Village Gamer

Ever since last February’s post-Superbowl, jaw-dropping cliff-hanger finale, FlashPoint viewers have been lighting up fan sites and the Twitter-verse, anxiously waiting to find out how the drama would unfold. Will Ed (Hugh Dillon) pull through his shocking attack at gunpoint? Will psychologist Dr. Toth (guest star Victor Garber, Alias) fulfill his agenda to disband Team One? Beginning July 8, viewers will get their answers, and more, when Canada’s most-watched Canadian drama this season returns with all-new episodes, Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on CTV (visit CTV.ca to confirm local broadcast times). This season, viewers can also lock their sights on Team One’s newest member, young diamond-in-the-rough recruit Rafik “Raf” Rousseau, played by Clé Bennett (The Line).

New episodes of FlashPoint are available on demand the day following their television broadcast on the CTV Video Player. Viewers can also get the latest news, play the FlashPoint: Training Day game, or catch up on episodes from Seasons 1-3 at CTV.ca. Encore Season 3 episodes also continue Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on CTV leading into the Season 4 premiere.

“With so many questions unanswered and the fate of Team One in doubt, the Season 4 premiere is must-watch television for FlashPoint fans,” said Phil King, President, CTV Programming & Sports. “It’s a riveting lead-in to the new season, which promises more heart-pumping action than ever before.”

“We’re extremely thankful for the outstanding support of our fans at home in Canada, and all over the world,” said executive producers Anne Marie La Traverse and Bill Mustos. “And we’re thrilled to bring them a Season 4 that’s stronger than ever before. We’ll take a more intimate look into the personal lives of our FlashPoint heroes, move at a pace that’s faster than ever, and continue to tell stories that pack a strong emotional punch.”

Recently renewed for a fifth season by CTV, FlashPoint has delivered strong audiences both in and out of simulcast since its debut in 2008. The dynamic series has just concluded a remarkable run on CTV this past winter, averaging 1.65 million viewers out of simulcast. Concluding with the post-Superbowl cliff-hanger finale, it saw double digit growth in the three key adult demos, up 15% with A18-34, 18% with A18-49 and 19% with A25-54, compared to its previous season, and it garnered series-high audiences among A18-34, becoming Canada’s most-watched Canadian drama this season. From its outset in 2008 when it led the way for several other Canadian series to air on U.S. networks, FlashPoint has picked up a number of record-breaking Gemini nominations: 19 in 2009 and 15 in 2010. The series was recently awarded a Writers Guild of Canada Award for Best Writing in a Dramatic Series (Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern).

In addition to all-new episodes airing in simulcast with CBS this summer, CTV’s FlashPoint is also licensed in more than 100 territories worldwide, including RTL2 in Germany, Canal Plus in France and Veronica in the Netherlands.

FlashPoint stars an impressive list of talent, including Hugh Dillon (Durham County) as Ed Lane, team leader and lead sniper; Enrico Colantoni (Veronica Mars) as Gregory Parker, the team sergeant and head negotiator; Amy Jo Johnson (Felicity) as Julianna “Jules” Callaghan, secondary negotiator and rappelling expert; David Paetkau (Whistler) as Sam Braddock, the young hot-shot sniper on the team; Michael Cram (Stargate: Atlantis) as Kevin “Wordy” Wordsworth, who specializes in close quarter combat; Sergio Di Zio (Just Buried) as Mike “Spike” Scarlatti, explosives and tactical toys expert; and Clé Bennett (The Line) as Rafik “Raf” Rousseau, new recruit.

—-Spoiler Alert—-

Do not read any further if you don’t want to know what’s coming in the Season 4 premiere.

—-Just Sayin’—-

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Montreal’s Transcontinental Interactive was a big winner at the prestigious Magnum Opus Awards for 2011, capturing a total of 30 top prizes.  Showcasing its leadership in digital and content marketing solutions, Transcontinental Interactive came home with some serious industry recognition.  The awards, which recognize excellence in custom-media editorial, design and strategy, were presented by ContentWise and the Content Marketing Institute and were judged by leading custom-publishing professionals and professors from the Missouri School of Journalism.

Transcontinental Interactive was singled out for its outstanding work in design, editorial content, photography, illustration and complete publication. With seven awards for online content, Transcontinental Interactive proved that it has what it takes to win in both the online and offline space.

“Being recognized by these prestigious awards is yet another reason to be proud of the consumer centric solutions we provide our customers,” said Christian Trudeau, President of Transcontinental Interactive. “These awards reflect not only the creative results our teams generate for our clients, but also the commitment to being a strategic marketing partner to fulfill our clients needs every step of the way.”

Among Transcontinental Interactive’s honours:

• Seven gold awards for leading North American brands such as Aeroplan, P&G, Sobeys and Geico
• Nine silver awards for print magazine work; electronic publication or websites; and  all-around publication work
• Five bronze awards and nine honourable mentions

Now in their eighth year, the Magnum Opus Awards are the top recognition for organizations using print and online publications, as well as social media in their content marketing efforts. This year, the judges considered 560 entries in 217 categories, including 18 interactive product categories for magazines, videos, blogs, podcasts, and use of social media, among others.

Two years after We Live in Public, a film that portrays our willingness to sacrifice our privacy in an online world, American film-maker Ondi Timoner, Director at Interloper Films, once again aims her camera at the Internet. This time her focus is on Internet startups in an era of almost complete transparency. It’s a film about big ideas and big data, from the first back of a napkin to the billionth user. But it’s also about how those businesses can modify our behavior, convincing and coercing us to do their bidding through the power of public, social interactions.

The documentary will kick off filming at the International Startup Festival in Montréal, July 13 to 15, 2011, where hundreds of founders, investors, and successful entrepreneurs are gathering to tackle the business of launching new ventures.

The International Startup Festival is a two-day dynamic event of networking, learning, new ideas that focus on the business of startups. It brings a global audience together to cover the entire startup lifecycle: early-stage innovation; scaling the business; and achieving a successful exit.

OpenText’s Metastorm business, a leading provider of business process management (BPM), business process analysis (BPA), and enterprise architecture (EA) software for business transformation, today announced that it has been recognized as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Business Process (BP) Platforms Report.

The report, released annually by industry analysts at IDC, evaluates the relative capabilities of vendor solutions to support people-centric process applications based on the complexity, abilities and strategy of the solutions. OpenText Metastorm was rated above average and received top scores across IDC’s product, customer and business assessments.

“Metastorm’s view of how work management is evolving is sophisticated, and this shows up in its product,” the IDC MarketScape report states. OpenText Metastorm’s BP portfolio earned high scores for its cost management strategy, ROI planning capabilities, and portfolio strategy, including its technical platform and the vision around integration and content management. The portfolio’s Metastorm ProVision®, an enterprise and business architecture suite which enables process discovery and business process analytics, was identified by customers as a deciding factor for deployment of Metastorm solutions.

The product assessment also examines out-of-the-box functionality around identification of the appropriate worker for a task, prioritization and task assignment. OpenText Metastorm’s Smart Business Workspace was awarded high scores for innovation. It is a composition or “mashup” environment that combines work management and social capabilities to allow for communication and collaboration across workers during process design and as on-going as work is being performed. OpenText Metastorm also received top scores for out-of-the-box business runtime capabilities, technology platform and development environment.

“We are confident that our position as a leader in IDC’s MarketScape report on Business Process platforms further validates our ability to provide consistent and innovative software products that allow customers to align business strategy and execution to improve process and drive meaningful results,” said Kevin Haugh, Vice President of Product Marketing and Management at OpenText Metastorm. “OpenText Metastorm is committed to product excellence and customer service and continues to evolve and improve our offerings.”

As part of the IDC MarketScape report, customers were interviewed about their use of OpenText Metastorm products and customer support, and identified faster install time, quick process development time, graphical design, low and flexible pricing, and governance tools as reasons they selected the provider. OpenText Metastorm received top scores for customer references, reflecting the company’s ability to provide service excellence and the company’s commitment to developing best-of-breed solutions.

OpenText Metastorm is known for its ability to provide a comprehensive and highly-proven BP solution that allows organizations to quickly implement, manage, monitor, and analyze core business processes. In addition, the Metastorm BPM® suite’s seamless integration as part of the Metastorm Enterprise platform – which includes the Metastorm ProVision® software for EA and BPA – enables effective alignment of process execution activities with business goals at all levels of the organization. The Metastorm Business Transformation Practices Framework leverages the entire Metastorm software portfolio and industry templates to provide organizations with a successful methodology for managing change and achieving successful, ongoing transformation to meet key strategic and operational objectives.

A Toronto local of the Teamsters Union is asking the Ontario Labour Relations Board to declare that the Teamsters not be barred from organizing crew members who provide location and transportation services for the movie industry in Ontario.

In an issue going back to 2002, Teamster Local 847 is scheduled to present its case at the OLRB on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, at 505 University Avenue, beginning at 9:30 a.m.

In 2002, the Teamster local signed up the employees of two companies providing location and transportation services for seven movies being shot in Toronto at the time and asked the producers to accept the certification.

The companies were Cheyenne Support Service Inc. and Bogeyman Locations but only Cheyenne, owned by Bob Watson and Ron Marki, is pursuing the case before the OLRB.

The Directors Guild of Canada, Directors Guild of Ontario (DGCO) and the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) opposed the Teamster involvement and after the Teamster certification at the two companies the DGCO required the crew members to sign a Guild “deal memo” if they wanted to perform work on a film set.

The employees of the two companies refused and, as a result, were fired from the set – in one case being escorted off by an armed Toronto Police Service officer. Prior to the Teamster move, the security employees were not asked to sign such a memo.

Neither of the two companies have been employed by producers since. Bob Watson and Ron Marki, the owners of Cheyenne, who also provided labour for the film shoots have also not worked in the industry since.

The Teamsters filing with the OLRB also alleges unfair labour practices by the Directors Guild and the producers’ association. The lawyers for Teamster local 847 and Cheyenne argue that employees should have a right to choose the union of their choice.

The employees had no voice in selecting the DGCO as their union. The production company allegedly voluntarily recognized the DGCO prior to contracting with Cheyenne, the security company, and then required its employees to sign up with the DGCO. Thus the employees had no say in whether they wanted to be represented by the DGCO or the Teamsters as their union.

Under their non-union status the guards were paid $11 to $13 an hour and were scheduled as needed without any limitations on hours or turnaround time.

Since the cased started, there have been numerous personnel changes at the OLRB and a number of preliminary motions by both sides.

The next DigiBC MoMoVan event takes place on July 11th at the Centre for Digital Media and will feature speaker Scott Michaels, Vice President, Client Services at Atimi Software, Inc. Scott will be sharing his views on industry trends, publishing, Apple store and best practices.

Atimi Software, Inc. focuses their technology insight on the quickly changing Apple market and is one of the largest independent Macintosh development houses in the USA. Scott Michaels has worked with many Fortune 500 companies to bring their products to the mobile space and has assisted in restructuring their marketing plan to include mobile.

He is a vital force behind the Atimi team that has developed more than 35 applications currently on the market for some of the leading brands in North America including the New York Times, HBO, and the Vancouver Canucks. Having worked on the front lines of software development and project management for over a decade, Scott champions the need for a cohesive strategy for companies bringing products to the mobile space.

MoMoVan July will start the evening with three to four quick entrepreneurial pitches – if you are interested please contact DigiBC president Howard Donaldson in advance. Tickets for MoMoVan are free DigiBC members, Sponsors, Partners and Students. Tickets for all others are $25.00 each. Space is limited to 70 people, so register soon.

New applications launched by the Government of Canada will allow more people across the country and around the world to follow The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as they embark on their tour of Canada beginning on June 30. The iPhone and mobile applications were launched today by the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages.

“Royal Tours are opportunities for all Canadians, particularly young people, to take pride in our country and our history, and to show to the world all that this great country has to offer” said Minister Moore. “Launching this application will offer Canadians the opportunity to connect with the Royal Tour and interact with friends and colleagues in exciting new ways.”

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will make seven official stops in four provinces and one territory over nine days, from June 30 to July 8. The upcoming Royal Tour will be the first international tour for The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as a married couple.

The new 2011 Royal Tour iPhone application is available for free on iTunes and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 4.0 or later. Blackberry and other mobile platform users can access the content at m.royaltour.ca.

The 2011 Royal Tour website provides information and details regarding the Royal Tour and the Monarchy in Canada. You can also follow the latest updates on the Tour on Facebook and Twitter.

RTNDA Canada – The Association of Electronic Journalists – has voted to change the name of the organization to adapt to the changes in the profession. In a vote at the Annual General Meeting at the National conference being held this weekend in Halifax, the membership agreed to change the acronym to include the word “Digital”. For the last 49 years, the acronym was short for Radio-Television News Directors Association. That will soon change to RTDNA, or Radio-Television Digital News Association – The Association of Electronic Journalists.

“Flipping those two letters, from “News Directors” to “Digital News” makes us more inclusive,” said President Andy LeBlanc. “Whether we are the news director, a reporter, a student, or an educator, we are all striving to achieve the same outcome: superb electronic journalism. Digital technology means we are no longer limited to radio and television – electronic journalists are also online.”

In addition to the name change, the membership amended articles in the Association Constitution to make all practicing electronic journalists voting members. Previously, only members who were news directors and news managers were eligible to vote on Association matters.

Amendments were also made to the Code of Ethics to reflect the technology shifts that have affected electronic journalism. Many of the changes amend “broadcast” to “electronic” and other modifications in the language acknowledge that news is delivered online and mobile in addition to television and radio, and that the equipment used is now not only for broadcast. “These amendments are an adaptation to the digital age,” said LeBlanc. “The Code remains the industry standard for electronic journalism – and all the principles of ethical journalism remain.”

Members are attending the annual national conference in Halifax this weekend, concluding tonight evening with the National Awards Gala.

Bulletproof Outlaws, an indie start-up studio documenting the process of developing a videogame from scratch, has teamed up with Ravenous Games, developers of the wildly popular iOS version of League of Evil, to release Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Elusive Ninja has full-screen visuals, tight controls, catchy music, and comes packed with a ton of behind-the-scenes information about the game’s development, starting up a game studio, a Post-Mortem analysis, the original Game Design Document with commentary, and more.

“We’re proud to release our first game, and eager to get started on the next,” says Bulletproof Outlaws founder Jeff Hangartner, “It’s been a long journey, and we’ve learned a lot about everything from streamlining the game development process to handling the business and financial side of starting a studio up.  We’ve documented every step of the journey and there’s over 100 pages of game development information for other developers and gamers curious about what goes into making and releasing a videogame.”

Game Features:

• Epic full-screen visuals
• A whole bunch of behind-the-scenes Bonus Features everything from a Post-Mortem to the original Game Design Document with commentary on how the final game compared to the original design
• Leaderboard support (both OpenFeint and Apple Game Center) so you can compete with the whole world or stick to one-upping your close group of friends
• Achievements (OpenFeint and Apple Game Center) to give you some extra challenges to shoot for when you’ve got your skills rockin’
• Super tight controls, and a difficulty curve that’s challenging but not impossible…the AI gets smarter the longer you last but there are a few strategies to discover and master that will help you survive the most chaotic situations

Rock Hippo Productions has announced a series of short educational Brawl Busters Lessons for its upcoming down and dirty title, Brawl Busters.  Players can head to the web site for a chance to win a coveted invite to become an Original Buster in the Closed Beta. Brawl Busters, a Free2Play online multi-player action combat game, has already received tons of positive feedback after its initial announcement. These lessons just might keep impatient players in check while they wait to get into the game.

The first Brawl Busters Lessons, showcasing four of the five character classes feature the Rocker, the Boxer, the Firefighter, and the Blitzer, have already been released. Check out the fifth character class, the Slugger today, Friday June 24^th, when it launches this afternoon. The newly released videos show some of the many strategies and combinations players can use to beat down their opponents and come out on top of the slug-fest.  Players can equip their character with the best gear around, including matching spiffy head, body, and leg armor then pick up a weapon and get ready to hose enemies, bust heads with a variety of gloves, groove out on a choice of guitars and much more!

Brawl Busters is a dynamic new action brawler that features competitive and co-operative battle modes all in a unique third person view.  With its simple and intuitive controls, this easy to pick up and play game makes team strategy a must as player’s battle against each other or team up against computer controlled enemies.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy3bCFZW3VA]

“Brawl Busters looks and plays unlike anything else on the market today, and we love that,” said Howard He, President and CEO of Rock Hippo Productions.  “We’ve had phenomenal fan support since announcing the game last month, and we want to thank those fans by bringing them even more updates leading up to the Closed Beta.  Check back every Tuesday and Friday for a new lesson revealing various game play features.”

Currently, the Free2Play PC title is still in its pre-Closed Beta stage. But rest assured, Rock Hippo is working extra hard to bring the game out as soon as possible. If you want to be one of the first brawlers to try out the game, drop us your email address at via the game’s web site.