TechCrunch managed to post another incorrect story over the weekend. Serkan Toto made it to the last paragraph before he misspoke, calling Cambrian House “now-defunct”. Let me tidy up some facts: VenCorps, for those who follow these things, is a site built by the not-defunct Cambrian House.
Luckily, the “not-defunct at all” Cambrian House team was on top of the situation and released this blog post to combat the misinformation. This post contains an official letter from their counsel, a detailed FAQ, and the wit and humor we have come to expect from the Calgary company.
Thanks for clearing things up... again!
Launched in 2006, Cambrian House began as a crowdsourcing community using a wisdom of crowds based approach to discover new business and technology... [more]
Usually the name of a BarCamp is an indication of the location of the event. But tomorrow, Saturday October 11, BarCamp Africa will be held not in Africa, but in Mountain View, CA.
BarCamp Africa brings people, institutions and enterprises interested in Africa - as a topic, an opportunity, or a place of action - together in one location to exchange ideas, build connections, re-frame perceptions and catalyze action that leads to positive involvement and mutual benefit between Silicon Valley and the continent of Africa.
Now, you could argue that this is a just a continuation of North America's grand tradition of telling Africa what's best for it, but the event is led massive cred by being held at the headquarters of the Internet, the Googleplex. It's sold out, but you can follow along through Ustream, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or blogs.
The Canadian New Media Awards take place November 18, 2008, as part of the nextMEDIA conference. In the lead up to this event, I'm going to profile the categories and finalists, one per day.
First up, the category of Excellence in Gaming. The three finalists are:
Mario Strikers Charged is a fast-paced, arcade soccer game for the Nintendo Wii. It was released last summer to favorable reviews (79 on Metacritic). The game makes use of the Wii's unique controller, and was one of the first Wii games to support online multiplayer. Strikers was developed by Vancouver's Next Level Games, a full service independent game studio. They have also received a nomination in the Excellence in Children's category for Spiderman: Friend or Foe.
The Urban Vermin Adventure is an online flash game/site designed in support of the YTV children's show Urban Vermin. The game also provides episode and character information, and activites and downloads. The game was designed by Toronto's Decode Entertainment, who also produces the show. They are also working on a version of the game for Nintendo DS.
Mystery at Mansfield Manor is an online murder mystery movie game. Filmed in Canada with live actors, the player takes the role of the detective and must solve a murder with the story and clues provided through video. Mystery is produced by SR Entertainment of Toronto.
We first reported on rumors to this effect back in July, and today, in a buzzword laden press release barely discernible to commoners, Bell announced they will be upgrading their network with HSPA technology. This will expand the models of phones they are able to support and bring them in line with the GSM standard that has achieved near ubiquity outside of North America.
As it continues to expand and enhance its national 3G CDMA/EVDO service, Bell will also overlay this industry-leading network with HSPA technology, maximizing the latest-generation wireless options the company can offer customers across Canada.
Bell wireless customers will be able to choose between EVDO – already the dominant 3G standard in Canada and across North America – and HSPA, which is rapidly becoming the main platform with carriers outside North America. At the same time, overlaying HSPA on its national network will offer Bell the most efficient upgrade path to the 4G LTE broadband standard in coming years.
This is a very major upgrade, and is likely costing Bell chunks of cash, but it is a necessary one to stay competitive and pave the way for future upgrades. The release also mentions that the upgrade will give them a migration path to the 4G Long Term Evolution standard that will give us faster speeds and reasons to upgrade our phones in the mid-distant future.
You might recall that went the iPhone came to Canada, there was only one carrier they could go with: Rogers/Fido. Only they supported the GSM standard that the iPhone (and many other phones) required, as opposed to the CDMA standard that Telus and Bell uses. This change doesn't mean that Bell will immediately begin carrying all these GSM phones, such things may be subject to carrier exclusivity agreements, but it does mean that it will be at least technically possible for these phones to work with Bell.
They don't mention an exact timeline for the upgrade, but there is one quote:
“As the exclusive telecommunications partner to the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, we look forward to delivering these enhanced capabilities before Canada hosts the world in 2010.”
Nice job getting the Olympic sponsorship reference in, I know I'm looking forward to seeing a Bell ad every 3 minutes during the Olympics. There's a major incentive for them to ensure that the GSM upgrade is in place before the 2010 Winter Olympics. When Olympic athletes and visitors land in Vancouver and power up their (likely GSM) phone, which provider will it connect to and start roaming with? Will it be the exclusive Olympic partner, or will it be Rogers? The big countdown clock behind the Vancouver Art Gallery says they have 490 days to make it happen.
Bell Canada, Canada's national leader in communications, provides connectivity to residential and business customers through wired and wireless... [more]
Partnering up with Amazon.com and Apple's iTunes Music Store, Google has announced their YouTube video sharing property will soon provide online shopping opportunities tied into the video content they display. Located just below the video clips, the purchasing options will link to a variety of products related to the video displayed from movies and music to concert tickets or clothing and accessories. Outside of adwords this will be one of Google's first attempts to monetize the site they paid $1.65 billiion for in 2006, a site that boasts 330,000,000 monthly visitors and almost 13 hours of uploaded video every minute.
The move comes amidst calls from investors to begin raising revenues earned from the popular site after Piper Jaffrey Research predicted only $200 million of Google's estimated $27 billion 2009 revenue would come from the site. YouTube further indicated that more options were forthcoming. "There'll be lots of different solutions for lots of different problems," Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube director of product management, said in an interview. "We've tested a lot of things already, and we're going to be testing more in the future. Some will work, some won't. Some of the options mentioned in the Reuters article included ads along the bottom of the streaming videos, advertiser contests, sponsored homepage videos, and short ads before and/or after uploaded videos.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. As a first step to fulfilling that mission,... [more]
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Internet Law Conference
Government Web 2.0 & Social Media
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Veratta - Web Design
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PeerFX
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PEER 1
6S Marketing Inc
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