Village Gamer

White label mobile wallet and marketing platform solutions provider Omnego has launched their GoTravelWallet™ app, the one place to digitally store travel information for people on the go.

Perfect for business and pleasure, the GoTravelWallet lets travelers carry all of their travel cards, documents, references and travel information within a single smartphone wallet app, enabling smarter and lighter travel without the bulk of cards, papers and books that clutter and weigh down wallets and luggage.

GoTravelWallet carries mobile versions of airline, hotel and car rental membership, rewards and credit cards in a handy smartphone wallet app. GoTravelWallet also helps protect travelers from the loss or theft of important travel documents by storing digital photos of passport, insurance and other travel forms created with the in-app camera. And GoTravelWallet is a convenient one-stop reference for all travel-related information from exchange rates to weather, and provides quick access to the mobile websites of airlines, car rental companies, hotels and other travel resources.

With GoTravelWallet, travelers can:

• Check airline flight status and schedules, and book flights from over 30 airlines
• Make car rental reservations from popular car and transport businesses
• Book hotels from major hotel and hotel discount websites
• Research destinations with access to travel guides like Fodor’s, Lonely Planet, Orbitz, TripAdvisor
• Find nearby deals, banks, shopping, restaurants, groceries, pharmacies, lodging and more
• Access travel reference tools – QR code reader, currency exchange rates, language translator, measurement conversion, time zones and weather

The GoTravelWallet app is now available for Blackberry, iPhone and Android smartphones.

Omnego is hiring: Director of Business Development and a QA Specialist

Mobile local search and advertising service Poynt Corporation has released a new version of their award-winning local search application Poynt on the BlackBerry® Playbook™ tablet for use in Germany, France, Spain and Italy in their respective languages.

North American and United Kingdom Playbook tablet users now have access to the Events search vertical allowing them to search for concerts, sporting events, festivals, and other local events and venues. Users can search by location, date, category or performer and have access to detailed event information, including turn-by-turn directions, performance details, venue details, event websites and images, without leaving the app. The up-to-the-minute content is provided by a Poynt content partner, Eventful, the leading digital media company connecting 20 million consumers to local events. Users can add events to their device calendar or send details to friends via email, Facebook or Twitter.

‘Search from here’—one of the more popular functionalities of the existing version of the App—has also been added. The feature allows users to fully plan their days or their evenings by making a search listing their location in order to find additional business, movie, restaurant and event listings nearby. For example, this allows users to plan a complete evening out by choosing a restaurant and making dinner reservations and then finding a movie theatre in the area, booking movie tickets and getting directions all without exiting the app. This functionality makes Poynt a truly valuable personal assistant tool when planning your day.

Playbook tablet users in Europe and North America can integrate Poynt across their devices by pairing their BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with their BlackBerry smartphone. Pairing allows users to take advantage of the larger user interface offered by the BlackBerry PlayBook while still taking full advantage of the features available through their BlackBerry smartphone.

“The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offers a very user-friendly interface and allows us to showcase the wealth of events data and multimedia available. Providing users in Europe with the ability to use Poynt for the PlayBook tablet in their native languages is important to us as we recognize the value of local content,” stated Andrew Osis, president and CEO of Poynt Corp. “We anticipate that continued growth in feature sets and geographies will translate into continued revenue growth for Poynt Corp.”

“With richer data sets and verticals comes increased usage of the App – both in frequency and length of time. We continue to see an increased number of searches per user as we expand the features and functionality within Poynt. This, in turn, translates into increased advertising revenue.”

Poynt is a convenient and timesaving GPS-enabled mobile application that connects consumers to local businesses, events, restaurants, movie theatres, gas prices and weather information at the moment they are looking to buy or acquire products or services. Poynt provides consumers with the ability to move beyond discovery of their local area to view movie trailers and reviews, buy movie tickets, click-to-call businesses, get directions, browse listing websites, read reviews and book dining reservations, all without leaving the App.

Poynt revenue is driven by providing contextual and relevant advertising to users through searches, local queries, page views, and transactions within the App. Each user query generates several page views, which are monetized through display advertising and sponsored listings paid for by advertisers on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis or on a cost per click (CPC) basis. Transactions, such as ticket sales and restaurant reservations, also contribute to revenues on a fee for service basis.

Poynt is available as a free download for users in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia on BlackBerry® smartphones, BlackBerry Playbook™ tablet, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Nokia devices from the respective App Stores. Poynt is also available via Over the Air download at m.poynt.com.

Flatter World, the new educational venture behind the Flat Stanley franchise’s move to the Web, has released Flat Stanley for iPhone. Flat Stanley is free to download and enables children to share content in a safe way with their friends, teachers and families.

The Flat Stanley App is the mobile version of the beloved Flat Stanley Project, a pen pal program that Dale Hubert, a third grade teacher in London ON invented in 1994 to promote international literacy and community building for children ages 13 and under. The character itself dates back to a beloved children’s book published by Harper Collins in 1964.

Children can quickly sign up and bring Stanley or Stella (the new, female Flat character) with them wherever they go. In minutes, they can customize their creation (by choosing skin and hair color, facial expressions and clothing), take photographs and insert Stanley/ Stella into them with either front or rear-facing camera, write their character’s biography and “like,” comment on and share photos with their friends across the Flatter World network, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.

The app also plots popular Stanleys on a Wall of Fame as well as those near a particular user on a world map, helping users track where their friends and families’ Stanleys travel. It’s a quick and easy way for kids to see the world and make new friends outside of their hometown with a familiar and friendly character leading the way.

To encourage exploring Stanleys outside of one’s network, the app unlocks special pictures from exciting locations.

The app works in both online and offline modes so that users can take and save Flat Stanley photos irrespective of Internet connectivity.

“This app marks the launch of Flat Stanley moving online in a way that’s mobile and social, catering to future generations of pen pals around the world,” said Flat Stanley Project founder, Dale Hubert. “It’s just the tip of the iceberg and will help introduce users to what’s coming next: a robust Flat Stanley social network built on the principles of sharing content in safe and fun ways.”

The Flat Stanley app presents wide range of educational possibilities for teachers, and beta app users have already been actively sharing pictures of their personalized Stanleys in scenes from history, alongside political leaders and celebrities, on their vacations, and more.

Over the past 16 years, schools and teachers across the world have incorporated the Flat Stanley Project into their curriculums to promote exploration and community building and to strengthen writing skills:

•     4,500 schools across 88 countries are registered with the Flat Stanley Project
•     It’s part of the official curriculum for counties in most of the Unites States
•     It has been incorporated into Harper Collins books to MTI musicals
•     Hundreds of thousands of Flat Stanley’s have been exchanged around the world
•     1M+ people are exposed to Flat Stanley each year

Ottawa’s Espial® has announced that the Espial TV Browser is now powering a wide range of consumer devices including Smart TVs, set-top boxes and digital media players. The Espial TV Browser is now commercially shipping in more than 25 languages across the world. To support this global reach, the Espial TV Browser has been optimized to support more than two dozen languages as well as the most popular search, news, video, photo, social and sports sites in dozens of countries.

“We’re pleased to bring the full web experience to Smart TV consumers across the globe” stated Dilshan De Silva, Director Browser Products, Espial.  “The Espial TV Browser, based on WebKit, provides connected TVs with a complete web and video experience including Flash 10.1 and HTML5 support.”

About Espial TV Browser:

• The Espial TV Browser is now powering Smart TVs, Digital Media Adapters, Set-top boxes and other consumer electronic devices across the world.
• The Espial TV Browser provides access to popular Search, News, Video, Photo, Social Networking and Sport Sites. The most popular websites are preset into the browser including Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Daily Motion, Picasa, Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, and more.
• The Espial TV Browser is based on WebKit, supports 25+ languages and is optimized to industry leading chipsets. It supports languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, European, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and many more.
• The Espial TV Browser, based on WebKit, delivers a PC-like web browsing experience, applications, widgets, video, HTML5 and Adobe Flash 10.1.

Next month, visitors to IBC 2011 in Amsterdam can see the Espial TV Browser demonstrated at the Espial TV booth (A18) in Hall 5.

QuickMobile, a supplier of mobile solutions for the meetings and events industry has closed a $2.3 million round of funding. The investment, a combination of debt and equity from angel investors, will be used to support new product development, innovation and to expand QuickMobile’s customer base internationally.  QuickMobile is on pace in 2011 to record a 500 percent increase in bookings compared to 2010.

Can Stock Photo’s independent library of images has surpassed the 5 million mark, reaffirming the company as one of the world’s biggest independent stock photography collections. The microstock photography company has seen strong library growth in the past year, largely attributed to significantly increasing contributor earnings and a file submission process that is widely regarded as one of the fastest and most efficient in the industry. This has enabled the company to add over 2 million new images in just the past year.

The prestige of having over 5 million independent images in Can Stock Photo’s library is something that few stock photography companies in the world can match. While many competing agencies share and distribute their images to one another to increase their advertised image count, Can Stock Photo’s library is independent of such sharing & licensing agreements.

“Every single image on our site was submitted directly to us, inspected by our staff, and is maintained by us. We don’t license outside images. Our approach is increasingly rare among our competitors, and provides us with the significant advantage of being able to provide more accountability to our customers. Our clients know exactly where our images came from, and know that they all meet our high independent standards.” – Duncan Enman, general manager

The news of reaching the 5 million image mark comes on the heels of another major announcement by the company last month, who launched a new version of its website, complete with a high-tech search engine that is billed as one of the fastest in the industry. By combining their new design, search engine, and growing library, Can Stock Photo aims to provide one of the biggest independent stock photography collections with one of the quickest stock photo search engines.

The Globe and Mail’s Globe2Go ePaper service, developed by NewspaperDirect, has enjoyed unparalleled success since its release in 2010. Now NewspaperDirect and The Globe and Mail have launched the much-anticipated Globe2Go Android app, which is now available for download from Google’s Android Market.

Unlike other news applications that offer a slimmed-down version of the newspaper, Globe2Go gives its readers the complete daily newspaper, including all advertisements, plus instant access to all the regional editions of the publication. The daily edition is available for download at 5:30 a.m. local time. So, for most people, The Globe and Mail will be available on their mobile devices or tablets well before the print edition lands on their neighbour’s doorstep.

“NewspaperDirect enabled us to quickly deploy the Globe2Go ePaper service and allowed us to offer electronic portability of our newspaper on multiple platforms. The original Globe2Go app was introduced on the same day the first tablet was made available in Canada. It has been very popular with readers and we expect the Android version to be a huge hit as well,” said Andrée Gosselin O’Meara at The Globe and Mail.

Globe2Go is based on the same technology as NewspaperDirect’s PressReader app for Android devices, which delivers touch-optimized browsing of complete editions of top news publications and offers:

•     Daily automatic download of user-selected titles
•     Fast navigation using thumbnails or tables of contents
•     Intuitive reading experience: flip, pan and zoom articles and photos, and view them in stunning clarity
•     Support for full graphic page views or easy-to-read text views of articles
•     On-demand audio that narrates a spoken version of any news article
•     Sharing of articles by email or by posting on social network sites

In 2010, NewspaperDirect and The Globe and Mail developed the Globe2Go ePaper electronic edition of The Globe and Mail using NewspaperDirect’s proprietary PressDisplay.com technology, making the full digital replica of The Globe and Mail printed edition available on numerous platforms and devices, including PCs, Macs, smartphones, tablets and eReaders — at no operational cost to the publisher. It also ensures that as new devices hit the market, Globe2Go readers will be able to enjoy their favourite publication on the latest handsets and tablets.

“The Globe and Mail is the top national paper in Canada and is renowned for its superior reporting and editorial. Globe2Go apps are perfect for delivering the complete newspaper to users wherever they are, while retaining the quality of the print edition, which has recently gone through a major redesign,” said Alex Kroogman, CEO of NewspaperDirect. “We’re truly delighted to partner with them to deliver their award-winning content on all the devices their readers choose to use.”

Ivana Murleau, who saw runaway success with her first ebook “The Best of Drunk Texter” knew that messages that seemed racy in the moment could often be equally hilarious, especially when the intended message didn’t go as planned. This growing phenomena is called “Sexting.”  Sexting is the act of sending explicit sex messages and images via cellphones and other PDA devices.

There have been an eruption of scandals involving sexting which have found many celebrities and politicians in hot water jeopardizing both careers and marriages.  For others, a sober “morning after” read through of a previous nights text can make for some regrettable and embarrassing moments.

“This ebook is definitely much raunchier than my first ebook” says Murleau who needed to add an adult content disclaimer on the sales page.

With her mix of wit and commentary, you’ll enjoy the taking the journey with Ms. Murleau through sexting gone wrong, from horrible misspellings to “wish you could die” misdirected messages. In anticipation to its popularity, Apple, Sony, and Kobo allowed Open Mic Press to jump the upload queue in time for a September 1, 2011 launch.

Ivana Murleau edited her first book “The Best Of Drunk Texter”  which made Bookstorechart.com’s Top 50 Humor eBooks available for download on your iPad and iPhone, resulting in a global sales increase of 5600% in May 2011 over the previous month.??In an effort to help readers enjoy both titles, most ebook vendors have committed to offering a discount on “The Best of Drunk Texter” bundled with “The Best of Funny Sexting”. The ebook has a simultaneous online release in the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States.?? Open Mic Press is an ebook publisher with a focus on promoting comics, joke books and general humour publications.

Arius3D Corp. and Masterfile Corporationare pleased to announce that Arius3D has entered into an agreement with the shareholders of Masterfile to purchase, on certain conditions, all of the issued and outstanding securities of Masterfile for a purchase price equal to CDN$21,379,580.

Masterfile, headquartered in Toronto, is one of the world’s largest providers of premium still images in terms of revenues. Masterfile was created within a subsidiary of the Toronto Sun in 1981 and managed by Steve Pigeon until it was sold by the Toronto Sun to Mr. Pigeon and a consortium of employees and contributing photographers in 1984. Since its founding, Masterfile’s growth has been primarily organic, and today it has approximately 100 employees worldwide.

Set out below is selected financial information from Masterfile’s audited financial statements for each of the fiscal years ended February 28, 2009 and 2010:

A decline of approximately $5.2 million in revenue between fiscal years 2010 and 2009 was consistent with overall industry results and is largely attributable to the impact of the world financial crisis. Net income improved by approximately $1.3 million over that same time period despite the revenue decline. Masterfile is only now in a position to benefit from a more normalized business environment, although there continues to be pressure on operating results.

Under the terms of the Share Purchase Agreement, Masterfile has agreed to provide the Company with its audited financial statements for fiscal 2011 prior to closing. With the acquisition of Masterfile, it is believed that the Company will be the only image distributor in the world offering traditional 2D images together with high resolution 3D images produced using Arius3D’s world renowned technologies.

John Wood, the CEO of Arius3D stated “I believe there is a significant opportunity in the 3D market and Masterfile is a great platform to enable Arius3D to take a leadership position in this market. Masterfile is a leading player in the 2D stock photo industry and has profited from the industry’s spectacular growth through more than two decades. Demand for 2D stock photo content is continuing to grow, however, crowd-sourced supply is impacting the business. As a result, combining the unique content of Arius3D with Masterfile has significant potential. Masterfile’s completely redesigned website released in July 2011 is the perfect platform to showcase 3D content on the internet. Users of the new class of consumer computing devices are demanding rich and interactive content, but 2D photographs are not interactive. 3D content provides the solution and we believe the potential growth in demand for 3D content could replicate or exceed that of 2D stock photo content.”

“Since 1999, Arius3D has developed proprietary, patented 3D technologies, capable of producing extraordinarily rich and interactive 3D image content. That content provides the users of the new class of computing devices with a dramatically enhanced experience. The acquisition of Masterfile should enable Arius3D to commercialize its proprietary capabilities profitably and more quickly, with the objective of making the combined company a leader in the 3D segment of our industry.”

Masterfile President, Steve Pigeon adds: “We believe the combination of Arius3D’s unique technology with Masterfile’s skill and experience in acquiring, marketing and licensing creative content globally provides a wonderful opportunity to build a powerful new enterprise that will benefit our clientele, contributing artists and other stakeholders around the world. This promises to be an exciting, challenging and hopefully rewarding adventure for all of us.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pizza operator Pizza 73 has launched its iPhone application to make ordering pizza both convenient and fast. The launch is the first of its kind from a Western Canadian-based pizza chain. Developed by Break Point Creative, the new app can be downloaded from the App Store for all iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad™ devices.

This innovative application will fundamentally change the ordering experience, making it fast and convenient, all at the swipe of a finger. Users have access to the menu, specials, and to completely customize their pizzas and other menu choices. By using location-based services (LBS), it can map out the nearest Pizza 73 location. Registered users also receive added convenience with saved profile information and can choose their last order with just one tap.

Pizza 73 was one of the first in the industry to launch online ordering over ten years ago and has a strong online customer base, due to its user-friendly system and promotional activity, such as the current “Spin to Win” game when you order online. They are now first to market with the iPhone ordering app.

“We are committed to mobile as a part of our overall strategy to provide a fast and convenient ordering experience for our customers. As the leading pizza chain in Western Canada, we strive to be at the forefront of technology to set new standards within the pizza industry. Being a trend-setter is key to winning over new customers and providing another service to our existing customers.” said Pat Finelli, Chief Marketing Officer of Pizza Pizza / Pizza 73.