Village Gamer

Hasbro Canada has donated $15,000 worth of Toys & Games to Montreal Children’s Hospital after hearing the hospital’s appeal for help earlier this week. This donation is intended to help alleviate much of the shortfall in toy donations that the hospital has experienced this Holiday season.

“We are proud to support the Montreal Children’s Hospital’s need for toys,” said Michael Hogg, President for Hasbro Canada. “We hope that our donation will not only help fill up the hospital’s storage room, but ultimately bring comfort and joy to the children in the hospital this Holiday Season.”

Best Buy Canada has also gotten into the spirit of the season, working together with the United Way of the Lower Mainland to create Imagine – a new online gift catalogue that provides a way to help underprivileged and at-risk children, families and seniors in 23 communities throughout the Lower Mainland.

Imagine is available online at imaginegifts.ca and features 12 unique gifts. Gifts range in price from $12 to $600. When donors purchase a gift from the catalogue, they will be sent a card, with an image of the gift purchased to be given to a friend, family member or colleague. Each gift in the catalogue represents a program or service that is funded through United Way. Gifts purchased help to support larger programs.

Best Buy Canada employees have been instrumental in helping create and deliver this important project and bring Imagine to life. Employees from the web design team volunteered their personal time and spent more than 100 hours making the online catalogue into a reality.

“I’m extremely proud of the time and commitment my team has put into this important project for the United Way of the Lower Mainland,” said Robert Pearson, Vice President E-Commerce Best Buy Canada. “The Imagine Gifts project makes it possible to reach out to so many Canadians in need this holiday season and we are honoured to be a part of it.”

Kobo has announced an update to its iOS4 software. The update introduces innovative new features for users on the Kobo iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch eReading apps enabling them to interact with books and easily share their love of reading.

The most significant feature being introduced in today’s update is the integration of Instapaper into the Kobo eReading application, which is now available to sync and read with the Kobo eReading app across all Apple devices. Instapaper facilitates the easy reading of long text and lets users easily save articles and other types of web content to read later via their Kobo eReading application.

As with books, magazines and newspapers in the Kobo Library, users can now sync Instapaper clippings on Kobo apps across all Apple devices. Any content saved to Instapaper and stored in the Kobo Library will automatically update in the Instapaper feed.

With today’s announcement, Kobo users will also be able to “Like” books and share what that they are reading with their friends on Facebook. Also newly introduced, iPhone and iPod Touch users can share favourite passages and notes from any book to Facebook.

Kobo recently launched Reading Life an industry first social eReading experience, which personalizes eReading and creates a fun, engaging way for users to enjoy an eBook. Reading Life displays statistics about a reader’s habits and preferences, shows activity timelines, and awards achievements for just simply reading. With this new Kobo iPad app release people will be able to interact with their Reading Life book cover and consumers using Instapaper are able to earn awards and monitor statistics.

Since the release of Reading Life in early December, users have earned a reward every five seconds and have shared over 1,000 experiences every day. Reading Life is currently available on the iPad and will launch on iPhone and all Kobo platforms in the coming months.

The Kobo iOS4 applications for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad all come preloaded with 5 FREE eBooks: Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Dracula, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales – so users can begin eReading as soon as their download is done. Plus, just in time for the holidays, Reading Life has released a selection of limited edition Holiday badges that are attached to exclusive deep discounted holiday offers.