Village Gamer

Montreal’s CGI Group Inc., a provider of information technology and business process services, today announced that BMO Financial Group has chosen CGI’s cloud computing services to help launch a comprehensive social media Hub.

The site will feature a comprehensive set of multimedia tools such as blogs, games and YouTube integration, a content management system for quickly and easily updating content on the site, customer relationship management tools, including e-mail registration and updates, and the capacity to rapidly activate new services.

In addition, CGI is providing BMO Financial Group with cloud services to support the launch of new mobile applications for its customers.

“Working with CGI, we developed the BMO SmartSteps for Parents, an interactive, online hub to help parents educate children about money management.  The resource is free and available to all Canadians and part of our commitment to Making money make sense^®,” said Bal Sahjpaul, Head of eChannel, BMO Financial Group. “We’re excited about our move to the cloud and how it will help us deliver exciting new services to our customers faster.”

“As a leading cloud computing provider, CGI delivers enterprise cloud solutions that address the performance, security and governance challenges large organizations face,” said Eva Maglis, President, Global Infrastructure Services, CGI. “Our value is in integrating cloud computing capabilities with more traditional services to provide clients with robust solutions customized to meet their specific business needs and enhance their business performance,” added Doug McCuaig, President, Canada, CGI.

Nightingale Informatix Corporation, an application service provider (ASP) of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software and related services today announced it has partnered with ExpeData LLC, an innovative software company and global leader in digital writing based in Ohio, to launch “Clinipen”, a potentially game-changing technology within the North American EMR market. Clinipen will enable EMR software providers to deliver an integrated digital writing solution with which healthcare providers can input structured data into a patient’s EMR directly from paper.

“Through this partnership with Nightingale, we will be making the adoption of EMR technology much more appealing to a large segment of North American healthcare providers, which is very exciting,” said Brandon Major, Vice President and COO, ExpeData. “We are looking forward to a successful launch of Clinipen.”

The EDW® digital writing platform from ExpeData leverages Anoto® digital pen and paper technology and Vision Objects’ industry-leading handwriting recognition technologies. ExpeData has demonstrated the effective use of its platform solution in a number of industries, including financial services and certain segments of the healthcare industry. Via the partnership, Nightingale and ExpeData will expand the deployment of the EDW® digital writing platform to the EMR market.

Nightingale and ExpeData have entered into a joint venture agreement for exclusive distribution rights for the Clinipen technology products for the EMR industry in North America. Each company will maintain 50% ownership.

Nightingale On Demand, Nightingale’s leading, web-based EMR, will be the first solution seamlessly integrated with Clinipen. The Clinipen-enabled solution for Nightingale On Demand is expected to become commercially available to physicians in Canada and the United States during the fourth quarter of this calendar year.

“Nightingale is committed to innovation and making the transition from paper records to EMR as seamless as possible for physicians,” said Sam Chebib, President and CEO of Nightingale. “Clinipen will be a major breakthrough in EMR data entry as it will allow healthcare providers to continue using their current paper forms to document patient encounters and write prescriptions. We believe integrating ExpeData’s digital writing technology with Nightingale On Demand will position both companies as leaders in the North American EMR market.”

According to the 2009  study Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians, it is estimated that more than 60% of Canadian physicians are still using paper-based records. A recent independent survey conducted in the US by CompTIA indicated that only 34% of healthcare providers use a comprehensive EMR system, while 16% indicated using a partial system. 29% of respondents indicated that they are evaluating solutions, while 20% indicated that they have not yet started the adoption process. (2nd Annual Healthcare IT Market: Insights and Opportunities Study)

ExpeData and Vision Objects are part of the digital writing investment portfolio held by Myrian Capital, a private equity firm focused on emerging technology businesses.

“Clinipen is a strategic opportunity and provides a natural way to expand our digital writing investment portfolio into the EMR market,” said Paddy Padmanabhan, Managing Director, Myrian Capital. “The advanced input technologies in this joint venture allow physicians to use handwriting, the most natural and flexible data capture method available, to easily transition to electronic records. This provides groundbreaking potential to accelerate EMR adoption.”

Get ready to start texting, tweeting and chatting like crazy, because keeping in touch with fellow Canadians just got a lot easier, cheaper and, well, a lot more fun! Boston company Heywire has launched HeyWire Canada as the very first iOS texting app to provide a Canadian phone number for unlimited texting (real SMS) to any mobile phone in Canada and to 45 countries for only $1.99 per month.

Whether you’re living in Canada, traveling on vacation or living abroad, HeyWire Canada provides an easy, inexpensive texting alternative using a Canadian phone number for connecting with friends and family in Canada and to 45 countries, including the U.S., Mexico, China, and countries within the Caribbean, South and Central America. Think of the HeyWire texting service as having a second line for your iPhone or a primary phone line for your iPod touch or iPad with access to unlimited texting greatness!

HeyWire Canada is available for $1.99/month. As a month-to-month subscription, you have the option to stop the service any time. So check-it out! Here’s how:

Step #1 – Make sure your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad has access to a 3G mobile data service or Wi-Fi.

Step #2 – Download HeyWire Canada from the iTunes App Store Social Networking category for free. Open the app, complete registration and simply purchase your Canadian phone number with unlimited texting for only $1.99/month. After that, once per month you will be reminded to renew so you can keep your Canadian number and unlimited texting. Yup, really easy! Read the rest of this entry »

With the release of its financial results for the first quarter of 2011, Videotron has announced some exciting plans for the rest of the year – and its customers will be the first to benefit. With reliable and robust land and mobile networks, state-of-the-art handsets and tablets, new HD channels and the most advanced platforms, Videotron customers already enjoy a wide array of benefits in terms of products, services, technological developments and entertainment.

“We know that the full range of telecommunications products and services that Videotron now offers or will soon be offering meets the growing needs of our customers because we are so close to them,” said Robert Dépatie, President and CEO of Videotron. “For example, the recent launch of our illico web and illico mobile services lets customers watch their favourite content on the platform of their choice, while saving money thanks to product bundling and one-stop shopping. This empowers Videotron customers and gives them a freedom of choice found nowhere else. In fact, it is thanks to our customers that Videotron was ranked the mobile carrier with the highest customer satisfaction rate in Eastern Canada.(1) We owe this honour to our loyal customer base, and to our people.”

As at March 31, 2011, the company boasted a total of 164,700 subscriber connections, including 143,600 connections to its new 4G network. Since the end of April, the residents of Saguenay–Lac Saint-Jean and several other municipalities across Québec have had access to the Company’s mobile services. Read the rest of this entry »

Tungle is now available in the BlackBerry App World as a free download. Tungle.me is an app that makes scheduling meetings easy – across organizations, calendar systems and time zones – by eliminating the multiple emails, phone calls and double bookings that typically come with finding a time to meet.
While it is not a calendar itself, Tungle.me synchronizes with the leading online calendar systems including BlackBerry®, Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage for Mac, Lotus Notes, Yahoo! and Windows Live. Tungle.me does not require people you schedule with to sign up or download anything.

Tungle.me lets you send meeting invitations that propose multiple times and automatically adjust for time zones. You can also invite others to schedule with you through your personal Tungle.me page, which displays your custom availability (not your calendar details).

With Tungle.me for BlackBerry, you can share calendars with others, inside or outside your organization, across different calendar types. You can schedule meetings by overlaying calendars of people you share with and proposing multiple times to meet. Tungle.me sorts replies for you, dynamically prevents double bookings, and automatically adjusts for invitees’ time zones. You can also reply to meeting invitations received from other Tunglers, or through your personal Tungle.me scheduling page.

Tungle is now a part of the RIM group, and can be used on PC, Mac, mobile iDevices and as mentioned above, BlackBerry.

Promaginy, a business assistance company in Winnipeg, is pleased to officially launch its own product. UpDownStart is a free web app that uses Twitter technology to track the latest announcements of games industry companies and their fans.

UpDownStart allows developers, news media, and fans to easily see the latest Tweets from the games industry. UpDownStart goes beyond focusing solely on game companies, expanding to include game communities, providing a holistic industry perspective. Companies and communities not included in the site’s index are invited to submit their Twitter feed to UpDownStart.

UpDownStart allows developers, media critics, and fans to:

• Track the most popular companies and communities, ranked by number of Twitter Followers. Smaller entities can be found through the index, the site’s search form, or via the random profile selection.

• Read games industry Tweets through UpDownStart.com’s Activity Feeds. Feel the industry’s pulse via distinct company and community perspectives.

• Add your own Twitter Feeds. If you are game developer, news media, or a fan, and have a website related to the games industry, you can add your site to UpDownStart. Not only will your profile be included in the index, your future Tweets will be shared via UpDownStart’s Activity Feeds.

• Note, there is currently a message on the site which states: At the moment we are only taking submissions for Video Game Company profiles. This is due to limited amount of resources at this early stage. Follow @updownstart for news when the resources limit is removed.)

Following the great success of “I Learn With Poko: Seasons and Weather! HD,” Tribal Nova has released the iPhone version of this top ranking educational app. The iPad version has been selected by Apple as “New and Noteworthy” or “Staff favorites” in the U.S and 15 other countries. Users and reviewers have also given the game rave reviews bringing the app to the top position of the Games-Educational and Games-Kids charts in Australia as well as a top 10 positions in the U.S., Canada and the UK.

I Learn With Poko: Seasons and Weather! is an educational game that lets children 3 to 7 years old learn many key concepts about the weather in various seasons, how to dress and what activities to do depending on the weather… while having tons of fun! Produced by the developers behind the award winning PBS KIDS PLAY! and CBC Wonderworld online learning programs, this app is the first app available on iPhone in the groundbreaking iLearnWith educational program, which is designed to help kids get ready for school, one app at a time.

“Seasons and Weather is one of the most important Science subjects taught to children in Pre-k and Kindergarten, yet there are no games for young children covering the subject in the app store. We are happy to fulfill this need and are committed to developing a comprehensive educational program in which each app will address a specific subject in the curriculum. We have another nine apps currently in development covering various skills in math, literacy, science and foreign languages,” says Pierre Le Lann, co-founder of Tribal Nova.

This app is based on National Standards and has been developed with child developmental psychologists and educators. The game has three levels, increasing in complexity, details and subject covered. Moreover, each level contains a mechanism that adjusts the difficulty based on the child’s success rate. These elements combined enable the game to meet children’s developmental needs regardless if they are 3 or 7 years old.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrMprG-AEYQ]

The game contains many ways for children to learn about seasons and weather: finding certain weather conditions such as clouds or snow to help Beebee find pictures for her photo album; or spotting clothes that do not fit the weather to help Poko take a perfect picture; or guessing what activities Poko did certain days of the week based on the weather and the month of the year.

Educational content, rich graphics and audio, fun game mechanics and a high production budget really set this app apart to deliver both learning and fun to families.

“We have developed over 100 online educational games for young children over the past 5 years. We are very excited to apply our expertise to touch screens, and are confident we can develop some of the best kids apps in the app store with truly educational content and great gameplay,” says Guillaume Aniorte, Tribal Nova’s other co-founder.

ORION Microsystems will be releasing iQuakeMini for iPad, iPhone and iPod this May 28th on the iTunes App Store worldwide. iQuakeMini is an app that displays graphically the latest earthquakes using heatmaps and allows you to receive earthquake notifications on your iPhone, iPad or wifi connected iPod when an earthquake occurs in one of the three user selected areas.

Quakes are represented by multicolored spots and areas on different types of Maps, with basic information provided directly on the maps. More indepth details are available on a List of recent earthquakes, with links to
Internet sources such as USGS. A unique feature in iQuakeMini is the option to create up to three “watch” areas on the globe, with the app then sending alarm notifications to your iDevice when an earthquake occurs in your watched areas. Day and Night settings also allow filtering of information during night hours if needed.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tabxirgnnxU]

Users can post maps and snapshots of the screen to Twitter, Facebook, emailed or saved in the Photo Album. The Info is linked to an internet-based “Breaking News” page which is updated in real time when major events occur.

iQuakeMini device requirements:

* iPhone, iPad (3G or WiFi) 4.2 or later
* iPod (WiFi) 4.2 or later

iQuakeMini will be priced at $2.99 (USD) and will be available worldwide through the App Store, with a $1.99 special intro price from May 28 to June 5. iQuakeLite, a free iPad version of the app is available now.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is asking Canadians to provide data and information on online broadcasting services and their impact on the Canadian communications system as per Broadcasting and Telecom Notice of Consultation CRTC 2011-344.

“The digital environment is providing Canadians with more programming choices than ever before,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC. “Canadians have access to libraries of online content that can originate from anywhere in the world, and which can be watched on different screens. This fact-finding exercise will give us a better understanding of the dynamic and innovative environment as it continues to evolve.”

As part of its mandate to supervise the Canadian broadcasting system, the CRTC has investigated similar technological and consumer trends in the past. For example, in 2006, the CRTC prepared a report on the future environment facing the Canadian broadcasting system. In 2009, the CRTC released a report on broadcasting services in official-language minority communities.

The CRTC is gathering data and information:

• at the request of the most significant members of the Canadian communications industry, as expressed in a letter dated April 1, 2011, and
• further to a resolution of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which was included in its March 2011 report, Impacts of Private Television Ownership Changes and the Move Towards New Viewing Platforms.

Interested parties are invited to comment on a number of topics related to the digital environment. They may submit their comments by June 27, 2011, either by completing the online form, by writing to the Secretary General, CRTC, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0N2, or by fax at 819-994-0218.

FreshBooks announced earlier today at the mesh conference that the company has recruited experienced internet Executive Stuart MacDonald to a newly-created “C” level role, responsible for Marketing, Sales, Support and Revenue. FreshBooks.com, the leader in online invoicing, has experienced impressive, ongoing growth, doubling its number of users each year, which is now at more than 2.5 million.

Stuart MacDonald joins the FreshBooks team as a proven entrepreneur and marketer with several start-ups under his belt, including founding Expedia.ca, Canada’s most successful online business. Stuart went on to be the CMO of Expedia.com in Seattle, and has worked with numerous other organizations as a consultant, advisor, investor and mentor. Stuart is a co-founder of the mesh Conference now in its 6^th year, together with FreshBooks.com CEO Mike McDerment and other partners.

“Stuart has already built one category from the ground-up, which makes him a perfect choice to build the online invoicing category,” said Mike McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks.com. “It’s never easy to find the top talent required to build a world class online company in Canada, so naturally we’re thrilled to bring Stuart on board, bringing with him the energy and expertise we need to seize the opportunities in front of us.”

Mike McDerment co-founded FreshBooks eight years ago in Toronto. Despite seeing many other Canadians move south to start or join up-and-coming companies, Mike committed himself to building a world-class company where he grew up, and to supporting Toronto’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“Continuing to build FreshBooks.com into a global online business powerhouse right here in Canada is a top priority for me too” says Stuart. “What Mike and the FreshBooks.com team have accomplished so far is a huge step in that direction. On top of that, the FreshBooks team loves what they do and loves their customers. It’s a pretty special thing to be a part of.”

“I’ve worked with Stuart for over five years now on the mesh Conference, and I’ve always known him to do the right thing,” Mike continued. “He has the FreshBooks.com values in spades, and no one loves customers like Stuart.”

FreshBooks.com also recently hired Gary Mirsky, former Director of Sales at Intuit Canada, and has currently has over 20 different positions open in Toronto, including another “C” level role as Chief Technical Officer.