Village Gamer

A story I missed late last week: SuperRewards, the pioneer of virtual currency for social and mobile games, has been acquired by Vancouver’s Playerize. Founded in 2007, SuperRewards quickly became a leading monetization service for online, free-to-play games. The company was acquired in 2009 by Adknowledge, one of the world’s largest ad marketplaces. Jason Bailey, the principal founder, continued with Adknowledge and served as the GM of Games and Virtual Currency for two years, before leaving in 2011 to found East Side Games. Read the rest of this entry »

Montreal’s Echoer, a mobile app that makes it easy to share local experiences and see what other people are thinking and experiencing in the places around them, is now available for Android devices. Initially released on iPhone earlier this year, the app curates users’ thoughts and experiences by relevance, placing the best content on the map to give timely and popular recommendations. Read the rest of this entry »

Online kids’ channel Toon Goggles, an innovative free portal that provides valuable viewing data to content producers, has signed an agreement with Malaysia-based Backbone Entertainment to bring two of the animation studio’s premier properties to Toon Goggles’ growing library of content. The agreement sees two of Backbone’s animated programs, 13 episodes of “Sugar Pals” and 13 Episodes of “Stryker,” now being available to Toon Goggles audiences throughout the US and Canada. Read the rest of this entry »

Warm Stories has officially announced its WhenAbouts project. A true, transmedia adventure series – part book, part subscription, part game – that will unfold in 12 real-world mailings over 6 months. These snail-mail “chapters” will have corresponding digital components that will develop into an immersive, time travel adventure series for tweens and their parents, fusing together the forgotten joys of real mail with awesome online video and game experiences. Read the rest of this entry »

UK-based digital payments specialist Telrock has launched a self service payments application, SmartCollect in Canada this week, offering customers a range of quick and discreet ways to make payments on current and overdue accounts, through a choice of digital channels. Read the rest of this entry »

Rdio has announced two landmark deals with CD Baby and TuneCore, the largest aggregators of independent music, bringing Rdio’s catalogue to over 18 million songs. CD Baby’s addition to Rdio supports the local Canadian music scene, with more than 18,000 Canadian artists across Canada’s ten provinces and three territories being added to Rdio’s groundbreaking and diverse music collection. Read the rest of this entry »

Shift Networks, a Calgary-based provider of hosted telephone solutions for small and medium sized businesses, announced today that it has launched enterprise level on-demand conferencing solutions at a price point of 20 to 80 percent less than comparable providers in the Canadian marketplace.  Shift has chosen to partner with US company ACT Conferencing, a conferencing provider that manages millions of conferencing minutes per month and provides on-demand conferencing services to companies of all sizes. Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow TVO will launch TVO On Demand, an Android app for Google TV allowing viewers to watch their favourite programs at their own convenience. Using the free app and a Google TV set top device, viewers can stream TVO programs over the internet directly onto their television. Through its already robust selection of apps and new additions such as TVO On Demand, TVO continues to be a broadcast leader in utilizing new technology to provide engaging content to Ontarians on a variety of platforms. Read the rest of this entry »

The Royal Canadian Mint is pleased to invite members of the public to cast their votes for the Popular Choice Award as part of the judging of submissions received by the MintChip™ Developer Challenge. The judging period and public voting, which opened today, continues until September 12, with winners to be announced on September 24 and more than $50,000 worth of prizes to be awarded later in the fall. Read the rest of this entry »

Kibooco is an interactive platform for kids to create and design their own books. Using fun and intuitive online tools and features designed just for them, children bring stories to life through digital or beautifully printed real-world books. Based in Vancouver, Kibooco was co-founded by Molly Schneeburg, who saw this idea as a way of fusing her creativity, entrepreneurialism and business savvy with her motivations and values as a parent. Working alongside Molly is a good friend of ours, Earl Hong Tai, the former Western Region Director for Telefilm Canada. Read the rest of this entry »