National Post Tech Desk

For Tess van Straaten, life was looking good in the spring of 2009.

After 14 years building her career away from her hometown of Victoria, B.C., she was finally back. She had landed her dream job anchoring the weekend newscast for CHEK, the local station she had grown up watching.

A couple of weeks after starting the job, a reporter from the local newspaper got in touch for an interview.

“The reporter asked, ‘Aren’t you worried about the station closing down?'” van Straaten said. “I had no idea what she was talking about. What do you mean they’re going to close the station down? They can’t close the station down.”

It’s the will of the employees

Van Straaten was right – in the end, the station’s embattled former owner Canwest Global Communications Corp didn’t close the station down. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. Soon after that interview, Canwest issued layoff notices to CHEK employees and gave notice of plans to shut the lights off on Aug. 31, in order to satisfy bondholders as the now-defunct Canadian media giant fought to avoid financial collapse.

But five-and-a-half years later, CHEK is still chugging along, with more local programming, less funding and no major media conglomerate with other sources of revenue to fall back on. The station may not be printing money – all news director Rob Germain would say about the state of CHEK’s finances is that there’s “no imminent threat of shutting down” – but the fact it’s around at all is an achievement, given the uncertain future for local television across the country.

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CHEK’s employees saved the station by buying it. With the help of then-28-year-old entrepreneur Levi Sampson, who had played a major role engineering a similar employee buyout of a mill in Nanaimo, they pooled their money, found other investors and convinced Canwest and its bondholders to hand over the station for a toonie, plus $2.5 million to cover operating losses while CHEK rebuilt its programming schedule from scratch.

“It’s the will of the employees,” Sampson said. “How badly they wanted to save that station, how they truly believed they could make a go of it as an independent station in this country.”

When it became apparent no buyers were coming forward and Canwest wasn’t looking very hard to find one, Germain asked Sampson for some advice. CHEK had covered the employee-led purchase of Nanaimo’s Harmac pulp mill the year before and was wondering if Sampson could help the station do something similar.

Sampson met with CHEK’s employees, who were immediately enthusiastic about the idea. With about two dozen employees at the time, all but seven committed to a buy-in price of $15,000 for each full-time worker, adding up to a 25 per cent stake for employees.

Chad Hipolito For National PostIsland owned and operated CHEK News reporter, Tess van Straaten.

Fans of the station flooded Canwest’s offices with phone calls and letters of support for the sale. Canwest was dealing with its own crisis, however, and not everyone had patience for the campaign. The company rejected the group’s first offer.

The employee-led team got some behind-the-scenes help making its next move from an unlikely source: Canwest’s then-chief executive Leonard Asper. While members of the community were blasting the media giant for being heartless, Asper was quietly helping CHEK employees hire a lawyer and prepare an offer that would be more acceptable to bondholders.

“You have a tornado going on in the company, a bunch of creditors trying to enforce their ability to take away the company… you have a corporate office that’s very distracted trying to manage all these different interests,” Asper said in an interview Friday. ” It’s just a very clinical, non-personal view. It’s capitalism in its rawest form at work. There’s no human element to it.”

Eventually, the bondholders came around and accepted the bid, saving the station at the very last minute. Asper remembers it as a bright spot during a dark time.

Chad Hipolito For National PostCHEK News Director and Digital Manager Rob Germain.

“I feel great about it. It was great to see the right thing happen to people,” he said. “We were able to stem the tide and stop this machine from just destroying everything in its wake. It was one of the proudest moments a lot of us had.”

Today, CHEK faces the same challenges as the rest of the industry. According to data released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Canadians of all ages watched less traditional television in 2013 than they did the previous year, with Internet television viewing increasing 46% over the same period.

Fewer viewers means fewer advertising dollars. Private stations suffered a 7.2 per cent revenue drop in 2014 to $1.8 billion from $1.94 billion the previous year, largely because advertisers spent $117.1 million less on local television, according to the CRTC.

If the company does well, we do well

Vertically integrated telecommunications companies like BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. don’t lose out entirely when viewers switch from cable to the Internet because they sell those viewers broadband as well. That’s not the case for a station like CHEK, which relies on advertising for revenue.

Justin Nielson, a senior research analyst at SNL Kagan who covers the television industry, said being small and local can work in an independent station’s favour. Viewers in small markets have fewer options for getting local news, which means a regional station can command a larger share of available advertising dollars.

“You could see those operations, small, local, regional broadcasters, being still competitive and profitable,” he said. “They’ve built an audience over time, they still have a very reputable name in terms of local news and they’re able to program accordingly.”

Van Straaten said being a shareholder in addition to an employee makes her and her coworkers more willing to go the extra mile for the business. The station’s staff took an across-the-board pay cut to help CHEK survive after the CRTC eliminated a fund for local television, allowing them to keep the station afloat without resorting to layoffs.

“Every time I go in the break room, I’m turning the lights off when nobody’s there,” van Straaten said. “If the company does well, we do well. We’re all more invested in making the company a success.”

 

When you think about virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), the cloud is rarely top-of-mind. All sorts of issues, from latency to security, make people look askance. However, at its annual conference, Synergy, Citrix announced an interesting solution: Citrix Workspace Cloud (CWC).

The culmination of a strategy born five years ago, CWC provides a cloud-based control plane (which is based on Microsoft Azure), but allows the rest of the components to reside anywhere. That means sensitive desktops can live safely in the data centre if need be. During his conference keynote, CEO Mark Templeton described it as a platform of services for high speed prototyping, delivery, and management of complete workspaces. Delivered as a service, he said CWC “contemplates being global out of the box.”

“The control plane design is a way forward to make infrastructure services more consumable,” he went on. “We try to give choices, and accept that some customers won’t put their data into a cloud they don’t own.”

Jesse Lipson, vice president and general manager, Workflow and Workspace Cloud, showed conference attendees how workloads and data (known as resources) stored anywhere could be connected to CWC through workspace cloud connectors. Resources can be as varied as VDAs, storage zones, and Active Directory, located on premises, at a host, or in the cloud.

“Creation of workspaces is so easy that even a GM like me can demo it for you,” he joked, while creating a workspace in a few clicks by adding predefined resources and services, defining the user population who’d receive it, and finally publishing the new workspace. He also demonstrated how moves, adds, and changes to existing workspaces can now be accomplished in real time; all the user needs to do is refresh the screen to see the changes.

Templeton noted that CWC can be a way to control shadow IT, since it gives departments the tools to design and manage their own workspaces, while IT does the design and architecture.

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Lipson also demonstrated another component, Lifecycle Management, a service that automates the design, deployment, and management of Citrix products such as XenDesktop, XenApp, XenMobile, NetScaler and Citrix WorkSpace Suite, as well as third party products. It provides monitoring, redundancy, auto-scaling and disaster recovery of application services. Cloud-based control enables access to the Citrix Lifecycle Management console from anywhere, from any device, for provisioning application services, managing users, monitoring and scaling. Lifecycle Management also lets administrators automate common tasks, including version upgrades.

Using Blueprints, which Lipson described as recipes that describe how to accomplish a series of actions to, for example, create a new workspace, or build a XenApp production environment, or deploy a SQL Server. Partners can also create and share their own Blueprints, as can customers.

“This architecture is great as an advanced tool for Citrix Workspace Cloud, but it’s not tightly coupled to the Workspace Cloud, or really to Citrix technologies at all,” Lipson noted. “It’s really just a powerful blueprinting, deployment management engine. And then we have scripts, which automate manual tasks.”

Pricing and packaging for CWC will be announced closer to the product release in Q3 of this year. Meanwhile, a free test drive is available for those who wish to try out the technology.

 

CHICAGO — In a January earnings call with investors, Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook made a confident prediction: “2015 will be the year of Apple Pay,” he said.

Since then, the company has aggressively courted retailers – and claimed significant success. “We’ve spoken to all of the top 100 merchants in the U.S., and about half will accept Apple Pay this year, with many more the following year,” a company spokesperson recently told Reuters.

But interviews with analysts, merchants and others suggest that Apple’s forecast may be too optimistic and that many retailers remain skeptical about the payment system.

The service is one of Apple’s biggest bets, a chance to tie customers more tightly to its phones and its new smart watch, as well as to take a tiny bite from every retail transaction.

To assess Apple’s progress, Reuters worked from the National Retail Federation’s list of the top 100 U.S. retailers, surveying the 98 that had brick-and-mortar outlets (two of the top 100 sell only online). Eighty-five supplied detailed responses, and 11 others supplied information only about whether or not they accept Apple Pay. Two did not respond.

While some of the country’s top merchants said they use and like the mobile payment system, fewer than a quarter of the retailers said they currently accept Apple Pay, and nearly two-thirds of the chains said categorically they would not be accepting it this year. Only four companies said they have plans to join the program in the next year.

The top reasons retailers cited for not accepting Apple Pay were insufficient customer demand, a lack of access to data generated in Apple Pay transactions and the cost of technology to facilitate the payments. Some merchants said they were holding out because they plan to participate in a new mobile payment system to be launched by a coalition of retailers later this year.

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Reliable statistics on mobile wallet payments are difficult to obtain. Neither the companies offering payment systems nor credit card issuers will disclose detailed data about usage. But analysts agree that they are used for only a tiny percentage of U.S. retail transactions.

An online survey conducted by Verifone and Wakefield Research released in January 2015 found that mobile wallets accounted for about 4 per cent of the overall payments market for in-store retail transactions in the U.S.

How that market is divided up among the major players is not entirely clear. An ITG Investment Research study conducted in November, soon after Apple Pay was launched, found that the service accounted for 1 per cent of digital payment dollars, while Google Wallet accounted for 4 per cent.

Since then, analysts agree, Apple Pay’s market share has grown dramatically. “In the last six months or so there has been more acceptance of Apple Pay,” said Steve Weinstein, senior internet analyst for ITG. “Google Wallet has kind of stalled out.”

In January, Apple’s Cook, citing internal data, said Apple Pay accounted for two out of three dollars spent in “contactless payments,” but the company did not provide data to back up those numbers.

They have called and tried to persuade us even after we communicated our decision to them

Still, it is clear Apple Pay has made considerable progress in signing up vendors, with more than 700,000 sites as of March 9, the last time Apple updated its numbers, including self-service terminals such as vending machines, laundromats and parking meters.

Interviews with retailers suggest that the company has relied on aggressive marketing to recruit participants. “They have been pushing hard and it’s been that way for months,” said the representative of one large retailer that has no plans to accept Apple Pay. “They have called and tried to persuade us even after we communicated our decision to them.” The company hasn’t adopted Apple Pay, he said, because not even a “small percentage” of its customers have asked for it.

SPEED, CONVENIENCE AND SECURITY

Many companies that accept Apple Pay report that they and their customers are happy with it. Whole Foods spokesman Michael Silverman said that Apple Pay transactions accounted for 2 per cent of its sales dollars as of March and that it expects use to rise.

“Our shoppers are really enjoying the speed, convenience and security of Apple Pay,” he said.
But for other retailers and consumers, Apple has yet to answer the question “what is in it for us if we use Apple Pay?” said Alberto Jimenez, program director for mobile payments at IBM, which provides technology to mobile wallet makers and retailers. Jimenez would not say whether Apple is among their customers.

The program doesn’t offer loyalty rewards to customers, as companies such as Starbucks do with their mobile applications, nor does it provide customer information to retailers about Apple Pay users.

For 28 of the retailers surveyed by Reuters, lack of access to data about customers and their buying habits is a key reason they don’t accept Apple Pay. “One of the biggest concerns is data control,” said Mario De Armas, senior director, international payments at the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

When a credit card is swiped through a terminal, the retailer gets the name and card number, which when combined with publicly available demographic data like address, phone and email, helps retail chains send well-targeted promotions to customers.

Wal-Mart and 18 of the other top retailers are part of a coalition challenging Apple Pay with a mobile wallet called CurrentC, which is scheduled to launch in mid-2015.

Retailers participating in CurrentC won’t be allowed to accept any other mobile wallet until 2016, according to a senior official at MCX, the company launching CurrentC. For that reason alone, 19 of the NRF’s top 100 retailers will not be able to accept Apple Pay before the end of the year, although three of them said they plan to accept Apple Pay by early 2016.

Another reason cited for not accepting Apple Pay by retailers surveyed by Reuters was the cost of terminals and computer upgrades required to accept a mobile wallet.

“What is the return on investment?” asked Maureen Elworthy, director of treasury at Ahold USA, which runs supermarket chains like Stop&Shop, during a panel on Apple Pay at an industry conference. “The is negative,” she said.

She told Reuters that Ahold USA does not plan to accept any wallets because they see it as an investment cost without immediate returns.

The cost to merchants of accepting a mobile wallet is highly variable depending on what technology they already have in place.

Retailers face an October deadline to upgrade their credit card terminals to accept cards with microchips, and the new terminals will typically also support contactless payments such as Apple Pay.

But mobile payments also require back-end systems that can be costly, especially for a large retail chain accepting multiple types of mobile payment systems, said Rick Dakin, chief executive of Coalfire, a security systems and IT infrastructure firm.

Apple declined to comment on the cost to retailers of accepting Apple Pay but referred Reuters to Ian Drysdale, Executive Vice-President at payment processor Elavon, which works with Apple.

Drysdale downplayed the cost issue.

“As long as the retailer is upgrading to the new payment terminals, which are enabled with contactless payment technology, there is very little additional cost to accept Apple Pay,” he said.

Ultimately the success of Apple Pay may rest with iPhone users like Scott Braeckel, an iPhone 6 owner who has used Apple Pay – but only once.

Braeckel said he liked the Apple Pay experience, but he generally pays with a credit card, even at places like McDonald’s, which accepts the mobile wallet.

A survey released in March by shopper insight firm InfoScout and PYMNTS.com of more than 1,000 iPhone6 users found that while 15 per cent of them had tried the payment system, only 6 per cent said they continued to use it.

“It was an interesting curiosity but hasn’t moved into daily use for me because frankly, I don’t really shop at places it’s taken,” Braeckel said. “The places I mostly shop, which are my grocery store and pharmacy, don’t accept it.”

Reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago and San Francisco; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sue Horton

© Thomson Reuters 2015

I recently celebrated my 41st birthday, but I don’t feel particularly old.

I still get breathlessly excited at the thought of a new Star Wars movie. I love Lego like a seven-year-old with aspirations to be an architect. And it goes with out saying that I’m still a pretty big fan of video games.

However, as time goes on I’m encountering more and more signs both mental and physical that I’m no longer the young, hard-charging, resilient gamer I once was.

I figured if ever I were to get some sympathy on this score it might be by writing about my woes for a newspaper audience – a demographic the likely age of which ought to put at least a few people in my camp.

And so I present the following: A list of 10 reasons I know I’m slowly becoming an old gamer.

1. I like to play on normal or (gasp!) easy difficulty.

Turns out I no longer play most games to prove how good I am at them. All I really want is to beat up some bad guys who don’t repeatedly kill me in the process and experience a nice little story. The only time I really feel a competitive spark is when I’m playing online and can tell by the squeaky voice in my ear that I’m up against some nimble-fingered adolescent so young he probably shouldn’t even be wearing big boy pants, much less playing a violent shooter.

2. Retro means something really different to me than it does to younger players.

When I walk into stores like GameStop I see college-age gamers wearing ironic Pokemon t-shirts talking about “retro” games that I played on Xbox 360 in my 30s. My daughter thinks of the Wii the same way I think of my old ColecoVision. To her, playing a game like Super Mario Galaxy 2 is really kicking it old school.

3. I have arthritis in my trigger finger.

Seriously. I’m not even kidding about this one. The top joint of my right index finger swells and gets stiff and sore when I’m reviewing shooters. I actually saw my doctor about it this spring. She basically just said, “Yeah, that’s arthritis all right. Take some ibuprofen. And for heaven’s sake, take a break from playing games.”

Chad SapiehaThe author's first game injury, a scar earned around the age of nine or ten when he was playing Centipede using a roller controller.

4. Speaking of video game injuries, I have a scar on my palm – from playing Centipede in the arcade circa 1983.

My skin got caught between the control ball and the edge of the cabinet during a particularly aggressive attempt to roll to the left. I didn’t get stitches, but the thing bled like a chest wound on M*A*S*H. I suffered plenty of other controller injuries in that era (Intellivision controllers were basically death traps for hands) but this is the only one that’s left its mark well into adulthood.

5. I wear headphones at night to keep from waking the family.

Because if I want to enjoy surround sound explosions I’ll end up paying for it the next day with a grumpy wife. What’s more, I one hundred per cent understand her point of view. I would feel exactly the same if someone woke me up during the night with loud explosions and gunfire. Grown-up love and true empathy can be a real bummer for a gaming hobby.

6. Most video game protagonists are younger than me. A lot younger. Some by as much as 20 or 30 years.

It’s most evident in Japanese role-playing games, which basically feature groups of teens adventuring to save the world. And if their large casts of characters include a token oldie he’s often depicted as being in his 40s (because that’s basically like being dead) and is probably extremely world weary and grouchy as all get out. Just like every 40-something I know.

RazorsoftWhat photo-realistic games looked like in 1990.

7. I remember being convinced that a game released 25 years ago was pretty much photo-realistic.

When I played TechnoCop on Sega Genesis in 1990 I told all my friends that it was pretty much like I was controlling a movie. And when I think back about it now I still think of its awesome body disintegration effect as being super gory, like something out of RoboCop. Now I complain about the foliage in The Witcher III: Wild Hunt looking too much like a painting. Go figure.

8. Setting up online matches with folks my age is a major undertaking.

Work schedules, family routines, and endless adult responsibilities can make arranging social gaming with friends and relatives a serious chore. It’s not like we can just jump online and reliably find each other anytime after 4:00 p.m. on a school day. We’ve all got hectic lives and minimal spare time, which we value like gold. (Also, I realize I like to use the word “folks” sometimes. Pretty sure that alienates from everyone, not just gamers, under the age of 30.)

9. The game developers I interview all seem to have silver-streaked hair.

This may only be evident to a person with a job like mine, but I’ve noticed lately that many of the creative people I interview who are in charge of major franchises are in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s. That wasn’t the case when I started doing this job nearly 20 years ago. I’ve also watched the mean age of reporters at game junkets slowly grow over that same time. Plenty of salt-and-pepper beards with notebooks out there.

10. To me, Donkey Kong is a kidnapping SOB.

To most people born after 1985 Donkey Kong is just another happy Nintendo hero. Say the name to me and I think of the evil, barrel-tossing, hostage taker that cost me fists full of quarters circa 1981 in the original Donkey Kong arcade game. Nintendo has attempted to explain away modern Donkey Kong’s origins by saying the one we see in Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Bros. is actually the grandson of the original Donkey Kong, who is now referred to as Cranky Kong. I say that’s a bunch of malarkey. Donkey Kong is Donkey Kong, and he’s not a simian to be trusted.

Take it from an old, world weary, grouchy gamer like me.

Michael Calce, better known as Mafiaboy for his infamous cyber attack at age 15 that shut down websites including Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo, says the best companies can hope for against a growing army of hackers is to prevent and, if that’s not possible, to mitigate the damage.

“This is really a hacker’s world right now. We’re on the defence 24-7,” says Calce, who took his punishment 15 years ago and is now, at age 30, a “white hat” hacker who uses his knowledge to help businesses avoid becoming victims of “black hat” hackers like his younger self.

“I don’t want you to be paranoid – but you probably should be,” he told the crowd at cyber security conference in Toronto on Thursday. “It’s time to start thinking you’re a target, rather than that you’re not a target.”

Calce made it clear during his talk at the Investment Industry Association of Canada conference that he has some practical advice that only comes with a fee for his services, but he said cyber breaches like the recent one at JPMorgan have reduced the need to go looking for business.

Now, companies, including some banks in North America, are coming to him.

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The JPMorgan hack “definitely raised a lot of questions, and banks are starting to buzz a little bit,” Calce said.

He did have some free, if tough to follow advice, including advising that employee use of free wifi and hotspots in hotels and on commuter trains leaves companies vulnerable. In a test, he says his team was able to gain access to a company’s network through the laptop of an employee as his train was passing by the highway they were on.

Another place where companies are vulnerable is through their increasing use of the cloud to store data. Calce predicts there will be a “major” cloud attack on a corporation sometime in the next year, which he said would give the hacker access to any device associated with the company or companies that are the source of the attack.

“I hate cloud. I think you’re putting all your eggs in one basket,” he said, adding that company IT departments are trained to follow rules, while hackers “are dangerous and succeed by thinking outside the box.”

Calce, who got the name Mafiaboy when he adopted a handle used by his brother for legitimate computer activities, also warned that many companies are actually being attacked from within, either intentionally or unintentionally.

“There’s a lot of internal hacking, [and in some cases] someone in the IT department is actually the one hacking here,” he said.

For all the talk and fear about so-called cord cutters and competition from Netflix, the total sales generated by television services in Canada actually grew in 2014 compared to the previous year.

According to financial data released Thursday by the country’s broadcast regulator, revenues for specialty, pay, pay-per-view and video-on-demand offerings rose 3.1 per cent to $4.2 billion in the year ending August 31, propelled by a 13.6 per cent gain posted by sports channels such as TSN and Sportsnet.

A 5.9 per cent rise in subscription sales offset the 4.2 per cent slump in national advertising, as the sector continues to fight for audiences and ad budgets with the plethora of alternative burgeoning mediums. This contraction snaps what had been a streak of at least three years of rising national ad revenue.

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The calculations include submissions from the licensees of English, French and Ethnic services.

But these stations are spending more to generate more content, with expenditures increasing to $3.1 billion and, in the process, squeezing profit margins before interest and taxes (PBIT) to 23.7 per cent from 26.5 per cent. Costs to produce Canadian content are up, too, reaching $1.5 billion in 2014; costs related to foreign programming also increased to $574 million from $528 million spent in the prior year.

More specifically, the 230 reporting units in the latest financial results are spending more on scripts, filler programming and local Canadian rights — but investing less in programming.

cpellegrini@nationalpost.com

T-Mobile US Inc. shares surged as much as 6.4 per cent after a report that the fourth-largest U.S. wireless company is in talks to merge with Dish Network Corp.

The purchase price is unresolved, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the negotiations. John Legere, T-Mobile US’s chief executive officer, would take the top role at the combined company, and Dish’s Charlie Ergen would be chairman, according to the report.

Ergen has said as recently as February that he is interested in deals and intrigued by T-Mobile. A combination of Dish and T-Mobile could advance Ergen’s plan for streaming mobile video to challenge cable companies and employ a vast airwave holding to compete in wireless service against the two largest carriers, Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc.

“Dish investors have seen this movie before,” said Paul Sweeney, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “Charlie is very disciplined and if he does not get the exact terms he wants, he will walk away.”

T-Mobile shares increased 5.9 percent to US$40.60 as of 10:02 a.m. in New York, after reaching US$40.77, the highest intraday price since 2008. Dish gained 7.1 percent to US$75.84. T-Mobile’s German parent Deutsche Telekom AG rose in Frankfurt trading, up 3.1 percent to 16.03 euros.

In September, after scuttling a possible combination with Sprint Corp., Ergen talked to Deutsche Telekom about his interest in a deal, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time.

Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile representatives declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report. Bob Toevs, a spokesman for Englewood, Colorado-based Dish, also declined to comment.

Deutsche Telekom has gained about 19 per cent this year, giving the company a market value of 71.4 billion euros (US$81 billion). Dish and Bellevue, Washington-based T-Mobile have a combined market value of about US$64 billion, based on their closing prices Wednesday.

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Airwaves Stockpile

Ergen has said he’s looking for acquisitions that will help him put a US$50 billion stockpile of airwaves to work.

“If the article proves to be correct and the companies really are in serious talks, we suspect it will flush out competing bidders, perhaps for both T-Mobile and Dish,” Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst with New Street Research, wrote in a research note.

T-Mobile last year rejected a US$33-a-share bid by France’s Iliad SA and talks to merge with Sprint failed over conditions for the deal and concern that U.S. regulators wouldn’t approve a combination of the third- and fourth-largest wireless operators in the country.

In August, Deutsche Telekom senior managers discussed US$35 to US$40 as a realistic valuation range for T-Mobile, according to a person familiar with the matter at the time. T-Mobile’s stock has since gained about 33 per cent as rollover offers and price cuts fueled subscriber growth, enabling the carrier to outpace bigger competitors.

Adding T-Mobile’s 57 million wireless subscribers would help Dish fend off gains in video-streaming customers by Netflix Inc., Hulu and
Amazon.com Inc. Dish and T-Mobile had a combined US$45 billion in sales and US$1.5 billion in profit during the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

–With assistance from Amy Thomson and Mark Beech in London and Dave McCombs in Tokyo.

Stingray Digital Group Inc. celebrated with a surprise staff party at their Montreal offices Wednesday following the company's $140-million initial public offering.

It’s always tempting – and not entirely wrong – to judge downloadable content by comparing it to previous DLC drops for the game in question. But do that for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – Supremacy, the third bit of DLC for Activision’s monster military shooter, and it comes off deceptively deficient.

The first DLC, Havoc, introduced an entirely new four-player co-op mode called Exo Zombies, in which players battled waves of undead in the roles of memorable characters played by Hollywood celebrities including John Malkovich and Rose McGowan, plus four new multiplayer maps.

The second, Ascendance, added a fresh level to Exo Zombies, four more multiplayer maps, introduced a great new dual-mode energy weapon, and brought the grappling hook from the campaign to online play, altering environmental traversal in fast and fun ways.

The third drop, Supremacy, simply adds four more multiplayer maps and another Exo Zombies level. Nothing particularly fresh or novel. Just some maps.

And yet sometimes it’s not solely about innovation.

ActivisionCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Supremacy's new Parliament map for competitive multiplayer.

Advanced Warfare‘s penultimate Exo Zombie chapter is maybe the best yet.

An intro cinematic picks up with the four previous heroes captured by Atlas on an aircraft carrier, with newcomer Lennox – played by Bruce Campbell in full ham mode – shooting Oz (Malkovich) in the head. Lennox explains that all four members of the group are carriers of whatever caused the undead outbreak, then takes Oz’s place as a playable character. Oz isn’t completely dead, though, so Malkovich fans needn’t despair.

The map begins with the four heroes split into two groups on board the carrier. The first order of business is to dispatch enough dead to earn the money necessary to open a door or two and regroup. There’s no right way to do this, but you’ll soon learn certain rooms are better suited for fending off the undead as a group early on.

Once you’re a team again it’s pretty much business as usual. Stick together, earn cash, buy weapons and ammo, and get your hands on an exo suit and an exo upgrade as soon as you can. There are some twists thrown in – like enemy Atlas troops who join the fray and drop bombs that need to be disarmed – but it’s all pretty familiar.

What makes this map so much fun is its layout. Unlike the two previous Exo Zombie maps, this maze makes sense. It’s easy to find and reach other characters to group up or revive them, the cure zones necessary to disinfect yourself are readily accessible, and there are several good spots to make a stand as a foursome during a siege – plus some good avenues of escape should things get too hectic.

Exo Zombies is on a roll heading into the concluding episode, which will come in Advanced Warfare‘s final DLC later this summer.

ActivisionCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Supremacy's new Compound map for competitive multiplayer.

The new competitive multiplayer maps – all available to be played with the grappling hook modifier introduced in the previous DLC – are a treat, too. They’re not as shtick-y as those in previous drops, but what they lack in panache they make up for in fun, balanced, strategic firefights.

Parliament is the standout. Set on a series of ships and docks along the River Thames in London, it’s a near-perfect blend of vertical and traditional play. A central blockage breaks the action into several hot zones; two main, plus a few smaller ones pocked with barriers. It’s good for just about any game type, but most fun in Hardpoint, which lets players make smart use of exo boosts while attacking and defending specific locations.

Compound is a ton of fun, too. It’s a close-quarters training facility with walls and windows positioned to create a disorienting maze. Human targets painted on walls fooled me into firing at them when coming around corners more than once. There aren’t many long sight lines, so shotgunners and melee attackers rule the day here. There isn’t much opportunity for camping. Very fast-paced.

The third map, set in Moscow, is called Kremlin. Its signature feature is a pair of machine guns in the windows of facing buildings overlooking a bridge. These wildly powerful weapons can help you rack up kills quickly – especially when the opposing team is trying to take a control point set in the centre of the bridge in Domination – but also make you an easy target for enemy snipers. It’s got one big, multi-level kill zone in the centre of the map, though the fight frequently moves into nearby structures.

The fourth, Skyrise, is Supremacy‘s requisite sniper map. It, too, has a large kill zone that lies between two buildings, but this area is broken into several smaller spaces at different heights with varying degrees of cover. Long gun wielders can sit on the second levels or roofs of the two wide buildings at either end and wait for enemies to show themselves while crossing the battlefield. However, unlike Havoc‘s notorious Sideshow sniper map, there aren’t any truly wide open spaces here, which means smart, quick players can usually make it safely between buildings with only a little luck.

ActivisionCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Supremacy's new Kremlin map for competitive multiplayer.

Advanced Warfare and its previous DLC packs proved Sledgehammer is capable of coming up with fun innovations. Supremacy, on the other hand, seems to be where the California studio is showing off its ability to make improvements of a subtler nature.

It may lack new and novel features that we can use to easily define it, but Supremacy gives us something that might be even better: Some Advanced Warfare‘s most sophisticated and entertaining competitive and cooperative maps yet.

ActivisionCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Supremacy's new Skyrise map for competitive multiplayer.

The new boss at BCE Inc.’s Bell Media division thinks some public shaming can go a long way to combat piracy.

Mary Ann Turcke, who replaced Kevin Crull less than two months ago, has seen how far people will go to find the content they want to watch both in her role as president and as a parent. To her dismay, Turcke’s younger daughter told her she had been using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to disguise her location and access Netflix Inc.’s richer U.S. video library, which is otherwise off-limits to Canadian subscribers.

“Mom, did you know that you can hack into U.S. Netflix and get sooo many more shows?” she recalled her 15-year-old daughter saying. A scolding lecture ensued, putting an end to the VPNing at the Turcke house. She says more conversations about what’s right and wrong should be had at dinner tables across Canada.

“It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix,” Turcke said in a keynote Wednesday at the Canadian Telecom Summit. “Like throwing garbage out of your car window, you just don’t do it. We have to get engaged and tell people they’re stealing.”

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The industry can’t just rely on government and the broadcasting watchdog to police and solve this growing problem, she says. It’s up to ordinary people to tell their guilty friend, colleague or child that stealing is wrong. But Turcke should know that relying on people to share and spread her belief is a Hail Mary at best.

In addition to tightening the security and integrity of online marketplaces, wowing people by offering them top-notch content that’s accessible at any time and on every screen can help, too. After all, the livelihoods of 125,000 people in this country’s production industry are at stake – and “nobody here works for free.”

The financial challenges plaguing the media business are no secret, and Bell hasn’t been immune. Costs to serve programming are escalating, while the fight for viewer attention is as fierce as it’s ever been. Then there’s Bell’s long-festering feud with the CRTC, which saw a combative Crull publicly go toe-to-toe with the regulator on several occasions. It’s still unclear whether Turcke will adopt a similar approach.

It’s early days for Turcke in her new role, she reminds the audience — a mere 55.5 days to be exact. She says she’ll put her master’s degree in numerical methods and modelling to use during her “deep and rigorous” strategic analysis of the specialty TV division, promising to take chances on innovation and get it right. The economics of it all are “intimidating,” she adds, “but that is what we get paid to figure out.”

For now, Turcke is focusing on what she can control, including her primetime line-up of shows for the fall, which she’ll unveil Thursday at CTV’s Upfront event.

“We, Bell Media, we, the industry, need to make our content more accessible. Just make it easy,” she said. “Viewers are demanding simplicity and they will seek it out.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s former neighbours have an ax to grind with the developer who got the rights to their property and then extracted a payment from the Facebook Inc. founder to not build a mansion overlooking his house.

The couple who lived directly behind the 31-year-old billionaire contend that if anyone deserved an extra US$1.7 million from the sale of their home, it was them.

As developer Mircea Voskerician advances toward a trial over claims Zuckerberg reneged on a promise to introduce him to Silicon Valley’s tech elites as part of their deal for the land, he’s now accused of cheating the couple who owned the property. A Nov. 9 trial date for the case against Zuckerberg was set Tuesday by a state judge in San Jose, California, over an objection from his lawyer who wanted to delay it.

Moris Kori and Betty Frayman-Kori claim in a separate lawsuit that Voskerician secretly conspired with their real estate agent to acquire rights to their home and sell to Zuckerberg in 2012 — even though they had been trying since the year before to get Zuckerberg to buy them out.

The Koris contend the fair market value of their property in in Palo Alto, California, was significantly more than the US$4.8 million they agreed to take from Voskerician. Saying they were duped, they want the developer to hand over the $1.7 million he collected from Zuckerberg to drop plans to build a 9,600-square-foot home with a view into the Facebook chief executive officer’s master bedroom.

Two law school professors who have followed Zuckerberg’s fight with Voskerician voiced doubt that the Koris have a strong case.

Miriam Cherry at Saint Louis University law school said that while the lawsuit “thickens the plot,” Voskerician had no obligation to look after the Koris’ interests and that his transfer of the property rights to Zuckerberg is irrelevant as long as he paid the Koris what he promised.

David Min, who teaches at the University of California at Irvine, said there is no basis for a court to unwind the deal between the Koris and Voskerician, even if the couple is able to prove fraud and win monetary damages.

The Koris claim that while they were in final negotiations with Voskerician, their agent at Alain Pinel Realtors Inc. prodded them to quickly sign a contract even though the developer hadn’t put down a deposit, giving him more time to negotiate behind the scenes with Zuckerberg.

In reality, he never intended to perform and instead intended to market the contract

The Koris said in their complaint that they agreed to their contract with Voskerician being passed along to what they were led to believe was an entity controlled by his development company. That entity, SFRP LLC, was actually owned by Zuckerberg, they said.

The couple alleges they didn’t learn Zuckerberg was the intended and ultimate buyer of their home until his lawyers told them in May 2014, the month that Zuckerberg was sued by Voskerician over the alleged broken promise to help him network with tech executives.

Voskerician “falsely represented his intent to purchase the property,” according to the complaint. “In reality, he never intended to perform and instead intended to market the contract” to Zuckerberg.

Voskerician’s lawyer, David Draper, called the lawsuit “sour grapes.” He said the Koris weren’t able to close a deal with Zuckerberg because he initially wasn’t interested.

When the Koris signed a contract with Voskerician in 2012, they got US$400,000 more than their asking price.

In 2013, a firm that handles Zuckerberg’s finances, Iconiq Capital LLC, snapped up three other properties surrounding his home, buying one for US$10.5 million, another for US$14 million and a third for US$14.5 million, according to the Santa Clara County tax assessor’s office.

“The Koris bring this lawsuit because they are unhappy that they sold their property a year before the Zuckerbergs paid three of their old neighbours US$38.5 million for the neighbourhood,” Draper said in a phone interview. “We have documented evidence that shows that what they are saying about Mr. Voskerician is not true and they know it.”

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Derk Brill, a real estate agent at Alain Pinel who represented the Koris and is named as a defendant in their lawsuit, didn’t respond to a phone call Monday seeking comment on it.

Zuckerberg’s lawyer, Patrick Gunn, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the Kori lawsuit.

Zuckerberg’s attorneys have said in court filings that the developer employed “extortive” tactics to profit from the billionaire’s desire for privacy. Zuckerberg has denied claims that he broke his word on introducing Voskerician to contacts in Silicon Valley.

A lawyer for the Koris didn’t immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation that Moris Kori was the chief executive officer of Palo Alto-based Luminescent Technologies Inc., which was acquired by KLA-Tencor Corp.

Bloomberg.com

NEW YORK — Users of Pinterest will soon be able to buy items directly through the company’s app using a new type of pin.

Pinterest and Ottawa-based e-commerce company Shopify said Tuesday that the “buyable pins” will debut in the next few weeks.

GLENN CHAPMAN/AFP/Getty ImagesPinterest displays a new 'buy' button for its application on an iPhone.

Pinterest says buyable items will have a blue pin displaying their price. Users will be able to search for similar items based on colour and price. The company says items from brands including Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Cole Haan, Michaels and thousands of Shopify stores will have the pins. Fabric and craft retailer Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores Inc. says it will also participate in the program.

Users can pay for the items they buy with Apple Pay or a credit card. Shopify says their credit card information will be stored by payment processors and not by Shopify itself.

Pinterest said iPhone and iPad users will see the pins in the next few weeks, and they’ll be available on future releases of the Android OS or desktop computers.

Pinterest allows users to create collections of photos, articles, recipes, videos and other images that are called “pins.” The company is based in San Francisco and was recently valued at US$11 billion.

Shopify Inc. works with merchants who want to offer their own online checkout services, providing a platform for small- and mid-size businesses that sell products online. Clients can use Shopify’s software to handle sales made through mobile phones, the Web, physical stores and other means.

The Canadian company went public on May 21 with a US$131 million initial public offering. Shopify shares are up 59 per cent from their IPO price, with most of those gains coming from a 51-per cent jump on their first day of trading. The shares lost 38 cents to US$26.95 on Tuesday.

The Associated Press

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It appears Apple Inc. inherited a fire hazard from Dr. Dre and music producer Jimmy Iovine.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said it is recalling Beats Pill XL portable wireless speakers due to a fire hazard from overheating batteries. The product was introduced by Beats by Dre in November 2013, prior to Apple’s US$3.2-billion acquisition of the Beats — which also makes headphones — in May 2014.

Customers can return their Beats Pill XL speaker to receive an Apple Store credit or electronic payment of $395, Apple said in a statement. The company also advised customers to stop using the product.

The iPhone maker will recall about 222,000 speakers in the United States and about 11,000 in Canada, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said on Wednesday.

Apple has received eight reports of overheating speakers, the CPSC said in a statement. One person’s finger was burned and another reported damage to a desk.

They were sold at Apple’s stores and websites since January 2014. It was also sold at other retailers.

The company said the recall does not affect any other Beats or Apple products.

With files from Reuters, The Associated Press

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General Electric Co., eBay Inc. and others have decided to pay the hefty tax bill associated with repatriating massive amounts of cash stranded overseas, but Cisco Systems Inc. doesn’t look ready to follow just yet.

The Internet networking giant has US$50 billion in cash outside of the U.S., equivalent to about 35 per cent of its market cap. Despite this hefty sum, it’s taking a more methodical view than some of its peers.

If the current proposal for a 14 per cent tax rate is ratified, Cisco says it will bring all of its cash back. However, more legislative adjustments are expected, so the company anticipates tax-code changes in 2017, with related benefits coming the following year.

“Right now repatriating at the 35% rate (30% with overseas credits) doesn’t make sense for Cisco,” said Mark Sue, a New York-based analyst with RBC Capital Markets.

He noted that repatriating at the proposed 14 per cent tax rate would correspond with US$7 billion in tax and total cash of US$47.1 billion subsequently available on-shore.

Assuming Cisco puts aside US$5 billion to run its business and the rest goes to deploying a massive accelerated share buyback program, Sue thinks the company’s 2016 EPS could climb to US$3.40 from a current forecast of US$2.46.

If Cisco opts to use only half of its available cash post repatriation for share repurchases, 2016 EPS would still climb to an estimated US$2.85. The analyst noted that implies a stock price of US$37, representing upside of more than 25 per cent.

“Cisco’s a cash machine and while we’re not likely to see a massive ASR anytime soon, our meeting [with Treasurer Roger Biscay] gave us increased comfort on the steady cash returns,” Sue told clients.

With more than 250 million plastic character figurines sold since the franchise’s launch in 2011, Activision’s Skylanders video games are a toys-to-life juggernaut.

And with this fall’s Skylanders: SuperChargers – unveiled to journalists (including me) at an event last week in New York – the American game maker intends to grow its toy business beyond the plastic characters kids have come to know and covet to include fully articulated plastic vehicles.

ActivisionHot Streak, one of 20 articulated vehicle toys, will come with the Skylanders: Superchargers starter pack.

The new game will see 20 “SuperCharger” Skylanders characters – most new, but also some fresh takes on older ones, such as fan favourite Stealth Elf – matched with 20 cars, boats, and aircraft that they’ll be able to ride as they once again battle the evil lord Kaos and his new sky-eating Doomstation of Ultimate Doomstruction.

Shipping September 20th – likely to stay abreast of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s new toys-to-life challenger Lego Dimensions (set for release the following week) and Disney Interactive’s Disney Infinity 3.0, which will have a Star Wars theme and likely launch around the same time – the Skylanders: SuperChargers starter pack is slated to come with two characters and a car, which is everything kids will need to play through the entire story.

However, kids will need to purchase at least one vehicle for each of the other two vehicle terrain types – sea and air – separately in order to access certain parts of the game. And while any Skylanders character can ride any vehicle, each of the new “supercharged” characters is designed to be paired with a matching ride in order to confer special attribute bonuses.

ActivisionDive Bomber, one of the new vehicles in Skylanders: Superchargers, is a sea-based craft that can dive underwater and fire torpedoes.

In other words, parents are probably going to feel the pinch in the wallets.

Each vehicle is slated to cost US$14.99, and each new figure will be priced at $12.99. Do the math, and die-hard players will likely spend around US$600 if they want to collect everything Superchargers has to offer – though you may be able to save a little money by buying and downloading a digital copy of the game (a first for the franchise), which comes with one virtual vehicle and character, and using your old portal and figures.

Indeed, frugal fans will also appreciate that all 300-plus previous Skylanders characters are supported. So are the elemental traps from last year’s Skylanders: Trap Team, which, if they contain a trapped villain, unlock special cards in the series’ signature Skystones mini-game, which is returning with new cards and rules.

But the real fun in SuperChargers lies in using the new vehicles, which include rockets, tanks, helicopters, monster trucks, and planes, each with its open weapons, movement, and abilities – much like the Skylanders themselves.

ActivisionSky Slicer, one of the new vehicles in Skylanders: Superchargers, will be sold separately from the starter pack for US$14.99.

Plus, many vehicle parts – including tires, propellers, and cranks – are designed to move or rotate, encouraging kids to play with them away from the game. Just don’t take them into the tub. There’s an NFC chip inside each toy, and the game’s makers can’t guarantee it’ll survive a bath.

Still, most kids are likely to spend more time playing with the virtual versions of each vehicle once they’ve been ported into the game. To that end, the hands-off demo Activision provided me elaborated on how vehicles are used in SuperChargers.

Levels are designed as they usually are in Skylanders games, with plenty of traditional on-foot melee action. Characters will defeat enemies, find hidden areas, collect treasures, and level up before heading back to gradually evolving hub world filled with activities where they can permanently upgrade their characters.

However, at certain points in each level players will prompted to summon a specific kind of vehicle and have their Skylander hop in. This might lead to a lengthy kart-style race filled with collectibles and secret routes, 360-degree dogfights in the air, large open areas at sea that they can freely explore, or even a major set piece battle that requires players to advantage of all of their vehicle’s abilities.

ActivisionStorm Blade is among the all-new Skylanders characters featured in Skylanders: Superchargers.

The boss battle shown in the demo involved a submarine riding waves and diving deep into a massive circular pool while avoiding rotating obstacles in the water and blasting groups of enemies with homing torpedoes. It appeared more tactical and skill oriented than previous Skylanders games, but we’ll need to wait for some hands-on time to see if that’s true.

Importantly, kids who like playing co-op on the couch (my daughter among them) won’t have to worry about arguing over who gets to control the vehicle in these sections. One will pilot while the other takes on gunnery duties, keeping both players in the action. This feature wasn’t shown in the demo.

What’s more, vehicles can be customized with dozens of collectible mod kits scattered throughout the game. These kits can augment stats such as speed, armour, and weapons. Permanent upgrades are applied via a new currency called “gear bits,” which can be found and collected during vehicle segments.

ActivisionSkylanders: Superchargers will feature several graphical upgrades compared to its predecessors, including dynamic volumetric clouds.

The introduction of vehicles also seems to have led to a graphical upgrade.

The undulating waves in water environments are beautiful. Aircaft sore through volumetric clouds, which also appear on land, growing to obscure architectural elements and enemies and then dissipating according to special in-game events. And the ground is frequently layered in thick, lush vegetation, giving Skylands a more organic appearance than in previous games.

Competition is clearly heating up in the toys-to-life category, but Skylanders: SuperChargers vehicles angle is evidence that Activision isn’t backing down from the challenge.

The gamer in me is excited to play all of this fall’s toy-based games with his daughter.

But the dad is getting a little worried about his bank account.

ActivisionSpitfire is one of 20 new figurines to be introduced in this fall's Skylanders: Superchargers.

As usual, consumers and investors alike will be monitoring Apple Inc.’s Worldwide Developers Conference closely for new products and services.

While they shouldn’t expect the tech giant to roll out an Apple-branded television, we’ll likely see a new version of the AppleTV device with more memory, improved graphics, and touch/speech capabilities.

These improvements, coupled with the AppleTV app store, should allow Apple better access to the US$35 billion console gaming software market. That could add 1 per cent to its earnings per share in 2016, based on conservative estimates from J.P. Morgan analyst Rod Hall.

He expects the new AppleTV will feature the same A8X processor featured in the iPad Air 2, which is considered a very capable chip when it comes to gaming.

“Given that the AppleTV will likely be priced significantly less than next generation consoles, we believe it will present an interesting option for casual gamers, particularly given the additional TV streaming features we expect the device to offer,” Hall said in a note to clients.

The rationale for such a push by Apple is obvious, as gamers spend an estimated an average of US$150 per year on video game software purchases. Meanwhile, both the total gaming software market and the amount of annual revenue per console have continued to trend higher, with Hall estimating that spending is up about eight per cent since 2012.

The analyst anticipates most AppleTV shipments will be in North America and Europe since better content is available in those regions relative to the rest of the world.

And while Hall doesn’t expect Apple to launch a streaming TV service at WWDC, he does anticipate it will arrive before the end of 2015.

The analyst forecasts AppleTV’s penetration will rise to five per cent in 2016, up from about 2.4 per cent at the end of 2014, assuming a TV replacement cycle of seven years.

Alek Krstajic, the new chief executive at Wind Mobile Corp., is pledging to go about his business as the industry’s underdog and talk a lot less about what he’s doing because, well, he doesn’t have to.

“Wind is a private company, and going forward we won’t be sharing much info or numbers,” he said on Tuesday during a keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit. Krstajic quickly set a tone in his first public address as CEO that differs vastly from the boisterous one of the company’s founder, Anthony Lacavera.

What truly levels the playing field in our sector is spectrum

After stints at Bell Mobility, Rogers Cable and faltered new entrant Public Mobile that was sold to Telus Corp., industry veteran Krstajic moved into the corner office at Wind in March as part of a major overhaul, which ushered in a new chairman and two new directors. A source close to Wind told the Post that the hiring was done to create proper processes and curtailing the unnecessary disclosures is an early fruit of that labour.

While Krstajic may take a quieter path to the finish line, he shares the same goal that Lacavera, an investor and Wind’s honourary chair, always has: to thrive as the fourth choice for wireless consumers in Canada. Like his predecessors, Krstajic reiterated that this objective demands access to coveted airwaves to fulfill.

“What truly levels the playing field in our sector is spectrum,” Krstajic said. “You gotta have it. If you don’t, you’re just not in the game.”

Wind serves roughly 800,000 cell-phone subscribers in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, according to the latest figures released by the company. It is also sitting on unused spectrum licenses in other places across Canada, which were bought in auctions that locked out the incumbents from bidding.

The long-festering capacity-connectivity debate was sparked again Tuesday during the Summit’s regulatory panel, which featured five regulatory executives who proudly wore their employers’ slant.

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“We need more spectrum, as customers use and demand more data-hungry services on our network,” Bob Boron, the chief regulatory officer at Wind, asserted during the discussion. He pointed out the gaping hole in Wind’s chest of low-band spectrum, adding that securing licenses to these airwaves is “something that we need to work with regulators in terms of setting up the auction framework.”

Boron’s comments about his desire to acquire more coveted real estate garnered flack from Ted Woodhead, the senior vice-president of federal government and regulatory affairs at Telus. “You’re absolutely right, you need spectrum,” Woodhead said. “But you also have to pay for it. And even when you were given an opportunity to buy it and you don’t, I question why you need further regulatory assistance.”

Microsoft Corp. is getting ready to plant its flag in Canada’s growing cloud industry, as the Redmond, Washington-based company announced on Tuesday it will begin offering its commercial cloud services from Canadian datacentres next year.

“Soon, the Microsoft Cloud will be truly Canadian,” Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner said in a statement. “This substantial investment in a Canadian cloud demonstrates how committed we are to bringing even more opportunity to Canadian businesses and government organizations, helping them fully realize the cost savings and flexibility of the cloud.”

Two locations, one in the greater Toronto area and one in Quebec City, will offer Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics CRM Online, addressing data residency consideration for customers and partners. Microsoft is building out additional datacentre capacity in both locations.

Microsoft Canada’s chief technology officer, John Weigelt, said that the locations were chosen after looking at the availability of green power, access to good network capacity, and at centres of innovation within Canada. “We’re sizing to meet the demands of the Canadian marketplace,” he said in an interview, adding that Microsoft will continue to evaluate capacity requirements as demand grows.

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Janet Kennedy, president of Microsoft Canada, said that delivering cloud services from datacentres on Canadian soil opens up significant new cloud-based possibilities for organizations that must adhere to strict data storage compliance codes. “We’re very proud to be delivering the Microsoft Cloud right here in Canada, for the benefit of Canadian innovators, entrepreneurs, governments and small businesses,” she said in a statement. “Delivering the flexibility of hyper-scale, enterprise grade, locally deployed public cloud services is the ultimate Canadian hat trick.”

Weigelt said that the services will be offered in preview toward the end of this year, with full commercial availability in 2016. Azure will be the first available service early in 2016, with Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online following later in the year.

Today, Microsoft offers cloud services to more than 80,000 Canadian businesses, from startups to enterprises, and these Canadian datacentres will further expand the market. According to IDC, total public cloud spend in Canada is projected to grow to $2.5B by next year. The fastest growth will be from public cloud infrastructure with a 45 per cent increase by 2016.

Customers such as digital asset management firm MediaValet anticipate increased business once the Canadian datacentres go live.

“Since launching the first version of MediaValet in late 2010, we’ve had opportunities to work with healthcare, government and higher education organizations in Canada, but have been hampered by their rigorous data compliance needs,” said David MacLaren, president and CEO of MediaValet, in a statement. “Microsoft’s investment in a Canadian cloud will open up doors to significant sectors of the Canadian market and help us grow our market share on home soil.”

Weigelt added that companies of all sizes can benefit. “Some companies see the cloud as IT,” he said. “I look at a plumber or a carpenter who has to deal with a computer – they’re passionate about growing their business, not about computers. If we can remove the burden of managing technology they can focus on their passion.”

“I know other regions are looking to Canada as a shining example,” he added. “We really punch above our weight. Canada is the doorstep to the world.”

Fitbit Inc., the maker of wearable devices that collect data on exercise and sleep patterns, is seeking to raise as much as US$478 million in an initial public offering.

Fitbit and its stockholders plan to offer 29.85 million Class A shares for US$14 to US$16 apiece, according to a prospectus filed Tuesday. At the high end of the offering range, Fitbit would be valued at about US$3.3 billion.

Fitbit is profitable, with US$745 million in revenue last year and has over US$100 million in net income. Still, as it markets the sale to investors, the company must show them it can continuing growing, despite heightened competition and the tendency for many users to stop using activity trackers after a few months.

A third of smartwatch and activity-tracker owners abandon their device after six months of use, according to a survey of 1,700 consumers by consulting firm Endeavour Partners in July 2014. Fitbit cites competitors such as Jawbone Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., as well as Apple Inc.’s smartwatch, in its prospectus.

Fitbit says that its strategy to boost growth includes innovating more products and services, increasing marketing efforts, expanding distribution globally and building relationships with corporations for employee wellness programs. The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO for research and development, sales and marketing, and capital expenses and potential acquisitions.

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Fitbit offers seven devices, ranging from US$59.95 to US$249 each, and offers products in more than 45,000 retail stores. The company was founded eight years ago by James Park and Eric Friedman. Prior to Fitbit, the two started Wind-Up Labs Inc., an online photo-sharing company that was ultimately acquired by CNET Networks Inc. in 2005. Park, now 38, serves as president, chief executive officer and chairman of Fitbit, while Friedman, also 38, is the chief technology officer.

The company recalled one of its products, the Fitbit Force, in March 2014 after users reported allergic reactions to the wristband. Fitbit was subject to litigation which impacted the company’s operating results during the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, according to the prospectus.

Fitbit will have two classes of shares after the offering, with Class B representing 10 votes and Class A providing one vote per share. Foundry Group, True Ventures and SoftBank Corp. are investors in Fitbit.

Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank AG and Bank of America Corp. are managing the offering. The stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol FIT.

–With assistance from Caroline Chen in San Francisco.

Bloomberg.com

It turns out the years-long hubbub over The Witcher III: Wild Hunt was justified.

The Polish-made RPG is enormous, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining. Developer CD Projekt RED has previously adapted the characters and world of fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski to excellent effect, but never with such scope and depth. The world of The Witcher III is a vast, town-pocked wilderness with seemingly endless stories to discover and in which to take part.

Indeed, the most impressive part of the game – and this is something that even acclaimed open world fantasy RPG peers Bethesda Softworks (The Elder Scrolls) and BioWare (Dragon Age: Inquisition) can learn from – is how virtually none of its quests are simple make-work tasks. Each one has meaning and worthwhile narrative.

When you help someone in need you become invested in their plight. You get to know and understand the players, what they want, their hidden motivations. Each task and character is unique and memorable; each quest significant and emotionally rewarding.

And when you take on a Witcher contract – white-haired protagonist Geralt makes his living cleansing the world of monsters terrorizing hapless humans – it’s not just a mindless mission to kill a creature. These quests are composed of multiple stages that require investigation, deduction, tracking, and learning everything you can about your adversary, its strengths, and weaknesses. And at the end there’s always a satisfying and frequently multifaceted battle against a powerful, believable foe.

Even random elements found in the wild – a letter here, a weathered skeleton there – frequently come with interesting little narrative tidbits that will grab your attention and leave you marvelling at just how much effort has gone into the construction of this enormous fantasy world.

Basically, The Witcher III hits a grand slam home run with its mythology. It’s rich and nuanced, drawing from concepts both familiar – werewolves, vampires, and even Cinderella – to others that are thoroughly unique and particular to Sapkowski’s books. And it all melds together into something hardcore sword and sorcery fans ought to find utterly captivating.

However, having sung these praises there’s something else that also needs to be said: The Witcher III: Wild Hunt often succeeds in all the ways mentioned above despite itself.

By which I mean it suffers an unexpectedly large amount of small-ish (and in some cases easily fixable) problems that have potential to do everything from make the experience initially alienating – especially for those unfamiliar with the books or previous games – to forcing those who stick with it to suffer repeated annoyances for the game’s (very) lengthy duration.

The Web is now full of odes to everything The Witcher III does well. Go read them. They’ll convince you that it’s a game you ought to be playing. They’re right and you should.

But rather than add my voice to this justifiably loud choir I’m instead going to provide a list of some initial and ongoing peeves I’ve encountered during my first 40-plus hours of play that have to one degree or another detracted from my overall experience.

If nothing else, these issues should serve to remind us that as wonderful as our favourite games may be, there’s always plenty of room for improvement.

CD Projekt RED

1. Best of luck if you’re a Witcher n00b

Leonard Maltin wrote decades ago (before pop culture became as obsessed with sequels and epic series as it is today) that if you watched Return of the Jedi without having first seen Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back you’d probably be completely lost.

The same might be said of The Witcher III and its precursors.

The third game drops you into a world filled with rival factions, complex race relations, and ongoing conflicts, and has you assume the role of a very old character with a long and complicated history. CD Projekt RED assumes to a surprisingly large degree that players are familiar with (and remember) all of this.

To the writers’ great credit, players new to the series should be able to read between the lines to glean at least a basic understanding of Geralt’s relationships with his friends, enemies, and other witchers he encounters. And if you dig around the glossary and read all the tomes you encounter you’ll find plenty of additional details about the world, its past, its factions and leaders, its creatures, and various personalities.

But it takes quite a while. And without some sort of proper, up-front introduction to our hero and his history, Witcher greenhorns may initially find The Witcher III intimidating verging on off-putting.

CD Projekt RED

2. Unreliable prompts for object and character interactions

This is one of my biggest ongoing peeves.

When Geralt walks up to something with which he can interact – dropped loot, a blood stain, a chest, or a non-player character – we’re supposed to see a little button icon pop up to show us we can do something. However, he needs to be in the exact right spot with the camera facing the proper direction to trigger these prompts. I often needed to make him awkwardly scooch around and fiddle with the camera angle in order to make them appear.

It’s especially problematic when Geralt is investigating a scene and needs to interact with a blood smear or footprint in order to activate the next clue. I sometimes walked right over an area I was supposed to examine in order to progress a quest without seeing any prompts, forcing me to backtrack over previously covered ground.

And this isn’t just a once in a while sort of problem. It happens all the time.

CD Projekt RED

3. Occasionally wonky combat

Combat is generally a ton of fun. It’s a mix of parries, dodges, light strikes, heavy hits, and simple but strategic magic.

It’s also occasionally kind of wonky.

Sometimes it’s because Geralt’s attack animations can’t always be interrupted once started, even if you see an attack coming from another direction (which occasionally led me to frustrated and pointless button mashing).

Sometimes it’s because he gets a little bit stuck on environmental geometry, especially in closed, crowded spaces, like caves, in buildings, or on ships.

And sometimes it may be because you’ve stumbled across something more troubling, like a painfully artificial rule of engagement.

Take the time I found a bandit camp filled with fighters many levels higher than my Geralt. I got hit once, lost two thirds of my health, realized I didn’t stand a chance, and ran away. But I noticed within a few metres that my foes weren’t following. I turned around, walked back, and they came after me again. I backed up a couple of steps and they retreated. It was like there was a magical barrier they couldn’t cross that started around five or ten metres from the camp’s perimeter.

So I stayed just outside this border, pulled out my crossbow and took pot shots at them until they were all dead. They’d run around a little when they were hit, but they didn’t attack or dash away.

It’s a cheap exploit that pops up noticeably from time to time. And each time it does it breaks the spell the game’s creators worked so hard to achieve.

CD Projekt RED

4. Trees made of paper

I’ve come to think of The Witcher as representing something close to the pinnacle of game graphics. But despite some very impressive character models and award worthy costume designs, my expectations diminished a little with The Witcher III.

I’ve been playing on PlayStation 4 rather than a supercharged PC, which, admittedly, may have something to do with it (the frame rate is at times alarmingly erratic, especially in a large, high-traffic city like Novigrad).

Still, some of my mild disappointment has nothing to do with fidelity or performance.

Exhibit A: Trees seemingly made of paper. The first thing I noticed about Geralt’s world it is that most of its trees don’t feel as though they’re composed of sturdy wood. They bend and sway in the wind so much and so rapidly that it’s like they’re perpetually experiencing the opening stages of a violent hurricane. The effect is all the more disconcerting when these trees are juxtaposed with other objects – hair, clothes, hanged bodies – that aren’t affected by the wind in the same way.

Plus, vegetation in general seems to have too-soft appearance. Leaves, pine nedles, and the edges of grass blades sometimes seem to blur together, almost like a painting.

Add in the overt sameyness of certain areas – like the nearly endless sprawling fields and forests of Velen, where landmarks are few and far between – and I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed sometimes.

It’s certainly pretty in its way, but to my eyes it feels like a slight step back from the smaller but methodically designed, deeply detailed, and wonderfully memorable environments of The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings.

CD Projekt RED

5. Frustrating fast-travel

Getting around this great big world is often a lot harder than it needs to be.

You can fast travel to any signpost once it’s been discovered (or a map to it has been purchased). However, in order to initiate fast travel you need first make your way to a signpost, which in some areas are few and far between.

I’ll admit it makes sense that you can only fast travel to specific points, but why should you have to trudge through a bog for a couple of minutes just to get to a signpost in order to begin fast travelling?

CD Projekt RED should have at least made fast travel available wherever you’re able to call Geralt’s horse, Roach, or when you’re on a boat. A steed or ship, not some random signpost, is the key to Geralt getting where he needs to go quickly. I often ran to signposts in the opposite direction of my destination simply because they were nearest.

What’s more, the signposts at which you arrive after fast travelling often aren’t ideally located.

For example, the signpost for a sizeable town and garrison around which many early missions take place is located at the foot of a bridge on the opposite side of a river. That means most of the locations you need to visit within the town are hundreds of metres away even after fast travelling, making for plenty of dull, pointless trots over the same ground.

CD Projekt RED

6. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs

Open world games are notorious for their bugs – so much so that many players not only expect them but are surprisingly willing to forgive them (see: pretty much any Elder Scrolls game).

That said, The Witcher III has more than its fair share, and some are particularly egregious.

My very first Witcher contract – to bring down a griffin – suffered a mission-arresting problem in which the winged beast became invulnerable and simply began circling in the air. It wouldn’t attack, and nothing I did could hurt it. Once I realized this I ran halfway across the map and back, hoping to reset the fight. It didn’t work. I eventually needed to restart from my last save.

That wouldn’t be the last bug I encountered during battle. And I ran into plenty of other types of glitches, too.

More than once the world has simply disappeared beneath my feet, making it appear as though I was running on air. The rendering engine would then either catch up and fix the problem or I would get booted to a blue PS4 error screen.

I’ve also watched dialogue scenes disconcertingly fade to black between sentences, as though the conversation has ended or time is passing. Then the image fades back in and the conversation picks up where it left off, as though several awkward seconds hadn’t just passed.

Plus, there have been times while crafting that all selections within the recipe menu have simply disappeared. I’ve had to back out of crafting, then jump back in again in order to keep working.

And at the start of a foot race up a mountain both my opponent and I were unable to move. In-race dialogue began playing while we just stood around. Half a minute passed. I was about to reload my last save when my opponent suddenly began sprinting up the hill, leaving me in her dust.

I won’t even get into the times I’ve gotten stuck on a rock or tree after sliding down a hill, found myself surfacing from a swim through the supposedly solid bottom of a boat, or listened as Geralt repeated a bit of monologue immediately after having already spoken it.

Like most open-world adventures, The Witcher III clearly could have used a little more time in the oven.

Happily, though, there are things called post-launch patches. And CD Projekt RED has proven pretty good at applying them in its previous games. With any luck, these bugs – and maybe some of the other problems I’ve listed here – will be rectified in the coming weeks and months.

And then The Witcher III: Wild Hunt – already a fantastic game – might become the truly great one that it very nearly already is.