Village Gamer

Vancouver – via E3 – United Front Games Ltd. is developing ModNation™ Racers, a creative twist on classic karting, designed exclusively for the PLAYSTATION® 3.

ModNation™ Racers puts innovation and creativity directly into the player’s hands with simple, intuitive and fun tools to create custom characters, karts and race tracks. These can be shared and played freely by anyone in the world on the PlayStation®Network.

“We are excited to be creating an accessible, endlessly imaginative and original property. Our team is inspired to push the limits of player creativity in this new take on racing.” said Julian Beak, Lead Producer. “Working directly with Sony is an honor.”

“With the creative pedigree and vision of this team and our plans for the PLAY CREATE SHARE™ genre, this partnership was a great fit for our strategic vision of this emerging genre.” said Scott Rohde, vice president of Product Development, Worldwide Studios America. “We are really happy to be working with United Front Games in bringing ModNation Racers to life, and excited to see what our consumers will create when they get to play in 2010.”

ModNation™ Racers was officially unveiled to the world during Sony’s E3 press conference.

Toronto – The Profit 100 Awards acknowledge the best in Canadian companies and creates a level playing field between small start ups and well established corporations. Celebrating entrepreneurship and recognizing growth, the award aims to uncover which business skill connects a company with 4 employees to a company with 1,600.

This year’s list contains a high percentage of interactive and new media companies, with the number one spot going to Allegro Wireless, a company which specializes in software and services for rugged handheld devices. PhotoChannel Networks Inc. whose technology allows consumers to upload digital photos for processing by major retailers; clients include Wal-Mart, Costco and Black’s landed in sixth spot, followed immediately by Kaboose Inc., a company recently purchased by Disney Interactive.

The only game development company to make the list was Frima Studios in the number ten spot. Frima has developed online multi-player games for blockbuster children’s films such as Harry Potter, Cars and Happy Feet.  Topping the medical software field at number twelve is Nightingale Informatix Corp. whose software allows patients to communicate with and receive information from their physician electronically.
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Banff – Telefilm Canada presents Shelly Palmer’s one day GetDigital seminar at BANFF, Tuesday June 9th 2009. Whether you are interested in workforce development, continuing professional education, honing your digital skills or playing catch-up, this course is designed to help you become more competitive and make you more productive in the digital economy of the 21st century. Join a crash course in digital literacy that will change your life. With only 50 places available, this course is FREE for BANFF attendees. Space will be filled on a first come, first served basis.

The Festival has also announced the winners of the TV 360 competition. The TV 360 Program is designed to train Canadian writers, directors, developers, interactive designers, show developers and TV, film and new media producers, to develop multiplatform projects and pitch them successfully both to Canadian and international buyers. Prior new media experience was not necessary to enter, however applicants were required to be professionals from the new media, film and television industries.

Congratulations to this year’s winners:
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Toronto – Lanamark Inc., a global provider of analysis and design solutions for virtualizing desktops and servers and optimizing physical and virtual infrastructure, today announced availability of the Storage Design Module for Lanamark Suite. This new module enables solution providers to design the underlying storage infrastructure for both virtualized desktops and servers.

“Storage is a core part of every virtual infrastructure solution that we architect and build for our customers,” said Craig Martin, vice president of Technology Services at Enterprise Systems, a leading solution provider in Colorado, United States. “The Lanamark Storage Design Module enables us to design desktop and data center virtualization solutions holistically with server, storage and software components that maximize interoperability, performance and uptime.”
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Toronto – The Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund has launched an online information source for ideas about the revenue generating potential of multi-platform digital media projects. The portal, which has received support from Telefilm Canada, is named The Bell Fund’s Bliki – How To Make Money with Multi-Platform Digital Media, provides a very comprehensive collection of articles and resources to assist companies in developing a strategy for success. The Bell Fund, which receives approximately $12 000 000.00 in funding from Bell TV, provides grants to Canadian independent producers, assisting in the development and production of outstanding television content which is complemented and enhanced by innovative interactive content for digital delivery.

Available in both English and French, the bliki is run similar to a wiki, with collaborative editing and database updating but also offers editorial commentary as well as pertinent news. Having invested over $70 000 000.00 in the development and production of over 600 multi-platform projects in the past 11 years, the people behind the Bell Fund have extensive knowledge in regards to the challenges of revenue generation.
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