Shortly into the new year, Leading Edge BC – an organization set up to promote British Columbia’s technology sector – and BC Stats released their Profile of the British Columbia High-Tech Sector report for 2005. Included for the first time were industries related to interactive media such as motion picture and video production, software publishers, and Internet publishing and broadcasting. Below are excerpts from the executive summary.

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Quebec’s Institut national de l’image et du son (National Institute for Image and Sound, or INIS), the province’s foremost professional training institute for media producers of all stripes, has announced a new executive committee for 2006. Patrick Roy, VP at Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm, the Toronto-based programmer’s Quebec distribution arm, has assumed the role of VP, cinema at INIS, while Zone3 VP of creative and executive producer Michel Bissonette has been named VP, television. Éric Chartrand, lead game designer at Electronic Arts, will move into the VP, interactive media spot, while Louise Gendron of Télé-Québec becomes secretary-treasurer of the executive committee.

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Toopy and Binoo
A new interactive toy box for kids, the Toopy and Binoo website invites both English and French speaking little ones aged four to six to delve into the imaginary world of their favourite heroes.

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Yahoo Canada is hoping its users will find no reason to go anywhere else for their online interaction, and has launched a new communications aggregation effort to try and convince users of the benefits of having all your online networking needs met in one spot.

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Canada’s telcos are making major inroads into digital music distribution through both their wireline and wireless telephony services.

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While it’s perhaps no surprise that the Internet has been an effective vehicle for Kids Help Phone to provide free counselling, what is somewhat astonishing is that it’s come at no expense to its phone counselling service. In fact, time spent counselling on the phone increased 4% in 2005, meaning all web activity is essentially a boon to the organization’s mandate of "providing the immediate help and hope that young people need and deserve."

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This year is another census year, but it won’t be like previous ones: for the first time ever Canadians will be able to turn to the Internet to fill out the questionnaires that will be coming their way.

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