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Thursday News Bytes For Your Digital Diet

Canadian Video Game Awards [1]Don’t miss your chance to vote for Game of the Year [2] for the 2011 Canadian Videogame Awards [1].  Voting is open to the public until midnight, Friday, May 13th (note: Facebook Connect is required to vote).

The five 2011 Game of the Year finalists are:

·       Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
·       Dead Rising 2
·       FIFA 11
·       Mass Effect 2
·       Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

There are still great seats available for the 2011 Canadian Videogame Awards – and tickets start at just $30.00.  Come out next Wednesday night and enjoy an evening with the top developers and publishers in Canada! The show will be hosted by Victor Lucas and his team from The Electric Playground, and you can even get some autographs post-show!  Internationally renowned Video Games Live will be back to provide the musical entertainment AND Nintendo will be offering attendees a special opportunity to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for Nintendo 3DS.  Canadian Games Conference [3]

Don’t miss the 2011 Canadian Games Conference [4] – there is still time to register [5].  This year’s event features sessions in business, production, design, programming, social games, and iPhone games, as well as a special line-up of “Best of GDC” speakers, and offers visionary keynotes, an expo hall, and evening networking events.  The Conference takes place May 19-20th at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

tiny hippos [6]Just over a month ago Tiny Hippo [6] became part of the RIM family, and the developers have announced that they are adding support for BlackBerry WebWorks 2.0.0 to their flagship product, Ripple Mobile Environment Emulator [7]. This support includes most of the APIs in the WebWorks stack as well skinning for 3 supported BlackBerry devices (The BlackBerry Torch, BlackBerry Bold, and the BlackBerry PlayBook). Check out Ripple’s docs [8] page to see the extent of the WebWorks support as well as what else is new in this release.Decapod Studios [9]

Decapod Studios [9] has released a free version of its hit match 3 title Murphid for Windows Phone 7. The full version [10] of Murphid is also available for 99 cents.

If you don’t have WP7, you can always play Murphid on your Xbox 360 [11], too – it’s available in the Games Marketplace for only 80 MS Points.

Roaring Penguin [12]Roaring Penguin Software Inc. [12] has announced the release of CanIt 8.0.5. which adds several major improvements to the CanIt Archiver software. Several major new features were added including:

CanIt Archiver, “The Uninteruptible E-mail Supply”, is a highly configurable e-mail archiving solution [13] focused on e-mail continuity. CanIt Archiver ensures that e-mail is accessible in the event of a mail server outage and queues e-mail to make sure that it is delivered when mail service is restored.

CanIt 8.0.5 is available as:

* CanIt-PRO, an anti-spam software solution suitable for small and medium business.
* CanIt-Domain-PRO, spam filtering software for MSPs to host anti-spam for their customers.
* Hosted CanIt, a fully outsourced, hosted anti-spam service.

canadian fallen firefighters foundation [14]Scott is a retired volunteer firefighter and my grandfather, father and two uncles were volunteer firefighters, so we are both very happy to see that construction has officially begun on a permanent, national memorial to pay tribute to Canada’s fallen firefighters, thanks to an investment by the Government of Canada. The announcement was made today by Pierre Poilievre, Member of Parliament (Nepean-Carleton), on behalf of the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages [15], as part of an official sod-turning ceremony alongside the Canadian Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

“No job is more important than protecting the lives of Canadians and their families,” said Minister Moore. “This memorial will be a permanent reminder of the sacrifices firefighters across Canada make to keep us safe.”

“Our gratitude to those who put their lives on the line to make Canada safer is often difficult to express,” said Mr. Poilievre. “This memorial will serve to remind all Canadians of the men and women who put their lives at risk for their communities.”

The Canadian Fallen Firefighters Foundation [14] is building the monument in the Lebreton Flats area of the National Capital Region, near the Canadian War Museum [16]. This monument, the only official memorial to Canada’s firefighters, will be located at the exact location where the Great Fire of 1900 was finally brought under control after destroying 1400 buildings and killing seven people in Ottawa, and destroying 1300 buildings in Gatineau.

The Government of Canada announced funding of $2,529,800 for the construction of this monument in 2009. This funding is being providing through the Commemorate Canada [17] component of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Celebration and Commemoration Program [18]. This component provides financial support to initiatives of national significance that commemorate various aspects of Canadian history.