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Astral’s Family Channel and Disney Junior have ordered new episodes of four Canadian original productions for the 2011/2012 season. Family Channel has ordered second seasons of the live-action comedies Really Me and What’s Up, Warthogs!, from Fresh TV and Dolphin Entertainment/Aircraft Productions respectively, as well as a third season of Temple Street Productions’ Wingin’ It. Disney Junior has commissioned a second season of the new animated series Justin Time from Guru Studio, for both the English and French language Disney Junior networks. All four series will begin production in Toronto later this summer.

“To be able to support these shows and encourage the talented teams behind each one is an incredible privilege. We are eager to see how each series develops, or in the case of Justin Time, debuts across our networks,” said Michael Goldsmith, Director, Original Programming. “Our new Canadian live-action productions have grown to be real hits with our viewers. Really Me has captivated the Family audience with its smart writing and innovative concept while What’s Up, Warthogs! and its off-beat comedic style is proving not only popular on Family and Family.ca but is also rating well on the newly launched Disney XD. Also playing a key part in the Disney XD schedule, Wingin’ It continues to engage fans on the new channel as well as on Family. Justin Time, with its focus on imagination and its unique style, is sure to charm younger viewers when it premieres on Disney Junior.”

Series Synopsis – Family Channel

REALLY ME (13 episodes x 30 minutes)
Maddy (Sydney Imbeau, Marley and Me: The Puppy Years), is an ordinary-turned-famous 15-year-old who has won the ultimate prize of starring in her own reality TV show with her best friend Julia (Kiana Madeira, Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars). The girls quickly realize that actually getting on the screen can be tough when surrounded by a family of scene-stealers and working with a ratings-hungry producer. Created by Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch, Really Me is produced by Fresh TV (6TEEN, Total Drama Island, My Babysitter’s A Vampire) in association with FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME). FME has worldwide distribution, brand licensing and home entertainment rights (excluding Canada). New episodes from the first season of Really Me currently air Saturdays and Sundays at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT on Family Channel. Read the rest of this entry »

Quebec’s Laurentian Bank kicked off the month of June with the launch of a summer contest on its Little Heroes Club web site. By indicating what they plan to do to stay active this summer, young contest participants have a chance to win a Wii game console, complete with controllers and games. In addition to contests like this, the Clan’s site offers children the opportunity to play interactive games, draw and explore the world of science with a number of experiments.

Through its various involvements, Laurentian Bank’s Little Heroes Club is committed to enhancing youngsters’ self-esteem by highlighting their accomplishments large and small. Once again this summer, the Club will be on hand at numerous family festivals and soccer tournaments to amuse and entertain. This initiative assembles the majority of the Bank’s activities in the area of donations, sponsorships and social involvement under a single umbrella. All geared toward children and families, these activities strive to encourage youth to actively participate in their communities’ sports, cultural and artistic life.

The contest is open to residents of Quebec, and runs until 4:00PM September 30, 2011.

Strangeloop has announced that it is the first company in the world to provide a commercial product that automatically offers the benefits of Google’s experimental SPDY protocol without requiring changes to the site owner’s code or servers. The release, which is available immediately to all Strangeloop customers, comes after months of close collaboration between Strangeloop and the Chromium Project team at Google.

“Our goal is to make the web faster for everyone,” said Mike Belshe, Lead Software Engineer at Google. “Strangeloop engineers embraced SPDY from the beginning and provided key data and feedback about their experience. They then integrated SPDY with their Site Optimizer product and moved rapidly from concept to code to product, demonstrating an impressive speed-up in their customers’ site performance.”

Strangeloop’s integration of SPDY within its Site Optimizer suite of products and services have resulted in:

• At least 50% reduction in page load time.
• Minimizing the complexity of deployment. Site Optimizer automates Web Content Optimization (WCO), delivering the benefits of SPDY to customers without making changes to their servers or code.
• Bringing together like-minded people interested in using the power of open-source collaboration to explore protocols as a way of solving latency problems.

“At Strangeloop, we’re passionate about pushing the performance envelope, and we’re always looking for opportunities to collaborate with other industry leaders to do this,” said Strangeloop CEO Jonathan Bixby. “This is just the first phase of our SPDY integration work.” Read the rest of this entry »

OpenText™ has released a new version of OpenText Integration Center featuring an enhanced, native connector to OpenText ECM Suite 2010. Customers can help better leverage their structured and unstructured content to reduce costs and improve efficiency. OpenText Integration Center unifies access to multiple sources of disparate information from OpenText ECM Suite for applications such as business systems integration, legacy decommissioning, in-place content management and content migration.

Most integration technologies focus on either structured data in databases or content in document repositories, but not both. Now with OpenText Integration Center, which inherently understands both structured data and unstructured content, customers can give business decision makers easy access to corporate information assets through ECM Suite 2010. This allows them to take advantage of powerful analytics, semantic search and rich interactive user interfaces to boost productivity and improve decision making.

“The current economic conditions are forcing organizations to reduce the number of information sources by bringing structured and unstructured content together under the roof of a single business process and repository,” said Eugene Cherny, General Manager for OpenText’s Connectivity Solutions. “By combining these worlds in the OpenText ECM Suite, we give customers a powerful solution that helps them reduce costs during a tough economy, while enabling them to do more with their information.”

The latest release of OpenText Integration Center, together with OpenText ECM Suite 2010, provides enhanced, integrated ECM support making it easier to design, integrate, and implement content integration projects. Typical applications include:

Content Migration — OpenText Integration Center offers complete migration features to move content from one or many repositories to any new destination with all its metadata and context. It helps to automate the movement of content while delivering content integrity and operational efficiency.

Legacy System Decommissioning – Finally turning the off switch on old systems can lead to substantial cost reduction. Customers can archive data from any application and automatically apply lifecycle management rules, such as records management classifications, retention rules, and schedules through ECM Suite 2010.

Data Archiving — With a global policy to integrate retention of structured and unstructured content into one archiving system, customers can be assured of speedy and accurate collection of historical information with a full audit history.

Systems Integration — OpenText Integration Center represents a new generation of integration solutions that transforms, cleanses, enriches and directs information across the entire spectrum of decision support systems and corporate applications, for integrations that include data warehouses, data marts, mainframe systems, ERP systems, CRM systems, and content management platforms.

Leading industry analysts such as Susan Feldman, IDC’s Research Vice President for Search and Discovery Technologies, have identified unified information platforms as a new and fast-growing segment in enterprise software. Facilities like OpenText Integration Center will support enterprise strategies to implement such platforms.

“Businesses of all sizes are wallowing in too much information, without being able to make sense of it. Our survey of IT buyers demonstrates that they are eager to fix the information quandary by investing in software that gives them a single access point to all their information silos. We expect this demand to fuel a new wave of growth in information access software,” writes Feldman in a report published in April 2011 titled “Unified Access to Information: Less Seeking, More Finding.”

Symantec Corp. has revealed the findings of its 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey which examined how organizations plan to move business-critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments. The survey highlighted topics including server, client, and storage virtualization, storage-as-a-service, and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and the results uncover disparities between expectations and reality as enterprises deploy these solutions. CEOs and CFOs are concerned with moving business-critical applications into virtual or cloud environments due to challenges including reliability, security, availability and performance. The survey is based on more than 3,700 respondents from 35 countries worldwide, including 200 respondents from Canada.

“Cloud computing represents a major shift within IT – changing from a traditional IT delivery to a service-provider model.  Moving to the cloud is a complex evolution for many companies and it’s essential that IT and executives are aligned on initiatives,” said John Magee, vice president of virtualization and cloud solutions, Symantec.  “Virtualization is an enabler for private and hybrid clouds and our survey shows that planning a seamless move is critical to achieving all the simplicity, affordability and efficiency that these environments have to offer.”

Adoption of server virtualization is widespread, and more than 75 percent of organizations are discussing private and hybrid cloud deployments.  Of the technologies evaluated in the survey, server and storage virtualization are the most mature with 45 and 43 percent of enterprises implementing.   Private Storage-as-a-Service is the least mature with 36 percent adopting.

Early investments have revealed gaps between expectations and reality which indicate that organizations are still learning what these technologies are capable of and how to overcome the new challenges they bring with them. We asked respondents about initial goals in server, storage, and endpoint virtualization; private Storage-as-a-Service; and hybrid/private cloud.  We then asked those who have already implemented which goals they actually achieved.  The difference between the two answers revealed an expectation gap.

• Server virtualization projects were most successful, with only a 4 percent average gap between expected and realized goals.  The biggest gaps occurred in scalability, reducing capital expenditures and reducing operating expenditures.
• The average shortfall in storage virtualization was 33 percent, with disappointments coming in agility, scalability and reducing operating expenditures.
• Respondents reported an average gap between expected and realized goals of 26 percent with endpoint/desktop virtualization.  They cited disappointments in new endpoint deployment, application delivery and application compatibility.
• Seventy-seven percent of organizations are considering private Storage-as-a-Service, but these projects are challenging to implement and fall short of expectations by 37 percent.  For example, complexity reduction was a goal for 84 percent of respondents, but reached by only 44 percent.

These gaps are a hallmark of early stage markets where expectations are out of step with reality.  As the virtualization and cloud markets continue to mature, we expect to see those gaps close. Read the rest of this entry »

MEGA Brands Inc. has entered into a multi-year international licensing partnership with Blizzard Entertainment to develop construction toys based on Blizzard’s popular  Warcraft^® and StarCraft^® franchises, expanding on the remarkable success the company has achieved with translating gaming content into innovative and entertaining toys for kids and collectors alike. The first-ever construction toy sets from this partnership will be based on the iconic locations, characters, and vehicles from World of Warcraft^® and StarCraft^® II: Wings of Liberty™. The Mega Bloks licensed product offerings will make their retail debut worldwide in Summer 2012.

“We’re proud and thrilled to enter into a partnership with Blizzard Entertainment, the world leader in creating epic online game franchises,” said Vic Bertrand, Chief Innovation Officer of MEGA Brands. “The depth of content in World of Warcraft and StarCraft will fuel years of fun, collectible products for gamers and collectors.”

“We’re pleased to form this partnership with the experienced toy developers at MEGA Brands,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “Our players regularly amaze us with their creativity, and we’re confident that they’ll enjoy building and collecting the Warcraft- and StarCraft-themed construction sets that we’ll be bringing to market with MEGA next year.”

Distribution360 has sold three properties to UK-based CSC Media Group at the Banff World Media Festival. CSC owns and operates several television channels in the UK: Tiny Pop (geared to kids 4-6) will air This is Daniel Cook and This is Emily Yeung, and Kix (geared to boys 7-12) will air Ambition Skatecamp.

Tiny Pop is a popular channel for kids 4-6 years old, which features a fun mix of educational, entertaining, and inspiring programming. Starting later this summer, the channel will broadcast:

• This is Daniel Cook (65 x 6′ Episodes): An educational adventure where children join six-year-old host Daniel Cook on all of his exciting adventures, whether he is learning with Olympic gold medalists and zookeepers, or creating with award-winning musicians. Preschoolers learn, create and explore with Daniel, a preschooler himself, who shares their interests and curiosity.
• This is Emily Yeung (65 x 6′ Episodes): Sunny six-year-old Emily Yeung is host to a whole universe of discovery and adventures that capture the imagination of preschoolers. Children tag along with Emily as she explores, learns and creates with everyone from painters and musicians, to politicians and rocket scientists.

Kix is the UK’s only channel devoted to boys 7-12 years old. It features a mix of gross-out comedy, action-packed animation, and high energy sports programming. Starting later this summer, the channel will broadcast:

• Ambition Skatecamp (8 x 30′ Episodes): Eight talented young skateboarders go head-to-head for an intense week of skateboarding competitions. The contestants compete for a profile in SBC Skateboard Magazine and a chance to participate in the Maloof Money Cup worth $450,000 in prize money.

“We’re very pleased to be bringing these great kids and youth properties to audiences in the UK,” says Stéphanie Röckmann-Portier, Managing Director/Head of Sales, Distribution360. “The CSC Media Group boasts an exceptional variety of programming on its channels,” continues Röckmann-Portier.  “Daniel Cook, Emily Yeung, and Ambition Skatecamp will be great additions to the company’s lineup.”

Sonomax® Technologies, Inc. has announced that their award winning sculpted eers™ custom earphones will be available to Canadian retail customers this week. The highly acclaimed custom molded earphones will be premiered on Wednesday, June 15^th at Boutique Tone in Montreal, at HearAtLast in Ottawa (Orleans) on Thursday, June 16^th and on Friday, June 17^th at HearAtLast in West Edmonton. The Ottawa (Orleans) HearAtLast is located at 3900 Innes Road and the West Edmonton HearAtLast is at 18521 Stony Plain Rd. N.W.

Sculpted eers, the revolutionary custom earphones which can also be pre-ordered at the sculpted eers website for delivery in August, are molded to the unique shape of an individual’s ear canal in just four minutes. They provide maximum comfort, exceptional sound, and a secure fit even during vigorous activity. Additionally, the acoustic seal delivers a total audio immersion experience so consumers can safely enjoy the highest quality music at a fraction of the volume required by generic earphones.

“I’m thrilled to offer sculpted eers custom earphones to my customers, ” said Boutique Tone Owner and CEO Jeremy Stern. “They’re amazing. I’m always looking for the newest and coolest products on the planet and that’s exactly what sculpted eers are. I saw how people reacted to them at the NAMM Show earlier this year and now that I’ve been using them, I’m even more of a believer. My customers are going to love them.”

Nick Laperle, Sonomax Technologies’ President and CEO will attend the official product launch, which will be from 4:00 until 7:00 p.m. on June 15^th at Boutique Tone, 4292 Saint-Laurent in Montreal. “Boutique Tone is Montreal’s premier specialty music store for guitar and bass players. They are perfect partners for sculpted eers custom molded earphones,” Laperle said. “I’m delighted that I’ll be on hand for the launch and am looking forward to personally introducing sculpted eers to Boutique Tone’s customers.”

Laperle will also be present for the sculpted eers launch at two HearAtLast locations. The Ottawa (Orleans) sculpted eers launch is set for Thursday, June 16^th and on Friday, June 17^th the West Edmonton HearAtLast store will introduce the sculpted eers product. Launch time will be from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. at both locations. HearAtLast, a store-within-a-store at various Walmart locations throughout Canada, sells state-of-the-art hearing aids, earphones and other assistive hearing devices. Read the rest of this entry »

Going Loud Studios, creators of Zombie Accountant, has announced that “Lair of the Evildoer” has gone gold will be released on Xbox Live Indie Games this Friday, June 17th. Gamers will be able to download it from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for only 80 Microsoft Points.

“We’re using the latest in cutting-edge set-your-release-date technology,” said Ben Kane, founder of Going Loud Studios. “It gives us an unprecedented level of control over when the game comes out.”

“Oh and the game’s pretty good too,” he continued, when asked to say something relevant.

In “Lair of the Evildoer”, players will attempt to escape the lair of mad scientist and all-around evildoer Dr. Odious. They’ll fight over 30 types of monsters as they explore the procedurally generated levels hunting for the best loot. Their only allies are the 25 varieties of weapons, each with dozens of variations. Fortunately, players will gain experience and spend stat points to improve their character and better their odds of making it out alive. They’ll need all the help they can get.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1JLIGP7TIM]

01 Communique Laboratory Inc. and Wi-LAN Inc. have entered into an agreement that will see WiLAN assist 01 Communique in the licensing of 01 Communique’s patents related to remote access technology for a number of specified licensees.

“Having signed technology license agreements with hundreds of companies, including Broadcom, Intel, LG, Motorola and Samsung, worth many hundreds of millions of dollars, WiLAN has demonstrated superior licensing capabilities,” said Andrew Cheung, President and CEO, 01 Communique.  “WiLAN’s proven track record and its strong financial position makes WiLAN an ideal choice to help maximize the revenue that we anticipate can be generated from our patented technology.  We are very pleased with the opportunity to work with WiLAN.

Added Cheung, “We have a complete suite of products in the remote access marketplace that have been built using our patented technology and we believe there are companies that are using this patented technology to compete against us.”

“WiLAN has been aware of the 01 Communique patents for some time and believes these are extremely important patents,” said Jim Skippen, Chairman & CEO, WiLAN.  “This partnership  is very significant to WiLAN and we are confident that we will be able to develop a licensing program that will benefit both 01 Communique and WiLAN.  This is especially exciting for WiLAN since it will bring us into new markets.”

Under the terms of the agreement, WiLAN’s subsidiary Gladios IP will have day-to-day responsibility for developing programs aimed at licensing 01 Communique’s patents.