Apple vs. the world
Another Friday, another comic. Let’s see if I can keep this up…
Read MoreAuthor: Doug Groves
dougplanet.com is his personal blog, which is withering on the vine. If you poke around it, you’ll find out that he’s an animator and broadcast designer by trade, usually pushing pixels in either After Effects or Lightwave 3D. If he absolutely had to pick a favourite all time writer, it would be Harlan Ellison more days than any other. If you don’t know who Ellison is, then Doug weeps for you. Doug also likes long walks on the beach, mainly to collect improperly discarded medical waste for an undisclosed project of epic proportions.
Usage-based billing okayed by CRTC
The CRTC has unsurprisingly sided with Bell, and is allowing the big blue telco to go ahead with it’s usage-based billing scheme, and yes, scheme is the most appropriate word here. Not only does it mean that Bell gets to charge it’s own customers, who are already paying through the nose for parltry data caps, but now big blue can hit 3rd party suppliers, like TekSavvy and Acanac with fees that look downright preposterous. Bell has complained about traffic congestion, caused mostly by heavy file sharing, but as their own…
Read MoreCanadian Video Game Award winners announced
Dragon Age: Origins took home the top prize of Game of the Year at the inaugural Canadian Video Game Awards. Though the Bioware RPG took the top award, along with Best Writing, it was Ubisoft Montreal’s Assassin’s Creed II which took the most awards, with Best Console Game, Best Game Design and Best Visual Arts, and shares the award for Best Technology with Prototype, from Radical Entertainment in Vancouver. Toronto developer Capybara Games also took home Best Handheld Game for Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, and Best Downloadable Game…
Read MoreDMCA disaster headed to Canada!
Despite a vocal popular opposition to the idea of enacting anything like the lunacy of the US DMCA here in Canada, that’s exactly the type of copyright bill the Prime Minister’s Office plans on introducing this June. Who cares what the People say, when the US speaks, I guess, even if most of what they say regarding Canada as a copyright violators haven is propagandist FUD. Anyways, instead of ranting, here’s the details from Michael Geist’s site, as well as how to get your voice heard! Months of public debate…
Read MoreHalo: Reach beta impressions
The mulitplayer beta Halo: Reach, available for free to Halo 3: ODST owners, was released yesterday. If the beta is any indication, Bungie’s last installment of the franchise is going to be a high point. I’ve always enjoyed the Halo series, but mainly for the single player experience. Every game in the Halo franchise has had good multiplayer, which is a large reason why it’s been successful for so long. Last night, after playing Reach for much longer than I expected to, I have to say that this is the…
Read MoreThe People vs. George Lucas: the verdict?
Ever since the release of The Phantom Menace, Star Wars fans old and new have debated the merits of the new trilogy, and Lucas’ decision to drastically alter the original trilogy to make it more ‘modern’, not just in the effects department, but taking some rough edges off main characters. The new documentary The People vs. George Lucas, from director Alexandre O. Phillipe, is a good distillation of that debate. It offers up, in a compressed timeline, an overview of the history of George Lucas and the almost religious following…
Read MoreTelus bringing IPTV to Xbox 360 in Canada
If the source over at gamefocus.ca is right, it looks like Telus will be bringing an IPTV solution to Canadian Xbox 360 users, which is currently being tested and should hit the market in 2011. Other than finding out that it’s Telus, as opposed to Bell or Rogers, there’s not too much new to see. It doesn’t sound like the 360 would be used to do the recording. Instead, the Telus TV HD PVR would handle the recording, and the 360 would be used as an interface for one of…
Read MoreBumptop bought by Google
Toronto based BumpTop, makers of the 3D desktop interface of the same name, has been acquired by Google. We’ve talked about Bumptop in the past, as it made for an interesting UI for touch screen computers. Earlier this year BumpTop appeared on HP’s tm2 convertible laptop, as well as releasing a verison for Mac OS X. The front page of BumpTop has a letter to it’s fans, and for the next few days the free versions for will be available for download. For paid users, there is an End of…
Read MoreiSealClub smacked by Apple’s ban hammer
You know, it’s gotten to the point where reporting the latest apps to be banned by Apple and it’s dark overlord is pointless. It happens all the time, and often for no good reason. This time it’s a Newfoundland app maker and his variation on Whack-A-Mole, iSealClub. The main reasons I’m pointing this one out is I’ve eaten seal – not much cuppa tea but hey – and that it’s been mis-characterized in the press… Sure, Apple banned our Be Nice to Bunnies app after catching a glimpse of sexy…
Read MoreActivision and Bungie announce 10 year deal
Just some Friday Fun.
Read MoreAlan Wake preview “Bright Falls”
It’s just under 3 weeks until the new Xbox 360 action thriller game Alan Wake hits shelves (May 18th in North America, May 14th in the EU), making light itself your most powerful weapon against the forces of darkness. What makes this most interesting is that the game is written by Sam Lake, writer of the Max Payne game, who had a knack of capturing the right tone for that game. To follow a trend that seems to be more and more prevalent every year, there’s a prequel short film…
Read MoreFreedom of the press, or license to steal?
By now, everybody knows the Gizmodo – iPhone 4G fiasco inside and out. It’s broken beyond the tech world to the mainstream, from the New York Times coming out in favour of Gizmodo’s journalistic rights to Jon Stewart offering an amusing but watered down spanking to Apple for becoming the “1984” it once rallied against. Of course, I’d argue that Apple is more “Brave New World” than “1984”, but that’s another story… What’s got my editorial undies all bunched is how since Gizmodo invoked the journalistic shield law as a…
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