CNM Update

UPDATE – Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Pl@tform back for a second yearWinners of the New Media Business Alliance’s (NMBA)Pl@tform program, which seeks to give up-and-coming new media designers and developers a marquee for their talents, were announced this week. Three Toronto firms – Learning Edge Corp. with its NovICE: A Beginner’s Guide to Hockey, Snoek Media’s Global Kitchens, and The Wine Dating Game from The Wired Schoolhouse – will have their creative featured on the Sympatico/MSN website sometime next year: The five winners of the competition’s inaugural round in 2004 are gearing up for their debut on the portal. NMBA presents Pl@tform in conjunction with – and with funding from – the Ontario Media Development Corp. (OMDC), which looked to be facing a funding cut of around $2 million earlier this year (CNM, July 20/05). NMBA president Ian Kelso says the Ontario government arm is operating on the same budget as last year, and fears of those cuts seem to have been overplayed. "They’re kind of working without a mandate right now, as far as I can tell," Kelso says. ‘They haven’t got any directive from the ministry other than it’s the status quo for this year, so business as usual again." He adds NMBA and OMDC have been in discussion about upcoming new media events they collaborate on – including the iLunch series of educational events – and OMDC appears to be proceeding on the assumption that funding for new media initiatives will remain intact next year as well. "In terms of my new media priorities the engine has started and we’re starting to roll again," Kelso says. More details will follow in the Oct. 27 issue of Canadian NEW MEDIA. Wallop wins Vancouver aquarium as client Wallop Creative, a Vancouver-based multimedia design firm, was retained by the Vancouver Aquarium to produce an animated video illustrating the aquarium’s Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) project. The Wallop team created the video, which depicts electronically tagged marine wildlife being tracked as they swim through invisible electronic "fences" on the ocean floor, from scratch using computer-generated 3D animation. POST is part of a broader global effort dubbed the Census of Marine Life, which aims to catalog the diversity and distribution of ocean life worldwide. The video can be seen at http://www.wallopcreative.com/portfolioProjects/post/index.html. Beenox brings three more console games to PCMontreal game studio Beenox Inc. had a banner September with the completion of three major projects at its Beenox Shift game porting division. Three console games – Ultimate Spider-Man, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, and GUN – were converted to the PC platform by Beenox’s team of coders, and will be available shortly at retail locations. Beenox says it will use revenue from its Shift operations to fund Beenox Score, another division aimed at original game development and which already has one title, code-named Project X, in the works. Earlier this year, the Canadian firm was bought by Santa Monica CA’s Activision Inc., one of the largest game publishers in the world. Heritage contract winners released Canadian Heritage recently released its contract winners for the first quarter of its 2005-2006 fiscal year. On the list for "Communications professional services not elsewhere specified" are Achilles Media, the events firm that organizes the NextMedia Interactive New Media Festival (the next installment of which will held June 9 to 11, 2006) and the Banff World Television Festival (to be held June 11 to 14, 2006), with a $21,400 contract; Ottawa web design firm Meta4 Creative Communications Inc., with an $18,710 contract; and another Ottawa firm, Gordon Creative Group, which provides multimedia marketing, design and communications services, with a contract worth $44,699.25. Tira Jump gets picked by PunchTira Wireless of Toronto is proclaiming a licensing win with its agreement with mobile games developer Punch Entertainment. The deal will see Mountain View CA’s Punch use the Tira Jump Product Suite, which aids gaming firms in quickly bringing their offerings to nearly every model of handset and operator network type in the wireless/mobile market, to deploy future titles. Existing products offered by the American firm include Big League Home Run Challenge, NBA 3 Point Shootout, and Bam Koala: Jungle Hero. SlipStream SP5.0 now available Waterloo ON software firm SlipStream Data Inc. is preparing to ship version 5.0 of its flagship email and web accelerator program. SlipStream SP5.0 incorporates the company’s new NOW!Technology platform, to bring users of all Internet access formats – including dial-up, broadband and wireless – a faster web browsing and email experience. The addition of NOW!Imaging compression will enable images to appear at full quality faster on even the most graphic-intensive web pages, while NOW!Service provides users with self-diagnostic tools and resources to optimize the software themselves. Mobile TV subs to hit 65M soon: reportA new report from technology research firm Juniper Research of Basingstoke UK makes the rather bold claim that mobile TV subscribers will number approximately 65 million worldwide in the next five years. Mobile TV users will make up more than half of both the user base and the annual revenues of wireless telephony carriers by 2010, the report says. However, author Windsor Holden says the service will likely be a loss-leader during most of that period, and many carriers will have to wait to realize a return on investment. Real Impact on streaming media for artistsUK firm Real Impact Productions has unveiled Film and Music Showcase, a multimedia streaming package for artists and creative professionals. The offering allows independent producers to air short music videos, films and show reels in three formats at four bandwidth rates, and also allows artists to publish accompanying information on album and single availability, upcoming dates/appearances, promotional material, etc.

CNM Update

Broadcast | October 19, 2005

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CNM Update

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