Village Gamer

Yesterday at f8, Kobo announced the next advancement in social eReading that will provide people with the ability to engage in conversations with each other while reading, as well as a Facebook integration that makes it easier for people to feature their eReading activity on their Facebook profile. Read the rest of this entry »

Calgary Social Media Breakfast (SMBYYC) is pleased to announce Lori Stewart as the September presenter. Lori came to Calgary in 2004 after spending a rather adventurous 5 years in California during the tech boom where she built and launched eBay Canada and then led the rapid expansion and globalization of eBay – including the acquisition of Paypal.

Recently, Lori was part of the core Nenshi strategy team and helped build the brand that is Naheed Nenshi. Following the election she went with Naheed to City Hall as acting Chief of Staff and built out the Mayor’s new team. Lori is also the founder of Awesome Foundation, Calgary providing micro-financing for micro-brilliance – “1 great idea + 90 second pitch = $1000”. Read the rest of this entry »

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has launched a tool to help teachers and community leaders talk with younger Canadians about protecting their privacy online.

The youth presentation package – Protecting Your Online Rep – comes right in time for back-to-school. It offers people who work with youth the information necessary to offer an engaging and effective presentation in their own schools and communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Vancouver’s largest and most comprehensive social media conference, Social Media Week Vancouver has opened for registration, and as Canada’s only host city for the fall conference, events are already starting to fill up. Socialized! Ltd. announced the free conference in July of this year which will take place September 19^th through 23^rd.

Social Media Week is a global platform that connects people, content and conversations around emerging trends in social and mobile media. Vancouver is one of twelve global locations selected to host the bi-annual conference that is free for registered participants to attend.

“This will be the largest social media conference of its type in Vancouver,” says Rob Lewis, Editor-in-Chief of Techvibes.com and a member of the Social Media Week Vancouver Board of Advisors. “We are excited to be involved in an event of this magnitude. Techvibes is connected to many different industries and this conference will touch on everything from journalism and government to social media and the use of technology.”

The principle is simple, visit Social Media Week Vancouver’s website and register for the events of your choice. Events are free for registered participants and will include summits, mashups and soirees that take place in various venues around Vancouver from Monday, September 19^th through Friday, September 23^rd.

“Some of the events are already sold out, but we encourage people to get registered today as some of our venues have limited capacity,” says Teri Conrad, Senior Social Strategist for Socialized! Ltd.

With conference events planned throughout each day and into the evening, Ceili’s Irish Pub has reserved the rooftop patio for the week, with soirees currently planned for Monday, Thursday and Friday evening. “Ceilis is excited to be hosting several of the day time events and are, of course, proud to be the official party and soiree venue for Social Media Week Vancouver,” notes Mark Reid, Vice President, Ceilis Group.

Vancouver social intranet software provider Intranet Connections has been selected by Ontario based healthcare organization York Central Hospital to provide its intranet services to their 2,500 users, providing an effective and accessible communications tool for healthcare workers on the go.

York Central Hospital was looking for intranet software to better organize their internal communications for healthcare professionals that access the intranet from computers across the four wing hospital throughout the day. The main objective of the intranet was to provide a central location for employees to access important company information. They use their intranet to announce their CEO’s message, hospital highlights, healthcare news, media coverage and press releases. Human Resources consolidated their important documents and policies onto the site and are promoting employees to apply for internal jobs within the Job Center application. A Google search widget allows employees to find content on the internet from the intranet home page.

Nelson Cardoso, Corporate Webmaster for York Central Hospital, says, “I appreciate the ability to create sub-sites that enable various departments and areas like fire and emergency and energy awareness to manage their own content. The service and response time needed to be efficient, and we found that in Intranet Connections.”

To prepare for the launch of Intranet Connections, York Central Hospital offered learning sessions, sent weekly engagement emails and advertised the new intranet with promotional posters and articles in the hospital newsletter. York Central Hospital uses Intranet Connections stats software to monitor visits to the site, whose visits have increased substantially in less than three weeks. The ease of using Intranet Connections software has made adding content simple. York Central Hospital allows users to manage their own content in the Physician Resource Center and Medical Affairs area of the intranet.

Squamish-based Tiipz has been selected from hundreds of start-ups across Canada to present its social new approach to market research today at Launch @GROW,happening at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Launch @GROW, an important platform for emerging companies, selects four brilliant new ventures each year to present their stories to more than 600 investors and influencers from Canada and Silicon Valley.

Explains Jason Cyr, who co-Founded Tiipz with partners Mark Nickson and Gesvyn Tjandra, “Today we have an exciting opportunity to explain how Tiipz will define a new approach to market research in the age of social media.”

Tiipz hasn’t yet officially launched, and already the company is working with clients including Westbeach, Kokanee, and Budweiser. Through a partnership with brand.LIVE, brands including Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Sennheiser and Mattel will be using Tiipz to undertake interactive customer research at the Live at Squamish concert happening this weekend.

Says Jason, “As a research tool, Tiipz is based entirely on engagement. The consumer benefits from a fun experience and a tangible reward for participation; they can share their opinion with others and possibly change the course of action for a business.”

“The business benefits from stronger market insights and increased brand loyalty. There’s no other research tool that’s nearly this engaging in the marketplace!”

Ludia Inc. and Mark Burnett’s One Three Television LLC have announced the availability of the Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? game for Facebook platform. Based on the syndicated TV game show, players across North America can now enjoy a multiplayer Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? experience with friends, family and the larger Facebook community.

“Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? is an acclaimed TV game show franchise that translates into an extremely fun and social game on Facebook,” said Alex Thabet, Founder and CEO of Ludia Inc. “We’re thrilled to release yet another top game show property featuring multiplayer, simultaneous game play- a unique formula that has proven to be highly addictive for players and very successful for Ludia.”

Contestants simultaneously compete to correctly answer eight multiple choice questions pooled from different school subjects such as Art, World Geography, Earth Science, Math, Languages, and others, with the ability to use the “copy” cheat to help answer difficult questions. The top three players at the end of the first round have a chance at boosting “cash” earnings by correctly answering a 5^th Grader Bonus Question. At the end of the game, a successful contestant can share winnings with friends, and brag about the win by posting it on his/her Facebook Wall.

Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? on Facebook features:

• Live, multiplayer game play with friends and other Are You Smarter 5^th Grader fans, and the ability to follow friends’ grades and progress in the game.
• Favorite elements from the You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader TV show, including thousands of questions drawn from 10 different academic subjects, authentic theme music and the familiar “classroom” setting.
• The ability to choose Facebook friends as “cheats” from whom players can “copy” an answer in order to earn bonus points and increase the chances of winning.

“This exciting game release brings a whole new dimension and audience to Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader?,” said Mark Burnett. “We’re delighted to see the franchise continue to thrive on Facebook so that fans of the TV show and players who enjoy social games will have an outstanding interactive experience with the brand.”

According a recent study, 97% of non-profit organizations are using social media, where 40% of corporations use social media to engage and connect with their communities and raise cause/brand awareness.

The Learning Disabilities Association of Toronto District (LDATD) is one of the non-profit organizations going through a communication shift by creating an online presence through social media, connecting with members and the outside community through blogs, facebook and twitter and also undergoing a website refresh to facilitate sharing, community building and easier navigation.

“We are slowly and gradually noticing increased traffic to all our sites,” says Mimi Hoffman, Executive Director of the LDATD. “This translates to more of our population receiving much needed programs and services. We intend to continue our social media campaign to reach as many as possible,” Hoffman adds.

Noticing the misconception of learning disabilities both on and offline, the LDATD understands that reaching out to people through social media platforms is a good way to inform about learning disabilities and to clear the stigma around it.

Slowly, the LDATD is embracing social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, as well as blogging to over 200 fans and followers about the LDATD. These social media outlets will help children, parents and adults with learning disabilities, and give a clearer sense of what learning disabilities are.

Funcom and EA Partners, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. would like you to know that the highly anticipated modern-day, Massively Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World™ will release for the PC in April 2012. Starting August 26^th, gamers can register to join upcoming betas, through a unique interactive social media campaign that will be made available on the game’s official site.

Imagine a world where secret societies pull the strings of kings and presidents, where vampires are more than just a Hollywood fantasy, and where all the myths, legends and conspiracies are true. The Secret World is an MMO that breaks free from the confinements of character classes and levels and allows players to explore real-world locations with an engrossing storyline. Funcom will not only challenge but redefine long-established MMO standards.

“It has never been more rewarding working on The Secret World than it is now,” says Senior Producer and Creative Director Ragnar Tørnquist. “The progress we are making in development allows the whole team to really enjoy just playing the game for hours on end. We are all looking forward to bringing in players through upcoming betas, and their feedback will be crucial to the further development of the game as we progress toward the April 2012 launch.”

It appears that there were loads of news announcements made while we were at SIGGRAPH with very sketchy wireless. The media room where we could have had a wired connection was two floors and a long walk away, but we wouldn’t have had long enough on the wired connection to catch up on everything. Here are just a few of the stories that broke during the past few days:

The Montreal International Game Summit announced its keynote speakers. The conference will open with Jason Rohrer, an independent Game Designer, and Richard Lemarchand, Lead Game Designer for Naughty Dog, on November 1st and 2nd respectively. Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and CEO of Ubisoft, will have the honour of delivering the conference’s closing keynote.

Other featured speakers at MiGS 2011 include David Hego, Artistic Director for Rocksteady Studios, who will be presenting in the Arts & VFX Track. Alain Tascan, President & CEO at Sava Transmedia will be participating in the Business track while Lee Perry, Senior Gameplay Designer for Epic Games will be on the Design track. Over on the Technology track, attendees will find a presentation by Stefan Boberg, Technical Development Director at EA DICE, while the Production track will feature a presentation by David Anfossi, Producer – DX: HR at Eidos Montreal. A new track has been added for 2011, and Tom Salta, Music Composer known for producing scores featured in popular franchises such as R.U.S.E. and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands will be the featured presenter for the brand new Audio track. Please visit the MiGS site for an up-to-date speaker list.

Ubisoft announced that PlayStation^® gamers will be able to test their assassination skills beginning on September 3rd with a multiplayer beta of the highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed Revelations that will run until September 11th. PlayStation^®Plus members and Uplay members will enjoy exclusive access to the multiplayer beta on PlayStation^®3. The multiplayer beta offers access to nine characters – The Sentinel, The Vanguard, The Guardian, The Vizier, The Thespian, The Deacon, The Bombardier, The Trickster and The Champion, three maps – Knight’s Hospital, Antioch, Constantinople, and four playable modes – Wanted and Manhunt, as well as two new modes, Deathmatch and Artifact Assault. The rest of us will apparently have to wait until the game’s release on November 15th.

Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise has expanded to Google+ games. Dragon Age™ Legends, the popular dark fantasy Play4Free® RPG developed by BioWare San Francisco (formerly EA 2D) has launched, and is the only game of its kind on Google’s new real-life social project. Dragon Age Legends extends the award-winning Dragon Age franchise and reinvents it for social play on Google+. The game blends accessible and engaging tactical combat, progression and exploration in the Dragon Age universe, and is perfect for co-operative and competitive gameplay across players’ Google+ Circles and Hangouts.

Vancouver’s WordLogic Corporation, a provider of advanced predictive text software for smartphones, PCs and other devices, has announced the availability of WordLogic Intelligent Input™ technology for licensing to manufacturers and software developers. The technology is ideal for mobile app developers, search providers, and device OEMs looking for the best possible predictive text or search technology.

WordLogic Intelligent Input™ helps make text input on touchscreen smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics devices faster, more accurate and helpful. Devices like smartphones, tablets, automotive infotainment systems, Internet TV, and game consoles are proliferating by the billions. They enable the Internet and employ touchscreens, body motion, infrared controllers or other non-mechanical keyboards to enter text, search and control applications. WordLogic Intelligent Input™ brings next generation text input to these text-hungry devices.

Current predictive text methods, which rely upon adjacent key prediction or misspellings, are frequently so inaccurate use that people simply turn them off. Alternatives require too much of a learning curve for mass adoption. Voice input has improved, but even server-based voice recognition is frequently insufficient in environments subject to background noise, such as groups where conversation is taking place, in vehicles, and on the street.

Gorilla Nation Media Canada has announced that it will exclusively represent the online advertising sales for European news site Figaro Medias in the Canadian market.

“Group Figaro is enthusiastic to join the Gorilla Nation family. We share the same vision of the digital business, which is to guarantee premium, innovative and engaging contents (video, chat session, etc.), to join our audience on all devices and platforms and to respond with care to our advertisers the same way we care about our content. The adaptability and the service quality of Gorilla Nation bring a new dynamic to the Figaro Medias offer in Canada,” says Eileen Lemuet, International Commercial Director at Figaro Medias.

“With the addition of Figaro Medias to our roster of sites, it shows our commitment and seriousness in increasing our offer in the French Canadian market, while complementing some of the new business sites we have recently added,” says Jean-Sébastien Tremblay, Director of sales, East of Canada, at GN Media Canada.