The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports.

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NAD games program now offered in English
The National Animation & Design Centre in Montreal is now offering its Design and 3D Animation for Game Design course in English. To date, 366 graduates have graduated from the program. The first English session will begin in January 2006. In other NAD news, the school is upgrading its equipment this summer, including with new 64-bit double process PC workstations. "Updating our lab to higer technology standards will most certainly raise the image quality, but will also demand much more precision to the artist, on applied textures for example," reads the May 27 issue of the centre’s email newsletter.

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Sympatico/MSN is hoping to show media buyers that online advertising is about branding rather than a direct response medium as many of them perceive. The portal giant recently concluded the first of several upcoming research projects in conjunction with New York-based Dynamic Logic and Canadian partners the National Film Board (NFB) and the Internet Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB Canada) to test user response to video ads on the Sympatico/MSN portal. Results from the study should be available within a month.

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A new contract with NYC-based Cablevision is the latest in a series of sales of ExtendMedia’s OpenCASE content management system as the Canadian new media company seeks to capitalize on the "triple-play" trend in the communications industry. Cablevision, a cableco serving over three million customers in the Big Apple, has licensed OpenCASE to provide broadband services to its customers. Specific details about the deal are under tight wraps, but the OpenCASE product is touted by Extend as offering communications companies the ability to provide customer self-care, triple play (bundles of television, voice and Internet services) marketing, customer profiling, service personalization, asset management, content distribution management and device management. The Cablevision deal, says Extend VP of sales Erik Davis, comes as telcos, cablecos and new entrants into telephony and television find their margins squeezed and are searching for new revenue sources and operational efficiencies.

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Canadians overall show little desire to begin purchasing music and television content for their mobile phones, but the carriers likely have a close eye on one group that has expressed a relatively enthusiastic reaction to its availability – youth and students. A recent poll of Canadians by Decima Research Inc. finds that significant numbers of young Canadians are aware of and interested in the content.

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A jubilant Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) will likely be back in court within about a month to bring a fresh spate of suits against Canadians it believes are illegally sharing music files over the Internet. On May 19, the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed CRIA’s appeal of a Federal Court of Canada ruling barring it access to the records of 29 Canadians it was hoping to sue (the BMG case). Despite the loss, CRIA head Graham Henderson tells CNM that the setback is temporary, and the higher court ruling has paved a clear path to more future successful actions.

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