Village Gamer

Karta Mobile has announced the release of version 1.2 of its leading personal productivity solution for BlackBerry® smartphones and Microsoft® Outlook®. The latest version of the Viira Outlook Suite™ brings faster synchronization as well as numerous new features and productivity enhancements to both the Outlook plugin and BlackBerry client part of the suite. The Karta Mobile development team has brought all new features from their leading BlackBerry GTD software app Viira™ 3 to the Viira Outlook Suite including enhanced touch-screen support, reminders, fast iterative search and the option to hide completed tasks, among many others.

The Viira Outlook Suite is the first personal productivity solution to bring together the power of Microsoft Outlook and a BlackBerry smartphone in order to help users get organized and stay on top of their commitments from wherever they are. The suite is comprised of a BlackBerry client and an Outlook plugin who provide support for all key aspects of personal organization and the principles of Getting Things Done® (GTD®). The suite leverages the BlackBerry cloud infrastructure by propagating updates wirelessly over the BlackBerry Enterprise Server; synchronization can be performed via USB sync and with third-party task sync tools.

The Viira Outlook Suite comes with a 14-day free trial and is supported on all modern BlackBerry devices with OS 4.6 or later as well as on Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010.

Microsoft Outlook and BlackBerry smartphones are the productivity platforms of choice for many professionals, executives and knowledge workers around the globe who strive to achieve higher personal productivity and organization and incorporate the principles of Getting Things Done in their day-to-day lives. The Viira Outlook Suite provides a much-needed solution to many who until now have not been able to leverage the full power of a GTD Outlook system because of the lack of wireless synchronization with their BlackBerry smartphone.

“Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” is a New York Times bestseller by David Allen (and one I recommend) that shows readers how to effectively organize information, tasks and communications in an effective and stress-free way. The principles of GTD have been embraced by busy professionals, executives and knowledge workers around the world.

Loud Crow Interactive Inc has released Sandra Boynton’s Blue Hat, Green Hat 1.0, the third title in their collaboration with Boynton Moo Media. Available now as a universal app on the iTunes Store for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch (regularly $3.99 USD, it’s on sale for $1.99), Blue Hat, Green Hat is a wry and light-hearted adventure in which children guide three earnest animals and one misguided turkey through various activities involving clothing and colors. The app offers narration by famed British Invasion rocker Billy J Kramer, the wonderful narrator of the bestselling Boynton app, The Going to Bed Book.

“I have a particular fondness for Blue Hat, Green Hat,” says Sandra Boynton. “At age three, my son Devin had a surprisingly hearty laugh for a small person – a laugh that would make everyone else laugh. I created this book long ago just to elicit that belly-laugh from him.”

Originally published in 1982, Blue Hat, Green Hat is one of Boynton’s all time bestselling titles, having sold over four million copies. Working closely with Loud Crow, Boynton designed the interactive concepts, wrote and produced the soundtrack with Michael Ford, and digitally recreated the original illustrations with new animations to ensure this interactive re-imagination delights fans while keeping true to the spirit of her widely-loved board book. Loud Crow then carefully worked its widely-praised technical magic to fully realize and enhance her interactive concepts.

“It was great fun to re-invent Blue Hat, Green Hat as an interactive e-book app,” says Boynton, “collaborating again with my endlessly clever Loud Crow friends. The digital dimension gave us so many terrific opportunities for adding theatrical flair to this spare yet decidedly Vaudeville book.”

Blue Hat, Green Hat is compatible with Phone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 3.2 or later.

Neggi Studio, based in Montreal and Monterrey, Mexico has announced that its new game, Zombie Piñata for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is now available on iTunes for 99 cents USD.

A terrible and evil Mayan spirit has been released from its prison; the curse says that the first “species” that this evil spirit touches will be transformed into zombies. The problem is that the biggest piñata chain store in Mexico was build on top of the prison, so the spirit ends up possessing the body of a piñata and thus transforming all the piñatas from all the retail stores in the country into Zombie Piñatas!

Zombie Piñata is an action packed game, challenging players to fight their way through over 30 stages of pure madness while fighting the now evil piñatas. Find the zombie lair deep in the Mayan archeological site and face the biggest zombie piñata of them all: Piñaton!

The game features old school side-scroller gameplay that presents a quick fix of action on the go.

Key Features:

– Travel around some of Mexico’s most famous cities and areas while whacking all the piñatas that stand in your way, clean each town and free the land from this zombie infestation.

– More than anything, piñatas fear the might of the whacking stick, improve your skills with upgradable combos and get power ups to turn your piñata stick into the legendary “Master Stick”

– Visit the totally groovy “Cheke’s Specialty Shop” for grenades, extra ammo and other awesome improvements to increase your chances for survival as you face hordes and hordes of zombie piñatas and people they have turned into zombies.

– Use every weapon and special item at your disposal; inflate zombies or blow them up, dish out justice, piñata hunter style!

– Download additional content such as music and game wallpapers for free!

– Future updates will bring additional achievements and future leader board integration using OpenFeint.

Zombie Piñata is rated 9+ for the following:

• Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
• Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
• Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence

Stegersaurus has released a new title on Xbox Live Indie Games. Avatar Without A Chute is a flying game – kind of. It’s actually a falling game. Players “toss” their avatars out into thin air and then let them fall to earth, collecting points on the way down. The object of the game is to be the first avatar to reach the ground. Now I have to try this game to see if my avatar will go splat, and how well it will splat. For some reason, I find the splatability of my avatar to be somewhat intriguing. There are no power-ups to collect, so riches are to be found in the number of points you can garner before hitting the ground.

Avatar Without A Chute features single player fun in offline mode while in online mode you can play with 2-4 friends. There is a free trial, or you can get the full game for 80 MS Points.

Android users now have a premium skee ball style game to call their own. Ball-Hop Bowling by Renown Entertainment has been customized for Android smart phones and tablets, previously available only on Apple iOS and Facebook.

Ball-Hop Bowling features high definition 3D graphics, fun ultra-realistic physics, tons of prizes, and standard/premium content to keep you coming back for more. Best of all, it’s FREE!

President James Lau notes “This arcade classic is a staple on mobile devices and we’re proud to offer this best of category experience for Android. Ball-Hop Bowling garnered near perfect user reviews and shot to the top of the Apple App Store charts in addition to being featured worldwide in its first day of release. The universal appeal on iOS is undeniable, and we hope Android users are equally excited to get this quality game in their collection at no charge.”

“The team obsessed over creating a faithful version of the real world counterpart. They measured and weighed the balls, played on a variety of machines, captured videos for reference, and tuned the physics until the game was exceptional.”

Don’t have an Android? Get it free for your Apple iOS device or play on Facebook and challenge your friends to compete for the highest score on the Ball-Hop Bowling leaderboards.

In this action-packed shooter by independent Canadian developer JoshOClock, you play the role of an adorable creature born to an empty nest because your family has been kidnapped by humans! This is an outrage, and something must be done to avenge this deed! Off you go on a mission to seek revenge for your kidnapped siblings, and armed with nothing more than destructive and smoking-hot fireballs, you’re ready for some mayhem and slaughter!

Burn The City features not only an amazing 45 levels of high-polished action, but also incredibly intuitive controls – touch, drag and release. Similar in style to Angry Birds™ and Worms™, this game will keep you addicted for hours, and includes explosive physics and Game Center support for the competitive players. At your aid to destroy all mankind you have your fireball attack, and by eating different colored YUMs that are gathered by destroying crates throughout the levels, you obtain 3 special attacks: the first is TNT, which turns the standard fireball into a green explosive shot! The second is “Sniper”, which gives better accuracy across far distances, and finally the third special attack is “nuke” (YES!), which unleashes a nuclear blast (oh yeah!!) when the screen is tapped! Go ahead! Download your personal copy of Burn This City, and get busy destroying humanity!

A free version of the game is already available on PC through Kongregate, and a version for the Android was released recently. The iOS version now available on the App Store is compatible with Apple iPhone®, Apple iPod touch® and Apple iPad® devices running iOS 3.0 or later. Burn the City is rated 9+ for Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence.

Toronto start-up zerofone has passed the 20,000 download mark for its mobile phone app available from Apple’s App Store. To celebrate this milestone, zerofone is tripling its no-obligation free trial to 30 minutes of free calling for new customers. The free trial allows mobile calls to Canada, the U.S. and many international destinations.

After trying out the service, a new summer promotion will give zerofone customers who purchase a monthly North American calling package an entire month of free calling. Customers simply purchase the first month of calling any time during July 2011, and their second month of calling will be free.

“It’s been an incredible few months since our official launch in January,” says company President, Ben Rovet. “We’re seeing customers from all over the world take advantage of our service.”

zerofone gives users simple and low-cost access to long distance and roaming (tip: when traveling out of country, use WiFi to avoid roaming charges) calling from their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch using a combination of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and traditional telecom networks for superior voice quality and reliability.

With zerofone, users can pay less than 1 cent per minute for North American long distance calls and under 2 cents for overseas calls to destinations such as India, China and most of Europe, without using any minutes from their cell phone provider. Canadian wireless carriers normally charge 40 cents per minute for North American long distance calls and 75 cents per minute or more for international calls.

“With roaming, it can work out to $1.50 per minute or more,” says Rovet. “Our service saves some people thousands of dollars per year. It’s really quite astounding.”

When asked what motivated him to start this company, Mr. Rovet said, “Canadian wireless consumers pay among the highest prices in the world for mobile service. We believe Canadians are entitled to more choices and we are leading the way with price, quality and service.”

Once the free trial period is over, users subscribe to one of zerofone’s low-cost calling packages, contract-free. Unlimited calling packages start at $6.99/month. Travel Packs, online phone numbers and other innovative features are also available.

Calgary-based Kryos Systems has launched their rapid mobile application development platform, Velocity, in a version compatible with Android™ smartphones and tablets. According to a comScore report published in February, the Android platform is the leader in smartphone market share in the USA.

The Velocity platform has long helped businesses to create full-featured applications for the BlackBerry® platform and the addition of Android platform support allows applications created to operate across either type of device, making the Velocity software even more impactful for enterprise business looking for ways to increase efficiency.

Velocity will allow non-specialist developers to program custom applications for the Android platform, cutting the traditional time and costs associated with setting up mobile applications significantly.

Jeff Samis, Vice President of Product and Market Development at Kryos Systems said, “Velocity works by acting as an interface between much more common XML language and the various native languages that are traditionally used to write applications for smartphones. This means that businesses can use in-house staff, versus expensive and rare skills, to create their mobile applications for both the Blackberry and Android platforms. And they can do this in a time frame of weeks compared to months.”

“Our plans to launch on the Android platform have been ongoing for over a year now and we are very pleased to be offering the market place choice in application development.”

Applications built using the Velocity platform for Android smartphones and tablets will make full use of all of the features of the device, including the camera, calendar, address book, email, and others. Once installed on the smartphone, the applications created mesh seamlessly with the device’s own menus and widgets, providing businesses with the ability to give out of office mobile device user’s full access to information and systems in an intuitive interface.

Velocity features built-in security measures and encryption for all applications built using it, and operates even in those instances when there is no connection to a cell tower. As soon as a connection is made the application will process any work completed prior to losing connection. Battery life and network capacity is optimized through an efficient information caching system.

The new Velocity will run on Android tablets that use the Android 2.1 and higher operating system. This cross platform functionality means that a business needs only to create their application once to have it work on both BlackBerry and Android devices.

The release of Velocity for the Android platform coincides with a recent announcement from BlackBerry smartphone producers, Research In Motion, about plans to deploy a device management infrastructure to support Android and iOS smartphones. The solution is expected to incorporate secure device management for Android devices and other iOS based devices, all managed from a single web-based console. This important announcement from Research In Motion, the leader in enterprise mobility, means that businesses can much more easily manage individual devices coming into the enterprise.

TVO has launched its first app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. My Canada is a fun and engaging memory sequencing game just in time for Canada Day. Beginning today, My Canada is available as a free download for BlackBerry PlayBook on BlackBerry App World™. It is also available as an online game at TVOKids.com.

My Canada is the perfect game for parents who want to help their kids learn about Canada’s geography, and nurture their children’s sense of pride in their country. It helps kids ages 6-11 learn about the locations of the provinces and territories, the capital cities and Canada’s Great Lakes. At the same time, the game focuses on “working memory” which can help enhance important memory skills in kids.

“We’re proud to announce the launch of TVO’s first app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook tablet,” says Lisa de Wilde, CEO. “My Canada is another example of the many ways TVO is using new digital media platforms to nurture important 21st century literacy skills and to complement classroom learning. My Canada makes learning about Canadian geography fun and accessible for kids.”

TVO’s My Canada memory game was designed with learning objectives that support the Ontario school curriculum and has been classroom and teacher tested and developed with TVO’s on-staff educator.

The introduction of TVO’s My Canada for BlackBerry PlayBook closely follows the recent launch of TVO’s two early learning mobile apps for BlackBerry® smartphones. Polka Dot Shorts and Flower Frenzy were downloaded over 250,000 times within the first two weeks of launching and recently held the number 2 and number 4 most downloaded positions on BlackBerry App World in the Education category.

Kohler Canada is pleased to announce that its CDNCatalog App for iPhone and iPod touch is now available for free on the App Store. Created for designers, industry professionals and imaginative homeowners, the app allows users to explore and discover the complete Kohler Canada catalogue of over 27,000 KOHLER_® products, along with videos, showroom and retailer locations and inspirational ideas.

“Intended to take full advantage of the iPhone and iPod touch, utilizing the aesthetic of the Kohler Canada website, the CDNCatalog App provides images, videos, product specifications, installation guides, pricing and locations in a useful and convenient manner,” says Donna Church, Manager of Marketing & Communications for Kohler Canada. “With a large following of industry professionals in Canada, we wanted to make it easier for them to work with clients who do not have access to showrooms or who are constantly on the go.”

“When homeowners decide to start a project, they are often overwhelmed by some of the small design details: Will it fit? What finish works best? How do I install it? Does it suit the design?” says Kevin Fitzsimons, Fitzsimons Design Build. “With Kohler Canada’s CDNCatalog App, consumers can run through their checklist in the showroom, at home, or on the go. With such an intuitive design, the CDNCatalog provides easy access to product information and installation sheets, making any home project simple, efficient and more accurate.”

Key features include:

• A product image gallery
• The ability to search by product name and number
• A GPS retail showroom locator
• In depth product information including specification sheets, installation sheets, measurements and finish/colour options
• The ability to share favourite products and design ideas with friends through email or on Twitter
• A wide range of video content, including product spotlights, brand messaging, installation instructions and design inspiration.