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Parrot Bebop drone review: Versatile drone with a hefty $649 price tag

National Post Tech Desk - Tue, 03/24/2015 - 13:03

The first time I used Parrot’s new, third-generation full-sized quadcopter, the Parrot Bebop Drone, the device immediately launched 15 feet into the air, and quickly edged dangerously close to a telephone pole.

I immediately pressed the drone’s “return to home” button, hoping it would slowly fly back to the earth’s surface. That didn’t happen though, and instead the Bebop climbed even higher (apparently “return to home” needs to be programmed ahead of time). Fearing the Bebop would either crash into the surrounding hydro lines or continue to climb so high that I’d lose sight of it, I pressed the Bebop’s “kill switch” on my iPad Mini, immediately halting its propellers.

The Bebop fell from approximately six metres in the air and plummeted to the ground. Surprisingly the drone only suffered minor damage.

My first experience with the Bebop drone was less than stellar, but after navigating the initial learning curve of understanding how to fly it, the rest of my time with the quadcopter was relatively glitch free (this wasn’t the case with Parrot’s smaller Rolling Spider drone). Setting a maximum height and drone inclination angle are also great ideas when you’re just starting out and learning how to fly the drone.

The Parrot Bebop falls into the “prosumer drone” category. It isn’t a “toy” like the $129 Rolling Spider or other smaller competing drones, and can shoot 1080p HD video at 30 frames per second with via its 14-megapixel 180-degree fisheye lens. But it also isn’t the type of drone used to shoot a documentary or a television show, which can sometimes cost more than $1,500. Instead the Bebop costs $649, a price tag that’s still unfortunately rather expensive for a device with a few significant drawbacks.

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostThe Bebop Drone's stabilization is extremely impressive. In this image the quadcopter is fighting the wind to remain stationary.

In terms of build-quality, the Bebop drone is less than stellar. The quadcopter’s body consists of foam and lightweight plastic, as well as two removable polystyrene shells designed to protect the drone from walls and other objects when flying indoors. Since my experience with flying drones is relatively minimal, I opted to use these protectors outdoors as well, although this results in a loss of control accuracy, especially if you’re using the quadcopter on a windy day. The shells can also bend into the camera’s viewing area during intense wind, which might be an issue for some people.

During my time with the drone I crashed it a number of times and beyond minor dents in the Bebop’s foam, it experienced minimal damage. However, I feel like I got lucky considering how cheap the Bebop’s thin foam and plastic feels. The battery pack also strangely doesn’t sit flush with the drone’s body and tends to slide around while in flight, which is a minor oversight but is the kind of issue that should have been fixed given that this is Parrot’s third-generation quadcopter.

Patrick O'Rourke/Postmedia

Once you get the hang of how the Bebop controls, removing the protectors when flying it outdoors improves control accuracy slightly. One of the drone’s most impressive features (and perhaps the factor that makes it compelling for amateur videographers) is the Bebop’s built-in image stabilization. Regardless of how rough a flight is, the resulting video will be smooth and clear, as long as the quadcopter actually decides to record video.

During my first flight session with the Bebop I was unable to get any video to record even though I snapped multiple pictures and pressed the record button a number of times. During subsequent flights this issue disappeared. Other reviewers have also experienced similar problems with the Bebop’s video and photography capabilities randomly not working. Hopefully this is something that is fixed in a future firmware upgrade to the device. However, the included 8 GB of internal storage is excellent and more than enough space to record multiple flights.

Patrick O'Rourke/National Post

My biggest issue with the Bebop is its hefty price tag – for $649 I expected more from the drone. It doesn’t comes with a dedicated controller and instead uses an iOS/Android device, connected to the Parrot via WiFi through the company’s Freeflight 3 app. There is an additional “Skycontroller” available that features two dedicated joysticks and a slot to plug-in your mobile device to view the Bebop’s often-delayed live video feed, but it costs an additional $250 and is difficult to find sold separately.

A bundle including the Parrot Bebop drone, Skycontroller and a range extender allowing the quadcopter fly up to 2 km away instead of the stock 250 metres, costs $1,099. But at this price most people would likely be better off spending a few hundred dollars more and purchase a high-end Phantom 2 Vision+.

Patrick O'Rourke/Postmedia

Then there’s the Bebop’s control problems. Virtual on-screen joysticks and tilting just isn’t an accurate and adequate way to control a $649 flying device. Sometimes the tilt controls felt off when using my iPad Mini and when trying to connect the Bebop to my Nexus 5 Android phone: I occasionally lost signal while the device was still in the air. At such a high price, the Bebop should include a physical controller.

In terms of extras the Parrot’s latest quadcopter comes equipped with a full set of additional propellers and two batteries that last around 10 to 12 minutes each, giving you ample flying time.

Patrick O'Rourke/PostmediaThe drone comes with a replacement set of propellers.

In the end Parrot’s Bebop drone is a significant amount of fun. It shoots impressive, high-quality video and the quadcopter’s image stabilization technology is extremely impressive, but unfortunately the Bebop is difficult to recommend at $649, especially when higher-end drones are only a few hundred dollars more.

Parrot Bebop Drone

Manufacturer: Parrot

Price: $649 ($1,099 with Skycontroller)

Release Date: October

Score: 7/10

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Facebook Inc in talks with publishers including New York Times, Huffington Post, on hosting content: sources

National Post Tech Desk - Tue, 03/24/2015 - 12:44

Facebook Inc. has approached several publishers, including the Huffington Post, about hosting content directly on the social network, according to people familiar with the matter.

The plan would be a shift in the relationship between the world’s biggest social-networking service and media outlets, which use Facebook to drive traffic to their sites and help boost revenue from online advertising. Facebook is proposing that publishers post directly to its platform, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Facebook is in talks with the New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic about hosting their articles or videos directly on the social network, the New York Times reported Monday. In February, the Times said it nominated Rebecca Van Dyck, global head of consumer and brand marketing at Facebook, to join its board.

Facebook has been working to increase the quality of the news content on its feed, weeding out posts that it deems to be click bait or link bait. The Menlo Park, California-based company has also been emphasizing news with partnerships for its Paper application, a magazine-style Facebook experience. Meanwhile, publishers are eager to get their stories to appear on its News Feed.

Last month, Facebook’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, said at a media conference that the social network had early conversations with publishers about hosting their content. Their concern is lack of control, Cox added.

“Reading news on a smartphone is still a very bad experience most of the time,” Cox said at the Code/Media conference. “We want to try and make that a better experience for publishers.”

Bloomberg.com

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Google Inc names longtime Morgan Stanley executive Ruth Porat as new CFO

National Post Tech Desk - Tue, 03/24/2015 - 08:18

Google Inc. said it hired Ruth Porat, Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer, to succeed Patrick Pichette as its new CFO in May.

Porat, 57, will leave Morgan Stanley in April after 28 years at the firm, the New York-based company said Tuesday in a memo to employees. Jonathan Pruzan, 46, co-head of global financial institutions banking, will become Morgan Stanley’s new CFO.

Porat, one of Wall Street’s most senior female executives, pivots from a job in which she built up cash reserves for safety to one where she must figure out how to use Google’s growing cash pile. In five years as Morgan Stanley’s CFO, the Stanford University alumna has helped stabilize an investment bank that almost collapsed in 2008.

“I’m delighted to be returning to my California roots and joining Google,” Porat said in a statement released by the Mountain View, California-based Internet company. “Growing up in Silicon Valley, during my time at Morgan Stanley and as a member of Stanford’s board, I’ve had the opportunity to experience first-hand how tech companies can help people in their daily lives. I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and get started.”

Silicon Valley has tapped Wall Street bankers to help them manage the finances associated with their rapid growth. Twitter Inc. last year named Anthony Noto, 46, previously Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s co-head of technology, media and telecommunications banking, as its CFO.

Long Ties

Google also has long-standing ties to Morgan Stanley, which was the lead bank on its 2004 initial public offering. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have battled in recent years for supremacy in advising on the biggest technology mergers and IPOs.

Google said earlier this month that Pichette, 51, who joined in 2008, is retiring and would remain at the world’s biggest search-engine company to assist with the management change.

“I’m at a point in my life where I no longer have to make such tough choices anymore,” Pichette wrote. “I wish to transition over the coming months but only after we have found a new Goggle CFO and help him/her through an orderly transition, which will take some time.”

Porat was a technology banker during the Internet stock boom of the late 1990s and worked closely with Morgan Stanley’s star analyst, Mary Meeker. Porat later advised financial companies, which gave her a key role in navigating the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

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Advisory Roles

Porat advised the U.S. Treasury Department on its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rescue in September 2008. After spending a weekend trying to save Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., she was asked to help deal with the rescue of American International Group Inc., Porat said in an interview five years later.

That AIG “could vanish that quickly and the impact that could have throughout the country, and that nobody could see it coming, was just staggering,” Porat said in the 2013 interview. When Morgan Stanley was threatened, the firm survived by borrowing US$107.3 billion from the Federal Reserve in a single day, selling a 20% stake and becoming a bank holding company.

That experience shaped her time as Morgan Stanley’s CFO, as she worked to stabilize the firm’s funding and convince creditors it was safer than before the crisis. In the interview, Porat said Morgan Stanley had accumulated enough cash and easy- to-sell assets to survive a year of dysfunction.

Brett Gundlock for Bloomberg NewsMontreal-born Google CFO Patrick Pichette announced his retirement earlier this month.

Cash Hoard

“Over the many hundreds of hours we have spent working together, she has won my great affection and highest esteem,” Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman wrote in the memo. “I respect her decision that now is the right time to make a change in her career.”

At Google, Porat will oversee a burgeoning cash hoard, which increased to US$67.5 billion in the fourth quarter, fuelled by the company’s dominance of the online advertising market. Net income rose 41% to US$4.76 billion.

Finance chiefs at cash-rich companies like Google have to strike a delicate balance as they seek to put tens of billions of dollars to work for shareholders in a market where regulators view large acquisitions with scrutiny. Adding to the challenge: Google holds a large portion of its cash overseas and would incur a tax hit by bringing it back to the U.S.

California’s Allure

Porat’s move to Google also reflects the growing allure of Silicon Valley for professionals who once viewed a Wall Street investment-banking job as the pinnacle of success. More graduates are flocking to hot startups and established technology companies, while shunning financial-services firms blamed by some for the credit crisis a half-decade ago.

Google CEO Larry Page has been stepping up spending, investing in areas outside of the company’s main search-ad business, from high-speed Internet service and driverless cars to digital-payments systems and Web-linked glasses. Porat will report to Page in her new job, the company said.

“We’re tremendously fortunate to have found such a creative, experienced and operationally strong executive,” Page, 41, said in the statement. “I look forward to learning from Ruth as we continue to innovate.”

–With assistance from Tony Robinson and Max Abelson in New York.

Bloomberg.com

How indie marketplace Etsy’s runaway success has bruised its hipster cred

National Post Tech Desk - Tue, 03/24/2015 - 07:56

Depending on whom you ask, Alicia Shaffer, owner of the hit Etsy store Three Bird Nest, is a runaway success story — or an emblem of everything that has gone wrong with the fast-growing online marketplace for handmade goods.

With the help of about 25 local seamstresses and alluring photography, Ms. Shaffer takes in upward of US$70,000 a month in revenue selling twee headbands and leg warmers on Etsy. But as her business has grown, she has been harshly criticized online and accused of mass-producing goods, of obtaining wares from China. Detractors consider her a blight on Etsy’s hipster cred.

The dispute over how goods are produced and sold on a site that prides itself on feel-good, handmade authenticity underscores the growing pains transforming Etsy as it moves toward a potentially lucrative initial public offering.

Ms. Shaffer denied the claims that have dogged her business recently but said she understands why questions have arisen about the volume of goods she produces. She said her store strictly adheres to Etsy’s guidelines, including that all items listed are either handmade or “vintage” secondhand, with some new exceptions that allow for approved outside manufacturing. “We’re a team of dedicated Etsy artisans who have been able to grow a tiny shop into a little machine.”

Matt Edge/The New York TimesAlicia Shaffer, right, owner of the hit Etsy store Three Bird Nest, works on designs.

For many of its fans, Etsy is much more than a marketplace. They view it as an antidote to global mass production and consumption, and a stand against corporate branding. It’s their vote for authenticity and craftsmanship, and a seemingly ethical alternative to buying from big corporations. And it has helped spur a wider industry of items that claim to be artisanal, authentic or bespoke, whether bedsheets or beef jerky.

Etsy, in turn, has ballooned and benefited from a growing demand for that kind of shopping, offering more than 29 million listings of handmade jewellery, pottery, sweaters and sometimes-regrettable objets d’art. It had 54 million members at the end of last year, of whom 1.4 million listed an item for sale and almost 20 million made at least one purchase in 2014, its IPO prospectus noted.

As Etsy has gotten bigger, it’s gotten more like eBay

Although the site still loses money because of high development costs, it is booming, with gross merchandise sales reaching US$1.93 billion last year. The fees Etsy collected on items listed and sold, as well as on services such as promoted placement of goods, reached US$196 million.

But criticism of the production methods of Three Bird Nest and other increasingly high-volume sellers, together with a string of defections by prominent vendors, reflect the company’s struggles to balance growth with maintaining the indie credibility that fuelled its popularity. Some sellers worry the site could soon become overrun with knockoffs and trinkets. Others say Etsy’s handmade ethos could soon become just a marketing gimmick, turning off shoppers drawn to its alternative appeal.

“Handmade businesses aren’t infinitely scalable, just by the definition of the term,” said Grace Dobush, a writer and longtime Etsy seller who made waves last month when she declared she was finally done with the site. “As Etsy has gotten bigger, it’s gotten more like eBay.”

Matt Edge/The New York TimesSupplies for the hit Etsy store Three Bird Nest.

Etsy grew out of a design project that three Brooklynites took on for an arts-and-crafts bulletin board. At the time, the indie craft scene was just starting up — a plethora of craft sales, blogs and boutiques selling handmade goods — of which one of Etsy’s founders, Rob Kalin, was an active member. Etsy declared to shoppers it was building an entirely “new economy” that would re-establish a personal connection between buyers and sellers, and it allowed its merchants to sell only things they made themselves.

But as stores took off, sellers started to complain that one person could not possibly keep up with the flood of orders. The logical next step, they said, would be to take on investment and hire employees, or outsource the manufacturing, but doing so would run afoul of Etsy’s rules. Etsy stuck to its ban until late 2013, when, under its new chief executive, Chad Dickerson, the site relaxed those standards. The change allowed sellers to hire workers or outsource production to small-scale manufacturers that met a set of labour and ecological criteria. Almost 30% of sellers on Etsy work in “self-organized teams,” the IPO prospectus noted, and there are more than 5,000 instances of Etsy sellers outsourcing their manufacturing.

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Critics charge that decision helped open the floodgates to a wave of mass-produced trinkets. For example, a red necklace carried by various sellers on Etsy, with price tags ranging from US$7 to US$15, can also be purchased through the Chinese wholesale manufacturing site Alibaba.

Alibaba says the necklace is made by the Yiwu Shegeng Fashion Accessories Firm, based south of Shanghai, which claims it can churn out almost 80 million similar necklaces a month. Jacky Wang, listed as the company’s chief executive, did not return requests for comment.

“It’s like having a gourmet restaurant on a street with upscale galleries, bookshops and coffee shops, and a McDonald’s or a Wal-Mart gets built in a vacant lot on the street,” said Diane Marie, an artist who sells handmade jewellery from her home in La Pointe, Wis., and who has called out “resellers” on Etsy’s discussion forums

Users can flag a suspected reseller to the site’s Marketplace Integrity, Trust & Safety Team, and Etsy has also said it uses algorithms to detect suspicious sellers. But Etsy acknowledges in its prospectus it cannot fully vouch for the standards of the sellers and the manufacturers they work with. Some critics have questioned whether there is sufficient incentive to investigate or shut down sellers that generate big traffic and sales.

Daniel Acker/BloombergEtsy is poised to carve out a big valuation for itself as the e-commerce company readies an initial public offering.

Other sellers, increasingly from outside the United States, also say the distinction between handmade and mass-manufactured is not as sharp as it may seem. Kyoko Bowskill, who runs the Link Collective store on Etsy, works with independent artists to design patterns for Japanese furoshiki wrapping cloth, and consigns the manufacturing to a small family business outside Tokyo that specializes in traditional dyeing methods.

“I’m all for ramping up production,” said Ms. Bowskill, who now sells 40 to 50 cloths a month at $50 each. “Etsy shouldn’t be about one person crafting goods all by herself with no sleep,” she said, adding, “We’re building a viable business, but that doesn’t mean we’re mass-manufacturing.”

Etsy declined to make officials available for interviews, citing the quiet period leading up to its stock offering. In its IPO filing, however, Mr. Dickerson acknowledged concerns that Etsy is “diluting our handmade ethos” by allowing sellers to work with manufacturers.

“After all, Etsy has always served as an antidote to mass manufacturing,” he said. “We still do.”

Bloodborne review: PlayStation 4 finally has its killer app. And it will kill you. A lot

National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 03/23/2015 - 19:00

Bloodborne‘s first battle – against a vaguely werewolf-ish creature inside what appears to be a 19th-century medical clinic – is so hard that you literally can’t win. You don’t even have a weapon. And there’s nowhere to run and hide. You will die. The only question is how long you can evade your relentless, monstrous foe.

When you awake in a comparatively tranquil place (though still pretty creepy, given all the graves and weird bony specters reaching out from the soil) called the Hunter’s Dream, you’ll find a couple of weapons in the form of a gun and a cleaver, plus a few tips from the developers. These single sentence missives teach you the basics: how to attack, switch weapons and items, and dodge.

Then it’s back to the nightmare world to face your attacker again.

And chances are pretty good that you’ll quickly die a second time. You’ll wake up once more in the Hunter’s Dream, maybe explore a little and find another tip or two, then head back into the fray and perhaps make it a little further before dying again.

And again.

And again.

This is the long awaited PlayStation 4 exclusive RPG made by Tokyo-based From Software, a developer that believes the harder a challenge is, the more satisfying it is to finally accomplish it.

It’s not wrong.

SCEA

There’s not much of a story.

After undergoing a mysterious blood transfusion, your hero – completely customizable, including race, gender, and a handful of classes that guide development without limiting it – wakes up in a nightmare world as a hunter of foul things. Once human, these beasts that have overrun a dark and dangerous city that wouldn’t be out of place in industrial-era Europe.

A tale (very) gradually takes shape through conversations with a few key characters, plus chats with civilians behind closed doors who’ve barred themselves inside their homes, away from the world’s horrors. But much is left to your imagination.

As in its past games, From Software has created an intricately architected world – in this case a massive, gorgeous, incredibly detailed gothic environment demanding of players’ attention – that allows us to project narrative onto it, creating little stories of our own in perhaps the same way an archeologist might imagine the lives of long-gone inhabitants of an abandoned city.

In this way the lack of much overt storytelling is actually kind of empowering, especially since it allows players to focus on exploration and combat – Bloodborne‘s stock-in-trade.

SCEA

Contrary to some rumours, Bloodborne is not significantly – if, indeed, at all – easier than From Software’s dauntingly difficult Souls games, of which it’s considered a spiritual successor.

Progress is like an inchworm. You’ll move forward a smidgeon, then things will seem stalled as force slowly builds behind you, and then you’ll scooch ahead a little more.

Lanterns – the places at which you can return to the Hunter’s Dream and spend all of the Blood Echoes (the game’s term for currency and experience points) you’ve earned – are few and far between. You might play for a couple of without encountering a new one.

And each time you die you’ll lose all of your Blood Echoes, which means you’ll have basically made no character progress. The only way to get them back is to make your way back to where you died and collect them without dying again. If a monster has consumed them you’ll need to slay the beast to get them back.

Consequently, if you’ve been playing for a while and have banked up a lot of Blood Echoes, sometimes it makes sense to simply return to your previous lantern and go back to the Hunter’s Dream to spend them – though when you return to the world all of the enemies you’ve defeated will be back, and you’ll have to kill them again.

It’s a hard-bordering-on-cruel bit of game design, as players of previous From Software adventures already no doubt know.

But you’ll eventually realize that you retain other forms of progress post-death.

SCEA

For starters, death doesn’t take back what you’ve learned of the world. You retain knowledge of where paths lead and which enemies appear where. And you have the information to keep from making the same mistake a second time.

Plus, you’ll earn items that stay with you. The most basic are bullets and vials that replenish your health, but there’s also a huge amount of mysterious and very useful items in very limited supply, from magic papers that can enhance your attacks to clouds of dust that can keep enemies from regenerating health. Finding them is exciting; trying them to see what they do is even more so. One of these items is called Madman’s Knowledge, and it’s used to gain a resource called Insight, which can alter the world around you, causing new, stronger enemies to appear in unfamiliar locations.

What’s more, you’ll eventually find shortcuts. The cleverly constructed labyrinthine world is filled with doors, gates, elevators, and breakable items that, once interacted with, will create new paths that remain from that point on, even if you die.

Indeed, one of Bloodborne‘s primary draws is world discovery. The need to know what waits beyond the next bend – be it a new monster, a treasure, or the handwringing choice of a branching path – is intense and addictive. Whenever I defeated a boss or found an emblem to unlock a gate and gain access to a new area I was downright giddy with excitement of what I might find.

I also, admittedly, found myself wishing for a map. From Software revels in providing players the bare minimum necessary for success, and maps aren’t strictly necessary. But the world is a maze, and at any juncture there are usually multiple open paths and areas of interest. It’s easy to think you’re stuck when really you just need to go back to a place you’ve forgotten about.

SCEA

Inextricably coupled with Bloodborne‘s exhilarating exploration is its combat system. Enemies are typically what keep you from advancing, so defeating them is your key to moving onward.

But they’re tough. They strike fast, hit hard, are unrelenting, and often behave unpredictably. The most basic enemies beaten with difficulty early in the game remain dangerous even 25 hours into the experience, and must continue to be approached with caution and strategy.

None of this will be a surprise if you’ve played previous From Software games. But the designers have tweaked their proven formula for punishing combat – which typically places a premium on defensive strategies – in a number of interesting ways.

First off, combat is faster paced and encourages risk taking. Rather than a weapon and a shield, you have two implements of pain: something sharp and something that shoots (you can swap your gun for a shield a little later in the game, but it turns out to be a poor fit for this sort of combat).

Your gun – which has a precious supply of ammunition – is used mostly to stun enemies by firing right before they attack. Then you can follow up with your sword, axe, cleaver, or whatever other weapon you choose to equip. And if you time it just right you can land a vicious attack that will kill most minions with a single blow.

SCEA

To push players to press their attacks, Bloodborne is less stingy with recovery potions and the length of time it takes your hero to use one. There’s also a new opportunity to regain some of your lost health if you can strike back within a couple of seconds of taking a hit.

Plus, your stamina meter – which governs all your actions – drains less quickly, especially when dodging. A very viable strategy is to dodge forward and past enemy attacks. Even if you get hit, you can likely regain most of your health when you quickly strike them from behind.

Also new is the notion of transforming weapons. Tap a shoulder button and your sword will become a stone mallet, or your short axe will morph into a halberd. These altered weapons can give you more reach or power at the cost of speed. Transform mid-flurry and you can deliver an even more powerful combination of attacks.

It all adds up to an immensely rewarding combat system that’s faster than that of other From Software games but still demands strategy and skill.

In fact, the fighting is so gratifying that it takes much of the sting out of dying and losing Blood Echoes. During the lengthy loading screen that pops up after you die (which provides plenty of time to reflect on what you did wrong and how you ought to alter your tactics), I frequently found myself thinking something to the effect of: I’m dead, and that sure sucks, but at least I get to hack up that terrifying furry man-beast all over again. Because man, that was fun.

SCEA

As with From Software’s other RPGs, a defining part of the Bloodborne experience is multiplayer, which takes on a trio of forms: asynchronous, cooperative, and player-vs.-player.

Asynchronous interactions exist as scrolls left by other players with bony messengers that live in the ground. These notes may alert you of impending boss battles and ambushes, treasures and hidden paths. You’ll also encounter blood stains which, if touched, will show you the red ghost of another player and how they died nearby. Very helpful stuff that saved my life several times over.

Even more important is cooperative multiplayer. You can ring a bell when approaching a tough section – typically a boss – and call upon one or two strangers (or friends, if they have the password you provide) to come to your aid.

The problem I ran into playing pre-release is that there were so few people online – just critics and developers – that I couldn’t find anyone to help me. That made some boss fights far more difficult than they probably should have been.

Consequently, my take cooperative multiplayer is predicated largely on how it works in games like Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. It looks to be almost identical, but I’ll update this review post-launch if it is not.

I’ve also not yet been able to try competitive multiplayer, in which other players invade your world, trying to stop you from making it to a specific boss encounter. But it looks to be peripheral and non-essential. I suspect it won’t enjoy much more than a niche audience, as has been the case with competitive play in From Software’s previous RPGs.

But again, I will provide an update if player-vs.-player proves significant in some unexpected way once the public jumps in.

SCEA

There are times in Bloodborne times when you feel stuck, when it seems as though you simply cannot beat whatever enemy stands in your way, and that your only choice is to grind levels, killing enemies to earn Blood Echoes and slowly grow your character’s stats.

But somewhere around the 15th hour I earned my first Chalice, which, along with a couple of special ingredients found elsewhere, allowed me to conduct a ritual by an altar in the Hunter’s Dream. This created a procedurally generated dungeon where I was able to hunt for fun, earning treasures and Blood Echoes before encountering random bosses just as powerful as those met in the game proper.

SCEA

I’d have been quite happy to simply keep killing foes in and around the city. But the Chalice dungeons provide fresh – if not quite as pretty or intricately constructed – scenery to explore while engaging in tough, bloody combat and gradually leveling up your hero.

The Chalice Dungeons are, in effect, the sugar on top of what is already an essential PlayStation 4 experience.

There’s been some justified grumbling about the lack of defining platform exclusives this generation.

Bloodborne should put an end to that.

The profound difficulty of From Software’s newest RPG probably won’t be to all tastes, but it makes a strong argument for the concept that the harder the challenge, the more satisfying the reward.

Give it a chance – not just a couple of hours, mind, but five or ten; enough to let its claws sink in nice and deep – and you’ll probably find Bloodborne an intoxicating dose of pure masochistic pleasure.

Wind Mobile Corp overhauls executive ranks, moves Lacavera to honourary chairman position

National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 03/23/2015 - 15:30

TORONTO – Anthony Lacavera knew his days at the helm of the small Canadian wireless operator he founded were numbered. The chairman of Wind Mobile Corp. figured as much last September when his investment firm Globalive Wireless Management Corp., backed by a consortium of investors, paid almost $300-million to buy out its foreign owner VimpelCom Ltd.’s controlling stake. Then, a week later, Wind’s new ownership group retained an international executive search firm to scour the planet for new executives.

On Monday, Wind unveiled a major executive overhaul featuring a new chief executive officer, a new chairman, two new directors — and a significantly diminished role for Mr. Lacavera. With the shakeup of the top brass, the serial entrepreneur exits the chairman’s office as well as the day-to-day role he’s held at the Toronto-based company since 2008.

“That was always in the cards,” said a source close to the company, who asked not to be named. “[Mr. Lacavera] is being transitioned into an ambassadorial role to recognize his achievement and contribution to Wind.”

Mr. Lacavera may still have a seat on Wind’s board of directors as honourary chairman, but with hundreds of millions of dollars in investments at stake, the heavy lifting at the newly capitalized company will be done in the executive suites by businessmen with proven track records and experience in best corporate governance practices.

Wind announced Monday that Rob MacLellan, a chartered accountant and former Toronto-Dominion Bank executive, has been appointed Wind’s new chairman. At the same time, Alek Krstajic, founder and former CEO of faltered upstart Public Mobile Inc., was unveiled as Wind’s fourth CEO in a little more than five years since it began operating in late 2009. More important, Mr. Krstajic has valuable executive experience as the former president at Bell Mobility and a senior vice-president at Rogers Cable.

The company also announced it will add two directors to its board, increasing its total to 10, with the appointments of David Carey, a 35-year industry veteran who’s currently an executive vice-president at T-Mobile, and Hamid Akhavan, principal of Telecom Ventures LLC who’s had a stint in the C-suite at T-Mobile.

Peter J. Thompson/National PostCompany founder Anthony Lacavera remains at Wind as honorary chairman.

“They’ve drafted very well,” said Richard Powers, national academic director of governance at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “If this was a sports team, they’ve just put themselves in the playoffs.”

By overhauling its executive ranks, Wind has morphed from a struggling upstart, then to a branch office of a large international conglomerate as part of Amsterdam-based VimpelCom, and now as an independent company that recently almost tripled its AWS-3 spectrum holdings after winning licenses in some of Canada’s most densely populated provinces in the federal government auction earlier this month.

But for the five-year-old upstart to solidify its position as Canada’s only viable fourth national wireless carrier, it will require long-term financing – a minimum of $300-million, according to Mr. Lacavera – in the public and private markets to expand and repair the cellular network in the markets where Wind currently operates.

Neither Mr. Lacavera nor Mr. Krstajic was available to talk Monday. However, a source close to Wind explained the boardroom machinations were about creating proper processes. “This isn’t about building a dominant wireless carrier,” said the source who asked not to be named. “There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done well.”

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Clearly, Mr. Lacavera’s partners – Toronto-based West Face Capital Inc., California-based private equity firm Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC, LG Capital Investors, Novus Wireless Communications and Serruya Private Equity – decided he wasn’t the executive to take Wind to that next level.

“I would hope that his influence on the day-to-day operations and the board is minimal at best,” Prof. Powers said of Mr. Lacavera. “This is a classic entrepreneur. They love building things, but they’re not interested in the day-to-day operations, and that’s what it takes. It needs someone that’s going to go focus on the details and take the company forward.”

Of the three new entrants conceived from Ottawa’s 2008 spectrum auction, Wind currently has the best chances of fulfilling Ottawa’s seven-year mission to foster a viable fourth national wireless carrier. It is a qualified bidder to participate in the federal government’s next spectrum auction beginning on April 14.

Financial Post

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