with Yota, the Russian operator developing and providing mobile services based on 4G Mobile WiMAX broadband technology.

LiveCast helps illustrate the power and speed of WiMAX for operators as well as end-users – currently supporting a variety of WiMAX enabled netbooks, PCs and mobile internet devices (MIDs). LiveCast has enabled hardware-level DSP assisted video encoding for the HTC MAX 4G mobile phone, furthering the company’s already extensive range of in-market supported WiMAX devices. LiveCast also takes full advantage of mobile devices’ built-in GPS capability by integrating location data for real-time tracking on a map, including automated notifications and social network sharing for Yota Network customers.

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