Village Gamer

Interactive Ontario (IO) in partnership with The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, Ryerson University, is pleased to announce the launch of EDGE: Education for Digital and Games Entrepreneurs. This part-time academic program will deliver targeted business-skills training to video game and digital media entrepreneurs. It will pilot in the spring with a full launch in the fall of 2011.

The goal of EDGE is to help grow the interactive digital media industry by providing in-depth business knowledge to video game entrepreneurs. EDGE will provide the training needed to make key business decisions and will teach entrepreneurs skills in training, leadership and administration.

“The EDGE program will be of huge value to digital entrepreneurs because the key to being a successful creator or innovator lies in your ability to navigate an ever-changing business environment,” says Ian Kelso, President and CEO, Interactive Ontario. “Ryerson is uniquely positioned to combine world class business training, a solid digital media focus, and an embedded entrepreneurial spirit which will ensure this program will add tremendous advantage to anyone trying to grow an interactive digital media business.”

Worldwide, the gaming industry is expected to grow 9.1 percent annually. Canada will benefit from this boom with profits estimated to be in excess of $346 million in 2012. The funding for the EDGE project was underwritten by Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.

“Ontario is rapidly becoming viewed as a leader in digital media and gaming,” says Dr Gervan Fearon, Dean of The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University. “Recognizing this growing market, The Chang School is pleased to be a partner with Interactive Ontario to offer programming to help prepare the next generation of leaders in this innovative industry.”

EDGE will specialize in areas relevant to the business aspect of the digital media sector, including courses on Business Strategy and Tactics, HR/Labour Relations, Project Management, Finance and Marketing. The program will feature industry experts from Canada and around the world. It will also provide opportunities to network and forge select business relationships.

WaveFront, DFAIT and Nokia are taking the Introduction to Nokia Platforms and OVI Services breakfast seminar across the country, and would like to invite Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal developers to these free sessions. (Pour la version française, s’il vous plaît clic ici). As we told you earlier this week, the seminar will also be held in Vancouver on February 8th.

Montreal – February 1st in the Mt-Royal I Room at the Centre Mont-Royal, 2200 Mansfield Street
Ottawa – February 2nd at the Brookstreet Hotel, 525 Legget Drive
Toronto – February 4th at the MaRS Centre, 101 College St (Breakfast: Cafe | Seminar: CR-3)
Vancouver – February 8th at 1055 W Hastings St, Conference Room, Lower Level

This introduction to Nokia platforms and OVI Services is an opportunity to bring your Canadian apps to the world’s largest application distribution network – the Nokia OVI Store. Attend this seminar to receive an end-to-end overview of Nokia platforms and OVI services which reaches hundreds of millions of consumers in over 190 countries downloading over 3 million applications per day. Developers and publishers will learn about the latest Nokia OVI business opportunities and receive practical advice on how to develop and port your mobile application/content on Nokia platform and publish it to the OVI Store, an easy way to distribute and monetize your applications and content to Nokia users all over the world.

OVI store makes it easy to distribute and pay for your Canadian apps:

• Consumers can browse and purchase content from Ovi Store in more than 190 countries through credit card billing
• 91 operators in 27 countries support integrated mobile billing
• Publishers from more than 90 countries are distributing their content through Ovi Store

This is a must attend for Canadian mobile app developers and mobile content publishers to network with business and technical specialists from Nokia and local developer peers. All attendees will receive copy of “Foundations of Qt Development” and can enter draw for several Nokia N8 smartphones that are being given away.

Attendance at this seminar will also give you an opportunity to set up a one-on-one engagement meeting with Nokia during and after each seminar, so please also let us know if you would like to set-up a meeting when you register. Mr. Johan Nyman, DFAIT Trade Commissioner from Helsinki, Finland will also be available for one-on-one meetings (between 9:30-11:00am) to discuss Finnish market opportunities.

Toronto’s PadWorx Digital Media Inc. and The Juno Company, a leading children’s digital media publisher based in San Francisco, have begun working together on The Juno Company’s 2011 series of music education gaming apps and eBooks. This collaborative partnership will see The Juno Company and PadWorx Digital Media develop and publish eight music education apps, games and eBooks based on the Juno franchise of DVDs and books, all of which will be released in 2011. The first app in the series is scheduled to launch in March; more details will be released in the coming weeks. The Juno eBooks will be narrated by actress and dedicated mom Brooke Shields.

“PadWorx’s technical expertise and design aesthetic is rocket fuel for our creative content as we roll out our line of children’s apps,” said Barrett Cohn, CEO of The Juno Company. “We are raising the bar in 2011 in terms of fun, engagement and learning for children with our eBooks, apps and games; we’re looking to make a significant impact in the children’s new media world!”

The Juno Company was founded by mom and composer Belinda Takahashi, Ph.D., and is dedicated to inspiring a lifelong love and appreciation for music in children. The company is best known for its Emmy Award-winning Juno Baby line and its newly released Juno Jr. line of products, which include DVDs, CDs, books, digital apps, toys and apparel. The Juno Company team is a blend of senior technologists, top children’s creatives and leading children’s educators.

“The creativity and design aesthetic we used to develop our award-winning eBooks creates an immersive, user-driven experience, and that’s exactly what fans of the Juno franchise are going to see with this new series of apps,” said Jeffrey Alan Schechter, CEO of PadWorx Digital Media, Inc. “Through the combination of text, animation, gameplay elements, touch screen interaction, original music, and sound effects, children will gain the ability to interact with the Juno characters they love in an entirely new way.”

Regina’s NetSecure Technologies is growing, and to support that growth the company has announced a new website to better reflect the company’s strengths and expanding product line – developing breakthrough security solutions for online transaction security.

With hackers becoming more sophisticated, antivirus software is no longer enough to protect consumers. NetSecure’s product suite, powered by its patented Dynamic SSL technology, provides complete protection from endpoint security threats by ensuring that sensitive information is never present in the data stream until the point of encryption.

The company’s award-winning SmartSwipe, an online purchase security system, enables consumers to swipe their credit cards at home for secure transactions while shopping online. According to a recent survey of 1,000 consumers and small businesses, there is a clear demand for such devices with nearly 70 percent of respondents indicating they would use one if their financial institution or credit card company offered it.

NetSecure’s newest PINCheckout, a chip and PIN technology solution, enables card issuers and financial institutions to offer their customers a secure online shopping environment for their chip and PIN transactions. Research has indicated that more than half of consumers would feel more comfortable making online purchases if offered a secure shopping solution. With PINCheckout, e-commerce transactions are secured by encrypting sensitive information through an external device and remains protected throughout the entire transaction. NetSecure offers this viable solution via licensing options, with or without hardware.

“NetSecure Technologies is at the leading edge of e-Commerce solutions, protecting consumers where they need it most: the point of origin,” said Daniel McCann, president, NetSecure Technologies. “We are dedicated to providing consumers the very best in protection technology, but also believe technology should be user friendly and follow the mantra “simplicity, speed, security and compatibility.” Our solutions embrace those elements to provide better and solid Internet security, and are proven by the growth we’ve realized since our inception. As we enter 2011, we look forward to even more growth as well as contributing to a safer online environment.”

Included in the new website is NetSecure’s blog, highlighting company news as well as emerging security threats, providing solutions and security best practices to readers. In addition, the site features a tool called “Ask an Expert,” allowing site visitors to ask questions regarding data security. Each week, NetSecure features the question and provides an answer.

Once again the internet has made business easier. In this case it’s show business – the business of Shakespeare with William On Web. It’s now easy to get your own copy of either a Classic (Free) or Director’s Choice ($19.97) version of the most popular plays of all time -thanks to the innovation of a local Vancouver social profit enterprise. For professional companies, community theatres, academic or school productions, the editorial expertise contained in a Director’s Choice is a huge benefit. It streamlines the editing process by offering industry insider professional editorial suggestions coupled with a custom built online editor from Vancouver’s PointyHat dev team. The website offers versions of Shakespeare’s most popular plays including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Romeo & Juliet as well as Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest, Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Love’s Labours Lost, Julius Caesar and more.

Most Shakespeare scripts, with 40-plus roles and running times over 3 hours, rarely get performed as-written in modern productions. But what to cut? Editing is a daunting process that may leave a director struggling with characters’ motives and plot flow, and requires time-consuming manual reformatting. To help solve these problems, WilliamOnWeb created their Director’s Choice scripts to suggest specific cuts which help you reduce cast size and running time while maintaining the integrity of the script.

This new production edition draws on every credible version of the plays, from the original Folio to today’s academic gold standard, the Arden. Unlike academic works, the scripts have been carefully crafted to work for directors and producers preparing from production. Accurate and faithful to the originals, these scripts also offer industry expertise on what and where to cut, delivering modern clarity to the characters and stories.

“We think of our project as bringing Shakespeare into the 21st Century”, stated COO James Pollard. “This new edition of his plays and Scriptivate — our custom-built online script editor — represent the first real change in the way to work with the Bard’s plays since he wrote them 400 years ago.”

Scriptivate, an online script editor free with both Classic and Director’s Choice versions, allows you to customize these scripts for your production. Scriptivate preserves all formatting of Shakespeare’s text — showing suggested cuts as strikethroughs — and lets you accept, reject or make your own cuts and additions. Once you’re satisfied, accepting your changes lets you e-mail or print your revised script in a rehearsal-ready format. Scriptivate works with modern web browsers on any computer connected to the Internet. Scripts are stored online “in the cloud”, bringing the process of editing Shakespeare into the digital age.