National Post Tech Desk

Two of Canada’s biggest cable companies are opening up their online TV streaming service to all Canadians, stepping up competition with Netflix Inc.

Launched last November, Shomi, an online TV and movie subscription service owned by Toronto-based Rogers Communications Inc. and Calgary-based Shaw Communications Inc. was previously available only to the companies’ Internet or cable subscribers.

Rogers, Shaw and BCE Inc. are competing with Los Gatos, California-based Netflix for customers who are increasingly ending their cable subscriptions and switching to online TV. BCE’s Crave TV is still available only to Canadians with a cable subscription.

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• Rogers, Shaw sign deal to stream original Amazon video content on Shomi

Netflix has been the dominant subscription video service in Canada since it launched here five years ago.

Mark Langton, a spokesman for BCE, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Non-Rogers and Shaw customers will be available to access Shomi in the summer, according to a statement. Shomi costs $8.99 a month, the same as Netflix.

The service can be streamed on tablet, mobile, online, and to televisions via Xbox 360, Apple TV and Chromecast. Rogers and Shaw TV subscribers can access content through their set-top boxes.

Shomi’s Canadian exclusives include the buzzy series “Transparent,” “Mozart in the Jungle,” and “Catastrophe” as well as past seasons of “Modern Family,” “The Americans” and “Sons of Anarchy.”

Bloomberg.com, with files from The Canadian Press

From the perspective of my family, Nintendo couldn’t have timed the launch of Splatoon any better.

My daughter, who’s never played a competitive online shooter before, celebrated her 10th birthday this month. The kid-friendly, E10+-rated Splatoon – in which tween-looking avatars use cartoonish weapons to splatter paint over each other and the environment – landed on shelves only about a week later.

As I’ve written previously, I’m a bit shocked at how many of her classmates are already online shooter veterans. And not lighter games, like Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, but gritty, hardcore fare with gore, language, and sex.

I’m all for parents knowing what their kids can handle, and I suspect there are lots of 10-year-olds who can be exposed to something like Call of Duty and not be much worse for wear. But I always wonder: When there are so many fantastic games without mature themes, why buy your fourth grader one that’s filled with blood, boobs, and bad words?

Splatoon was to be my kid’s first experience with a competitive online shooter – and a happily innocuous one pretty much devoid of objectionable content. I thought it an excellent opportunity to get a sense of how such a game might affect her impressionable young mind, see if she found it as intense, immersive, and habit-forming as other games in the genre have proven for so many young players.

After a couple of weeks of play (we were provided an early press copy by Nintendo) I sat her down and got her opinion on what she thinks shooters are all about, what she makes of playing online with and against other people, and whether Splatoon makes her feel different than other games.

Nintendo

Dad: I haven’t really let you play any shooters until now, and especially none with online play. Do you feel like you’ve been missing out on anything?

Daughter: No, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. Online shooters always sounded like they were really competitive, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be very good. I’ve never felt like I needed to play them before.

You’ve mentioned before that some of your friends at school play shooters geared for grown-ups.

Yeah. There are these two kids who play together online after school every day. I think they think they’re too old for games without blood and guts and guns.

And how old are they?

Same age as me. You know that dad.

Right. Just wanted to clarify. And now that you’ve tried Splatoon – your first online competitive shooter – what did you think of it?

I liked it a lot. It’s a lot of fun to play with other people. And I like how I can be sneaky and turn invisible by becoming a squid and swimming through puddles of paint. That way I can sometimes just watch the action and then get involved when it’s safer. It’s not too stressful, which is something I was worried about.

How is it different from other games you’ve played?

Well, the controls let you move the camera and also your person. I like that. It felt a little bit like moving around in Minecraft, so I was able to get into it pretty easily. Though I didn’t like the Wii U motion controls at all. I turned those off. I just use the joysticks.

With online shooters like Splatoon there’s constant action and no pausing. Do you find it more intense than some of the other games you play?

What do you mean?

I mean does it get you keyed up? Excited. Really into the action.

Yes! Very much. When I lose I get very mad. And I just want to start again. I want to play repeatedly. It’s weird. I think I talk to the TV a lot when I play.

Yeah, I noticed. Once when you got hit by an opponent you shouted: “I hate this game! But I love it. Why?!”

I did. Because I lost. That was annoying. But it’s also addictive. I wanted to try again, right away. And then a few seconds later I would get to try again, because I respawned. And it happens that way over and over again. It’s hard to stop playing.

Did you find it more immersive than other games you’ve played?

What’s immersive mean?

Like you were there, inside the game. That you, not your avatar, were the one doing the shooting and splattering.

Well, no. And that makes me happy. Because I don’t want to feel like I’m covered in paint, or that I’m a squid swimming through paint. And this game isn’t as aggressive as I thought it might be. It’s not violent the way I hear other shooters are. Like, when you die, you don’t really die or anything. It has kind of a bright, happy atmosphere, actually. Because it’s Nintendo, right? And it’s very colourful, and nice to look at. Except when you’re fighting with red and green paint. That’s when it’s most warlike. Because red and green don’t go well together. At all. Except at Christmas. And even then, really.

There’s a single-player area, a multiplayer arena, and a local competitive mode for two players. Which did you like most?

I liked online play the most, because you get to have a team. Which is great. I’m not the best player out there, and having a team I can rely on is great. I really like that. But it’s kind of a personal thing. I’d rather not get into it.

Oh?

Yeah. Let’s move on, dad.

Okay. So you say you like having a team. What was your strategy when playing with others?

I like becoming a squid and sneaking past the other team by diving into the paint, then shooting them from behind and covering the turf they’ve already covered with my colour. Sometimes I just get up high and throw paint bombs. I also like to try to follow my teammates and support them. That way they can run into enemies first, and I can help. But they often get way ahead of me. If I had friends I could’ve played with rather than the strangers I was teamed up with maybe that wouldn’t happen.

Hmm. Interesting point. There’s no voice chat, and if there were I’d have disabled it because I don’t want you chatting with strangers online. But do you think being able to talk to other players using a headset would help you do better? Especially if they were your friends?

Yes. Because then I could make plans with my teammates, and that would help. But I can see why it’s not for everyone. When you go around the game plaza you can look at what people say in their Miiverse drawings. I saw one person say, “I’m happy there’s no voice chat because if there were people would just tell me how much I suck.” I can kind of understand that.

Yeah, that’s actually kind of why a lot of adults – like me – tend to switch off voice chat in online games. Especially if we’re not playing with our friends. Did you try communicating with other players by tapping on the d-pad to have your avatar yell out preset messages? It’s not voice chat, but it might help.

Actually, I didn’t even notice I could do that until yesterday. It might be helpful, but if it took me a couple of weeks to notice it even existed I don’t know how useful it’d be. Everyone would need to know about it. Most players are probably like me and don’t even know it’s there.

Do you think you’d like to try a shooter that’s more of an every-player-for-themselves kind of thing?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. As I explained before, dad, I like to have teammates I can rely on. That’s all I have to say about that.

Gotcha. Now that you’ve played an online shooter, do you think it justifies all the schoolyard hubbub?

Yeah, I think so. I really like Splatoon a lot. But I feel like if I told the other kids that I was playing Splatoon they might not think it was all that great. Because it’s Nintendo, and they think Nintendo is for kids. And it doesn’t have blood and guts. And even if it was fun, they wouldn’t admit it. Because they want to seem more grown up. But I don’t care, because Nintendo games are adorable. And fun. Especially this one.

So it sounds like Splatoon was a big hit with you.

Yeah. I know we’re not really reviewing it, but if you were looking for a score I’d give it an eight or nine out of ten. It’s great.

And if I sat you down in front of the TV right now and laid it among all the games you normally like to play – Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Lego games, Minecraft, Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart – would you go straight for Splatoon?

Maybe. But honestly, it really depends on what I’m in the mood for. I like all sorts of games. I’m just really happy that now there’s also an online shooter that I want to play – and that you’re cool with me playing it.

It’s been a hectic month for newly public Shopify Inc., so much so that its executive team is basking in the spotlight that a successful cross-border listed initial public offering brings, but also craving for a return to normalcy and to what the group does best: making software that helps other people build a business.

“It’s been a really exciting time for us, but we’re ready to get back to business and go back to running the company,” Harley Finkelstein, chief platform officer, said in an interview after Shopify ceremoniously opened the stock market Tuesday in Toronto, just three business days after doing the same in New York. “We’re not focused on the stock price,” he assured. “We’re focused on building a great company.”

Ottawa, Ont.-headquartered Shopify is the market’s latest technology darling, returning a handsome paper profit to the investors who jumped in before or at last week’s US$17 per share debut price in New York. Shares rose 4.7 per cent on Tuesday to US$29.64 at 12:54 p.m., while its more thinly traded shares in Toronto slumped 1.5 per cent to $36.69.

While the company’s IPO has caused a big stir among traders and media on both sides of the border, its platform hasn’t yet seen that same burst of interest from prospective clients, says Finkelstein. Still, he says Shopify has added a number of larger brands to its roster during the past few weeks including Sears, the UPS Store and the Kardashians. But the goal is “to become a trusted public company,” he said, which he hopes will help boost the confidence of entrepreneurs who have been slower to embrace the web.

Related

• Shopify Inc surges 51% in trading debut, valuing company at nearly US$2 billion
• Buy Shopify — but not yet: Som Seif

During the quarter ending March 31, the cloud-based platform processed US$1.3 billion in transactions, a 108 per cent increase compared to the same period last year, and powered 162,261 businesses in more than 150 countries. While Canadian retailers have been sluggish in the pivot from a physical storefront to a virtual one, Finkelstein says online retail as a percentage of all retail is growing faster here than the U.S.

Shopify’s growth, he adds, has been all about persuading people that setting up an online business doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

Seeing the obvious potential beyond the computer screen, Shopify announced a few months ago that it would also introduce a point-of-sale terminal in an attempt to broaden its focus from just e-commerce to commerce, too. It’s now available across channels such as stores, pop-up shops, mobile and social media.

“For us, the future of retail isn’t about being online or offline,” Finkelstein added. “It’s about being able to sell where you have customers – and we’re going to allow our merchants to sell anywhere.”

George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire is two books and probably many years away from a proper conclusion.

And while Game of Thrones, HBO’s TV show based on the novels, is slated to finish up before publication of Martin’s final volume, it, too, is likely at least two or three years away from delivering its ending.

Which made it all the more exciting when, while playing the fourth of a scheduled six episodes in Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones adventure series – which follows the travails of House Forrester and takes place concomitantly with the events of the middle books – it began to dawn on me that an honest to goodness Game of Thrones ending is really and truly drawing near.

It may not be the family Stark finale millions of fans have been itching years to see, but at this point we should probably take what we can get.

Telltale Games

The fourth episode, titled Sons of Winter, kindles hope – a dangerous thing since, as fans well know, it always seems to be brightest before nightfall in Martin’s gritty fantasy world.

Following the format established in previous episodes, in which the story skips between multiple protagonists and plays out in brief segments, episode four finds several members of the Forrester clan finally making progress toward saving and restoring their house. (As usual, here’s the requisite SPOILER alert for anyone who hasn’t played preceding episodes.)

Rodrik Forrester, the current and still crippled head of his house, finds an unexpected ally that could help him save his captured brother Ryon and get out from under the thumb of rival House Whitehill. He finally possesses some semblance of power. Or at least thinks he does.

Brother Asher is still in Essos, but his dealings with Daenerys, the Mother of Dragons – just as calculating here as in the books and TV show – just prior to the liberation of Meereen place him on the cusp of earning a small army he can take back to Westeros to fight for his family.

Telltale Games

Sister Mira, meanwhile, has one of her strongest episodes yet, spending much of it mingling at Tommen Baratheon’s pre-coronation party in King’s Landing. She – meaning you, of course – plays the political game in satisfying fashion, using information as a tool to gain leverage and show strength. Be warned, though, that she faces some hard choices that could make formal enemies out of one or two withering allies.

Things are even looking up for one-time Forrester squire Gared Tuttle, whom we last saw being taken into custody on The Wall for killing his father’s murderer. Depending on your decisions, friendships earned in previous episodes could prove the key to his freedom.

The series’ trademark darkness still rears its head – most notably during a horrifying back story for Asher’s warrior pal Beskha, who’s quickly becoming one of the most memorable side characters in the series – but things are, by and large, looking up for the Forresters and their friends.

Telltale Games

That said, this episode is decidedly mid-season in tone. It’s all about scheming and positioning and without any truly shocking moments. I thought I’d stumbled across one in which several major characters die, but then the screen faded to black and I realized I’d made a rare game-ending decision and would need to try again.

There’s still some engaging play, including a lengthy and well choreographed stealth action sequence starring Asher that makes good use of Telltale’s traditional point-and-click interface. If you can manage to pull off everything without any mistakes it plays out in deliciously cinematic fashion.

But I couldn’t help being a bit disappointed that more hadn’t happened when the words “Next time on…” popped up and I realized that most of the developments that began this episode were going to be left hanging until sometime this summer.

Still, I have the sense that a legitimate Game of Thrones ending – a true ending, in which we are provided some sense of the outcome and fate of a family in which we’re deeply invested – is not only in the offing, but now only months away.

And in a franchise famous for cliffhangers and lack of resolutions, the thought of a genuine conclusion of some sort is reason to get at least a little excited.

TORONTO — Canadian e-commerce start-up Shoes.com Technologies plans to go public this fall following a private funding round that tapped high-net-worth individuals and private institutional capital, Chairman Roger Hardy said on Monday.

The company raised $45 million earlier this month, valuing it at $320 million. The offering was oversubscribed by two to three times, Hardy said, adding that it was the largest unbrokered private placement for a Canadian e-commerce company.

“This gets us cashed up right through to the IPO. It keeps us well capitalized to continue funding growth,” Hardy, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, said in an interview.

The news comes as another Canadian e-commerce company, Shopify, went public in a soaring U.S. and Canadian market debut last week.

A slew of Canadian technology companies have been tapped as potential IPO candidates, including Hootsuite, BuildDirect, Vision Critical, Wattpad and Shop.ca.

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“It’s validation that there are great companies here,” Hardy said of the Shopify IPO. “What it truly says is that innovative Canadian companies that succeed can get global attention.”

The e-commerce industry, dominated by giants such as Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, is highly sought by venture capitalists and investors as more consumers do their shopping online.

Shoes.com expects to generate more than $300 million in revenue in 2015. In the first quarter, sales grew 88 per cent from same period last year, Hardy said. The company’s revenue was over $200 million in 2014.

Shoes.com recently named Greg Kerfoot, owner of the Vancouver Whitecaps FC soccer team, and Jeffrey Mason, a former chief financial officer at Hunter Dickinson, to its board.

The company could list on a stock exchange in Toronto or New York, or both, Hardy said.

Hardy made a name for himself last year when he sold Coastal Contacts Inc, a digital retailer of eyeglasses and contact lenses, to Essilor International for about $430 million. Coastal was listed on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

© Thomson Reuters 2015

Close to five years after BCE Inc. first launched its Fibe TV offering in Toronto, the media giant unveiled a free mobile application for Apple’s iOS and Android on Tuesday that better integrates and encourages the use of the so-called “second screen” in the television viewing experience.

The new release, which combines the functionality of Bell’s content viewing app and its remote control app that were both already in use, now offers Fibe TV subscribers in Ontario and Quebec access to more than 300 live channels on their mobile screens at home and more than 170 live channels for on-the-go viewing, a feat the Montreal-based telco says it was first in the world to achieve.

Clearly designed with the end user in mind, the app is built with features that let people choose the way they want to watch, including starting a show on one screen and continuing it on another with the tap of a button.

Bell is continuing to see big gains in both subscriber count and revenue for its young Fibe solution, which is helping to lift sales of its companion broadband Internet offering. As more Canadians tune out to cable and satellite, many are opting for newer Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) products such as Fibe instead of cutting the cord completely. These days, many viewers are either using a computing device while they watch their television screen or they’re watching a show on the device itself.

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• Canadian TV revenues rise even as more viewers tune out

Shawn Omstead, the vice-president of residential products who manages the Fibe file at Bell, says the two screens have never really been formally married – until now.

“To date, this screen has been a compromise,” said Omstead, pointing to an Apple iPad during an interview at the company’s Bell Media offices in Toronto. “It hasn’t really lived up to where we wanted it to be. Now you’re able to get an experience that’s worthy of the Fibe brand.”

If the remote or tablet is too far away, viewers can even navigate the programming menu, change channels, and start, pause and record a show on their Apple Watch. This free upgrade follows other innovations that Bell has brought to television consumers such as the Restart function, which lets customers rewind and watch TV shows already in progress from the beginning on more than 170 channels.

Bell said on April 17 that it surpassed one million subscribers of Fibe TV in Ontario and Québec and its Bell Aliant FibreOP TV in Atlantic Canada, amassing a total footprint of 6.1 million households.

cpellegrini@nationalpost.com

Charter Communications Inc. agreed to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for about US$55 billion in cash and stock, swooping up the cable provider after getting last-minute competition from French billionaire Patrick Drahi.

Charter will pay US$195.71 a share —14 per cent above Time Warner Cable’s May 22 close — with US$100 in cash and the remainder in its own stock, according to a statement Tuesday. Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company that Charter has previously agreed to buy, will also be merged into the combined entity.

Charter, the fourth-biggest U.S. cable company, is clinching a deal with on No. 2 Time Warner Cable after its early 2014 bid was rejected and Comcast Corp. jumped in with a competing offer. Charter got another shot when regulatory scrutiny caused the Comcast deal to fall apart in April and then faced competition last week from Drahi’s Altice SA, which also held merger talks with Time Warner Cable.

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“The idea that Time Warner Cable and Charter are merging isn’t a surprise, but the price raises some eyebrows,” Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson in New York, said May 24 after Bloomberg News reported a deal was near. “Altice undoubtedly contributed to Charter having to pay such a steep price to close the deal.”

The Time Warner Cable deal enables Charter, whose largest shareholder is billionaire John Malone, to almost quadruple its number of cable subscribers, gaining 12 million customers in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Cable Deals

Dealmaking has been heating up in an industry that faces waning demand for traditional pay-TV packages and competition from Netflix, Amazon and other online services. Although many analysts predicted a tie-up between Charter and Time Warner Cable, Drahi made surprise foray into the U.S. on May 20 with the announcement of plans to buy a smaller rival, Suddenlink Communications. While in the country, he also met with Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Rob Marcus, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Cable providers have been expanding their Internet offerings to help offset the loss of cable subscribers. By opposing the Comcast merger, regulators have showed they are taking a hard look at deals that give companies too much power over broadband Internet, which is increasingly becoming the way that people watch TV.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler called Time Warner Cable’s Marcus and Charter CEO Tom Rutledge recently to dispel notions that industry mergers won’t be approved by regulators, a person with knowledge of the calls has said. Wheeler told the CEOs that any transaction would be judged on merit, and there was no flat ban on cable combinations, the person said.

Mergers may give cable companies more leverage when negotiating contracts with television networks, which in turn could keep cable TV prices down for consumers.
Bloomberg.com

Charter Communications Inc. is near an agreement to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for about US$55.1 billion in cash and stock, according to people familiar with the matter.

Charter will pay about US$195 a share – 14 percent above Time Warner Cable’s closing price on May 22 – with US$100 in cash and the rest in its own stock, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. The deal could be announced as soon as tomorrow, they said. Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company that Charter is trying to buy, will also be merged into the combined entity, they said.

Charter, the fourth-biggest U.S. cable company, is making its second move on No. 2 Time Warner Cable after its early 2014 bid was rejected and Comcast Corp. swooped in with a competing offer. Charter and its biggest shareholder, billionaire John Malone, got another shot when the Comcast deal fell apart in April because of regulatory scrutiny. They also faced last- minute competition from French billionaire Patrick Drahi’s Altice SA, which held merger talks with Time Warner Cable over the past days.

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“The idea that Time Warner Cable and Charter are merging isn’t a surprise, but the price raises some eyebrows,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson in New York. “Altice undoubtedly contributed to Charter having to pay such a steep price to close the deal.”

Spokespeople for Charter, Time Warner Cable and Altice declined to comment.

Time Warner Cable shareholders will have the option to accept as much as US$115 a share in cash and less Charter stock, the people said. The deal value of US$55.1 billion is for Time Warner’s equity. Charter also will assume debt in the transaction.

The transaction enables Charter to almost quadruple the number of its cable subscribers, gaining 12 million customers in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Dealmaking is heating up in an industry facing waning demand for traditional pay-TV packages and competition from Netflix, Amazon and other online services. While many analysts predicted a tie-up between Charter and Time Warner Cable, Drahi made surprise foray into the U.S. on May 20 with the announcement of plans to buy a much smaller rival, Suddenlink Communications. While in the country, he also met with Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Rob Marcus, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Going after Time Warner Cable just days after agreeing to take control of Suddenlink, the No. 7. in the industry, would be the boldest move yet for Drahi. The Franco-Israeli billionaire has built up a telecommunications and cable empire that so far stretches from France, Israel, Portugal to the Caribbean.

At $55.1 billion, Charter’s offer will be difficult to top for Altice, a Luxembourg-based company that has a market value of about US$35 billion and ballooning debt.

“It would be hard for Altice to structure a deal that would be as compelling for Time Warner Cables’ shareholders as a Charter deal,” said Moffett, the MoffettNathanson analyst.

Liberty Broadband Corp., the Malone entity that holds the stake in Charter as well as shares of Time Warner Cable, will buy US$5 billion of new Charter stock at the current price to help fund the deal, said the people. The transaction also has a breakup fee of US$2 billion, which anticipates a possible bid by Drahi’s Altice SA and antitrust concerns, they said.

Charter has also been renegotiating its offer to buy billionaire Si Newhouse Jr.’s Bright House Networks for US$10.4 billion. That agreement had been in jeopardy because it depended on Comcast closing its merger with Time Warner Cable, which has the right to match or block the deal because of a longstanding arrangement to negotiate programming and other deals for Bright House.

Cable providers have been expanding their Internet offerings to help offset the loss of cable subscribers. By opposing the Comcast merger, regulators have showed they are taking a hard look at deals that give companies too much power over broadband Internet, which is increasingly becoming the way that people watch TV.

The idea that Time Warner Cable and Charter are merging isn’t a surprise, but the price raises some eyebrows

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler called Time Warner Cable’s Marcus and Charter CEO Tom Rutledge recently to dispel notions that industry mergers won’t be approved by regulators, a person with knowledge of the calls has said. Wheeler told the CEOs that any transaction would be judged on merit, and there was no flat ban on cable combinations, the person said.

Mergers may give cable companies more leverage when negotiating contracts with television networks, which could keep cable TV prices down for consumers.

Investors have been anticipating more deals. Cablevision Systems Corp., the No. 5 in the industry, rose 17 percent on May 20, the day Altice agreed to buy a controlling stake in Suddenlink Communications.

Bloomberg.com

LOS ANGELES — It’s a meet-and-greet worthy of an A-list star.

Outside the three-story bookstore at the outdoor shopping mecca known as The Grove, hundreds of mostly young women have formed a line that stretches past trendy clothing stores and spills out onto a nearby street. They’re waiting to have Connor Franta, an affable 22-year-old Internet personality best known for delivering diary-like monologues on YouTube, sign a copy of his new memoir.

The irony of a YouTube star drawing a massive crowd at a bookstore isn’t lost on talent manager Andrew Graham.

“A year ago, I went to New York and tried to get a book publisher to take a meeting with me,” said Graham, who represents Franta and other mega-popular YouTubers. “I had one meeting, and they laughed at me. Here we are a year later at Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles with a New York Times bestselling author who is a client. I think that says it all. It’s a 180-degree turn.”

Franta isn’t a singer, chef, comedian or athlete. He’s a YouTube star angling to be the Oprah Winfrey for millennials.

In its 10-years of existence, YouTube has evolved from a playground for kitty videos to a $20 billion visual menagerie. Along the way, it’s also become an incubator for a new type of celebrity — a digital Brat Pack that’s leveraging smartphone stardom to write books, drop albums, design products and break into Hollywood.

“It’s the most powerful marketing platform in the world for millennials,” said Graham. “If you’re trying to reach that audience of girls gathered downstairs, YouTube is the venue to do that. Look at an artist like Fred (Lucas Cruikshank). He went off to Hollywood, created some films, neglected his channel, came back to YouTube and … crickets. No one was there anymore. You can’t abandon it.”

In recent years, YouTube, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, has propped up YouTubers like Franta — “creators,” the site calls them — who attract millions of subscribers that regularly watch their online videos and the advertising attached to them.

Their popularity is still eclipsed by music videos, which continue to account for YouTube’s most watched clips. Yet the fandom that creators are inspiring, and the ad revenue they’re bringing in, can’t be ignored.

With his playful grin and doe eyes, Franta currently boasts more than 4.4 million devotees to his personal YouTube channel, where he speaks to viewers about life, dating, candy, whatever at least once a week. He began posting videos in 2010 while still attending high school in La Crescent, Minnesota. Now, he’s releasing music compilations and a line of locally grown coffee.

For every Justin Bieber or Psy, perhaps YouTube’s biggest success stories, there are dozens of Frantas. It’s a form of celebrity that didn’t exist 10 years ago, when YouTube was born and made it simple to post video online. Franta, who continues to upload videos despite his other endeavours, is young enough to have been inspired by the YouTube vloggers that came before him.

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“There are guys like Shane Dawson and Phillip DeFranco who I was a fan of, and now we’re friends,” said Franta, sequestered from fans behind racks of his book, “A Work in Progress,” in the Barnes & Noble stockroom. “Do you know how awkward it would be to tell some of my friends that I watched them on YouTube in my bedroom before I knew them? It’s weird to think of it like that.”

The creators’ importance to YouTube is evidenced by the Google-backed site bankrolling marketing campaigns the past two years featuring such famous (on the Internet) faces as Bethany Mota, Hannah Hart and Grace Helbig. While such creators vlog about very different topics, they usually share a similar esthetic: improvised delivery, quirky editing and personalities that jump off screens.

Google has opened production facilities in London, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and Sao Paulo for creators who have more than 5,000 subscribers to film videos. The studios are equipped with sets and equipment that transcend most YouTubers’ living rooms and webcams. The spaces also serve as social hubs for creators. Several of them will host 10th anniversary parties on Wednesday.

“For us, creators are the lightbulb of the ecosystem,” said Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s head of culture and trends. “Sure, YouTube was originally known for viral videos, and that was great and still is, but if you want to be able to build a business, you need to be able to create a following. I think it’s a very different model than traditional media. It’s about maximizing the connection with an audience.”

That’s not so different from the genesis of YouTube, which entered its beta phase in May 2005. The first-ever video posted on the site was a crude 19-second clip titled “Me at the Zoo” that featured YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim speaking directly to the camera about the “cool” elephants at the San Diego Zoo.

It’s been a decade, and while video lengths are longer and resolutions are higher, the sentiment is the same: watch me.

The next evolution for online video has seemingly already arrived, with such sites and apps as Twitch, Periscope, Meerkat and YouNow making it easier than ever to stream live video. That’s a feature YouTube has in its arsenal but the streaming video giant has yet to solidify itself as a live video destination.

“There’s a ton of opportunity for innovation there,” said Allocca. “As it becomes easier to stream and take advantages of audiences built on YouTube, there’s going to be some interesting stuff. It’s another one of those things that’s really hard to predict what will be next. I definitely think live experiences and people gathering around singular moments will continue to grow.”

If the rise of YouTube over the past decade is any indication, so will the lines to meet creators.

 

MONTREAL – The lobby at Place Viger castle has a bare concrete floor and unfinished drywall as crews continue to work on the $250 million redevelopment at a complex that was once a grand hotel and railway station in the heart of Montreal.

But up the elevator to the top floors of the 117-year old chateaux, the offices of Lightspeed are renovated and in operation at the new headquarters the company moved into last month after out-growing their old location.

Lightspeed develops and sells point-of-sale technology for retailers and restaurants — mobile device-based systems for recording transactions, keeping inventory, managing orders and processing credit card payments.

Right now the company has 24,000 locations on board with about $9 billion in processing volume going through every year.

The company celebrated its 10-year anniversary in March, growing from 50 employees three years ago to 300 globally today.

“We want to be the Montreal unicorn,” Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva said, using the term for a tech startup that reaches a $1 billion dollar market value.

“Ottawa has Shopify, Vancouver has Hootsuite. We think we are that for Montreal,” he said in an interview.

In October, the United States will change credit card security rules, shifting the liability for fraud onto merchants if they don’t adopt EMV chip and PIN technology. Until now, card issuers have been absorbing the fraud expenses.

For Lightspeed, which uses the EMV technology, this represents a demand as companies try to become compliant.

“We see this as an amazing opportunity where you’re going to have a very high demand for systems like ours and we are the largest player in the market today, so we think this is going to fuel growth like crazy in the next couple years,” said Chief Revenue Officer Jean-Paul Chauvet.

Chauvet said Lightspeed’s marketing team reaches internationally out to 16,000 leads a month and will be targeting U.S. companies this summer with education about what EMV changes mean to their liabilities.

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“It’s complex for an independent retailer to understand what’s happening,” he said.

“Through that education, we’re going to bring them through understanding how Lightspeed can help them.”

The company says that in the coming weeks it will be approved to become the first company to manage cloud-based versions of Sales Recording Module systems for restaurants in Quebec, as part of the province’s tax collector’s new requirements.

Last week, Ottawa’s Shopify Inc. — another POS software company — had a successful stock-market debut when its IPO raised a larger-than-expected sum of US$131 million.

“It was a huge day for Canadian tech. I think the realization that you don’t have to build your company in Silicon Valley is such a big help for all of us that are trying to build big tech superstars in Canada,” said Dasilva.

“It tells us we’re going in the right direction.”

Though Shopify and Lightspeed provide similar services, Dasilva and Chauvet say there isn’t a strong feeling of competition.

“The market is huge and worth billions and billions of dollars. I don’t think you’ll have one player,” said Chauvet.

They say the average customer working with Lightspeed has $600,000 in transactions a year at two to 10 stores — a different target market than Shopify’s focus on smaller businesses.

Dasilva said Lightspeed is still “a few years away” from going public. “That’s a big ambition, but I think right now we’re just focused on growing,” he said.

Accel Partners led a $30 million investment round in 2012. In September 2014, Lightspeed closed a $35 million investment round led by iNovia Capital.

“Right now we’re enjoying the ride as a private company. We’ll watch Shopify enjoy all the public scrutiny,” joked Dasilva.

TORONTO — Wireless carriers automatically renewing customers’ contracts without their consent. Clients being kept on hold for hours while trying to cancel their services. Mysterious charges from unknown third parties popping up on customers’ phone bills.

These were some of the most commonly cited allegations in hundreds of complaints lodged by consumers with the CRTC about telecom companies between January and August 2013. The Canadian Press requested the documents via Access to Information legislation in September 2013 but did not receive them until March of this year.

A few of the appeals are heart-wrenching. One complainant alleges Bell wouldn’t stop harassing him about his deceased wife’s account, even though he had paid it off.

“Losing my wife of 45 years was hard enough, but dealing with ineptitude like this makes it even harder,” he wrote.

Bell said it works to resolve all complaints but it can’t comment on what happened in this case because it would need to know the identity of the complainant, which was redacted by the CRTC. The CRTC noted that it was copied on the complaint that was sent to Bell CEO George Cope and the federal regulator closed the file.

Another wrote to the CRTC in desperation, accusing Bell of shutting off service for an “unknown reason” and that five calls to the company had failed to resolve the problem.

“Please please help me,” the complainant wrote. “I’m 77 years old and just lost my wife and I need my phone and Bell won’t fix the error that they caused.”

In its response letter to the CRTC, Bell said it had accidentally disconnected the customer’s phone line a week earlier than requested but restored service a few days later. The customer received a $56.44 credit as a good will gesture.

Other complaints contain personal details or wacky anecdotes.

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One complainant alleges Bell cut off his phone service on Halloween night, leaving him unable to pick up his girlfriend, who was left waiting for him alone outside.

Again, Bell said it works to resolve all complaints but can’t comment on this specific case without knowing the identity of the complainant. The CRTC said it does not intervene in billing, marketing practices and quality of service.

Another person alleges he was trying to get Telus service trucks to stop speeding through his neighbourhood when company employees flashed him the middle finger.

Speaking generally and not about the specific complaint, Telus spokesman Shawn Hall said the company expects its technicians to provide a high level of customer service and they try to resolve such instances immediately. The CRTC said the complaint was outside its scope.

I’m 77 years old and just lost my wife and I need my phone and Bell won’t fix the error that they caused

Many of the gripes were about billing issues and were referred to the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services. In one instance, Telus provided a customer with a $2,435.25 credit for erroneous charges, taxes and interest.

BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. say the number of complaints filed about telecom companies has been steadily declining as all three companies have worked to improve customer service.

“These specific issues demonstrate that we’re not perfect at Telus,” said Hall. “We are striving to bring the number of complaints down to zero.”

Ottawa has introduced a number of regulations in recent years to address some of the issues contained in the complaints.

In June 2013, the CRTC introduced a new wireless code that allows customers to cancel their cellphone contracts after two years without incurring penalties. The code also makes it easier for Canadians to unlock their phones so they can be used with another carrier.

The federal government has banned telecommunications companies from charging customers for paper bills, and as of late January, customers have been able to cancel their telephone, Internet and cable services without providing 30 days’ notice.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl DyckBCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. say the number of complaints filed about telecom companies has been steadily declining as all three companies have worked to improve customer service.

An annual report from the complaints commissioner suggests the measures are having an effect.

The commissioner accepted 11,340 complaints by the end of 2014 — down 17 per cent from the previous year.

Roughly 32 per cent — or 3,651 complaints — were about Bell, down nearly seven per cent from the previous year. Rogers and its discount brand, Fido, came in second with 3,284 complaints, a decline of about 31.5 per cent.

Telus received 653 complaints, roughly six per cent of the total and a decline of about 26 per cent.

Hall said the decline indicates that the company’s focus on improving its customer service is working.

“That said, one complaint is too many,” said Hall. “We learn from them. And if we need to change a policy or a practice, we’ll do that.”

Rogers spokeswoman Heather Robinson said the company has been investing in improving its customer service.

“Much has changed in the time since those complaints were initially lodged,” Robinson said in an email, adding that the company always checks with customers before renewing their contracts and provides refunds to clients who are billed for services via premium text messaging that they did not request.

Bell spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis said the company works to investigate and resolve all complaints it receives.

“Bell may have a greater total number of service complaints than other companies, but it’s worth noting we are by far Canada’s largest communications company with more than 21 million customers in every province and territory,” Michelis said in an email.

The Canadian Press

BlackBerry Ltd. is cutting jobs at offices around the world as it brings together the different parts of its shrinking smartphone business.

The cutbacks come as the Waterloo, Ontario-based company works to make its device unit profitable again, BlackBerry said Friday in an e-mailed statement. Lisette Kwong, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to say how many employees were affected. The company had 7,000 employees as of September 2014.

“We have made the decision to consolidate our device software, hardware and applications business, impacting a number of employees around the world,” BlackBerry said in the statement.

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After its global market share fell to less than 1 per cent, BlackBerry narrowed the target audience for its phones to financial professionals and government workers who demand a rigorous level of security.

While reining in BlackBerry’s hardware ambitions, Chief Executive Officer John Chen is expanding in software, making more applications that work on other manufacturers’ mobile devices. Revenue is still falling, but Chen has stemmed cash losses and BlackBerry began to post profits late last year.

BlackBerry advanced 2 per cent to $10.48 at the close in New York on Friday. The shares have fallen 4.6 per cent this year.
Bloomberg.com

BlackBerry Ltd. shares were up Friday afternoon on the company’s plans to buy back and cancel as many as 12 million shares, or 2.6 per cent of its public float, to offset a new employee share purchase plan.

The employee stock plan, which will increase the amount of shares available for compensation, will be presented for approval at the company’s annual general meeting on June 23, BlackBerry said Thursday in a statement. The shares climbed 2.2 per cent to $12.81 at 1:43 p.m. in Toronto.

BlackBerry shares have fallen 6.5 per cent this year to $10.27 as analysts expressed doubt about the company’s ability to increase software sales. Chen, since taking over in November 2013, has been diversifying the company, with the goal of doubling software revenue to US$500 million by next March.

Several top employees have left the company in the past year, including Jeff Gadway, former director of enterprise product marketing; and Alec Saunders, former vice president of the QNX unit.

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“We intend to take advantage of our strong cash position to purchase our shares when the market price does not reflect what we view to be the underlying value and future prospects of our business,” Chief Executive Officer John Chen said in the statement.

Chen’s salary for the fiscal year that ended in February was US$3.4 million, down from US$85.8 million in the previous year when he was awarded US$84.8 million in shares that are being distributed to him over five years.

BlackBerry plans to buy the shares within the next 12 months on the Nasdaq Stock Market and, pending regulatory approval, on the Toronto Stock Exchange, according to the statement.

The company said it hasn’t repurchased any outstanding securities in the past 12 months.

Bloomberg News

The Financial Post rounds up recent news that technology leaders need to know:

PCI Data Security Standard 3.1 deadline approaches

As of June 30, 2015, companies that accept payment cards must comply with the updated PCI DSS 3.1 standard. Included in the update is a revision of the acceptable encryption used to protect customer data. Partly driven by recent vulnerabilities, SSL has been removed, as have earlier versions of the TLS standard. SSL and early TLS cannot be used as security controls to protect payment data after June 30, 2016. Prior to this date, existing implementations that use SSL and/or early TLS must have a formal risk mitigation and migration plan in place.

SSD drives can lose data if left without power

ZDNet reports that some solid state disks will lose data if left for as little as a few days without power. It depends on the temperature; a presentation by Seagate’s Alvin Cox on the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) website warned that the data retention period on some SSDs falls by half with each 5 degree (Celsius) rise in storage temperature. For example, a drive stored at 25 degrees Celsius should hold its data for two years under optimal conditions. At 30 degrees, retention drops to one year. For enterprise class drives, the storage standard drops from 2 years to 20 weeks. Security company KoreLogic recommends imaging critical data onto mechanical drives before storage.

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Malware command and control hidden on TechNet

ThreatPost reports that researchers at Microsoft and security firm FireEye have discovered embedded command and control information for China-based malware on Microsoft’s TechNet web portal. The researchers were able to successfully inject encoded data into some of the affected pages, allowing them to identify the malware and its victims, and to gain insight into ways to detect the compromise. FireEye says that this will help identify and remediate the compromise.

CSC splitting in half

IT services company Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has announced that it will split in two this fall, separating its global commercial and government business from its U.S. public sector arm. The company says that the two segments have different growth profiles and cash flow dynamics, so the separation will allow both companies to better optimize their capital strategies and cost structures, and will provide investors with distinct long-term investment opportunities.

“Logjam” vulnerability fix causes problems

Engadget reports that the fix for a website encryption vulnerability known as Logjam can block access to some sites, even if they have been patched. Admins and owners of affected web or mail servers can check the researchers’ guide to fixing it; it involves changing Diffie-Hellman cipher settings. Users should be sure to have the latest version of their browsers installed. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari are all releasing patches.

USB flaw hits networking equipment

The NetUSB kernel created to allow users to plug USB devices such as printers and external drives into networking equipment contains a flaw that could allow attackers to invade affected devices, according to researchers at security firm Sec Consult. Eighteen vendors, including market leader Cisco, are listed in US-CERT’s advisory; users are advised to update firmware once patches are available, and meanwhile to perform the mitigating actions in the advisory.

While fewer Canadians paid to watch television last year than the year before, the country’s service providers still managed to post combined revenues that exceeded what the group had generated during the prior period.

According to new figures released on Thursday by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the sales of cable, satellite TV and so-called Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) rose 1.5 per cent in the year ended Aug. 31, 2014, to $8.9 billion from $8.8 billion in 2013. The number of subscribers who consumed media these three ways fell to 11.4 million from 11.5 million, hampered by losses in cable and satellite.

The data show that newer IPTV solutions, which would include Bell’s Fibe, for example, are seeing “significant growth,” the telecom watchdog said in a release. More specifically, the number of IPTV subscribers jumped 29 per cent year-over-year, while revenues increased 39 per cent. These statistics support the enthusiasm that executives at the likes of BCE Inc. have been conveying about the new technology during its recent earnings calls.

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The cost of fulfilling cable and IPTV services is also on the rise, up 7.6 per cent to $5.5 billion. As a result, operating margins in this category are under pressure, down to 16.3 per cent in 2014 from 25.6 per cent in 2010.

Note: The CRTC considers cable and IPTV companies to include Rogers Communications Inc., BCE, Telus Corp., Quebecor Inc., Shaw Communications Inc., Cogeco Inc., Eastlink, MTS Inc. and SaskTel, among a few other unnamed small providers. BCE and Shaw represent the satellite providers.

Carl Icahn makes a pretty compelling case for why Apple should get into the television market. The billionaire investor says people spend a quarter of their free time watching TV, and that the market, which he says is worth about US$575 billion, excluding advertising, is more valuable than smartphones.

Sounds nice on paper, but the reality is that the economics of building a TV set are very different from those of mobile phones or laptops. The key difference is that the entire product essentially hinges on one component: the display. In many TVs, the screen accounts for about 80 per cent of the production cost, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In a smartphone, it’s about 20 per cent, says market research firm IHS, which leaves plenty of room to differentiate with other features.

Whereas savvy smartphone shoppers look at software, memory, processing power, and other tech specs when deciding on a phone or computer, people tend to choose TVs based on picture and price. Apple doesn’t make its own displays, so both factors would rely almost entirely on whatever ones it can procure from a competitor in Asia. Perhaps that, more than the lack of exciting new features, is why Apple put an end to its efforts to develop a TV set last year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

To gain a foothold in TVs, you’ll want a great screen, and only a few places sell them. Two South Korean tech giants, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, supply about 42 per cent of the world’s liquid crystal display panels, according to market researcher IDC. To get access to those panels, Apple would have to persuade them to let it compete with their TV businesses. Samsung and LG-brand TVs together account for about 38 per cent of purchases by consumers around the world, according to researcher TrendForce.

The Koreans have gained a technical edge over Taiwanese, Chinese, and Japanese panel manufacturers. Samsung and LG have been at the forefront of new TV technology, such as curved displays, OLED organic displays, and 4K ultra-high definition. There aren’t many other alternatives. China Star Optoelectronics Technology in Shenzen and other companies with similarly catchy names are rapidly climbing the ranks of suppliers by feeding a growing domestic demand for local, low-cost brands. While Sony still sells a lot of TVs, its market share has been declining for years. Sony placed its TV manufacturing business into a separate structure to boost performance after years of losses. Apple buys screens for some products from Sharp, another Japanese consumer electronics company that’s not exactly in ascendance. On May 11, Sharp said it was considering reducing capital and issuing preferred shares to shore up its balance sheet.
There’s probably never been the kind of opportunity in TVs that Apple exploited in other areas of consumer electronics. When it entered the phone market in 2007, Apple used a game plan that had already borne fruit in music players with the iPod. It wrapped industry-standard components in an attractive package and married it with easy-to-use software. It also helped that Nokia, Motorola, and BlackBerry were painfully slow to respond.

The TV business is already fiercely competitive, and profit margins are slim. The latest sets on the shelves at Best Buy can be easily hung like picture frames and have bezels measuring a fraction of an inch. Smart TVs, set-top boxes, and game consoles offer all kinds of innovations in voice search, motion control, and content. You can already get Netflix or Hulu on many of those—including the Apple TV box or similar devices from Google, Roku, and Amazon.com, each available for less than US$100.

Despite all the odds stacked against this project, more than a few Apple watchers were surprised by the prospect of the company not making a TV set. Icahn told CNBC he was confused by the Wall Street Journal article. Besides that apparent miscalculation, we’d like to check Icahn’s work on the value of the TV industry. IDC says the TV industry generated US$149.5 billion in revenue last year. While still a hefty sum, that’s about a quarter the size of Icahn’s estimate and less than half of the smartphone market, according to IDC data.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray who’s been among the loudest beating the drum for Apple’s TV project, is trying to come to terms with the loss. “Given how adamant we have been about the reality of an Apple television, it’s hard to accept the reality of no Apple television,” wrote Munster in a note on Tuesday. Don’t worry, Gene. There’s a lot of other good TVs you can buy.

Bloomberg.com

Gaming in Color turns out to be a well meaning but only occasionally interesting documentary about gay gamers and gaming culture.

Produced by MidBoss – a company originally founded to bring into being the Kickstarter-funded, LGBT-focused GaymerX convention – the 62-minute feature covers much of the territory you’d expect of its subject. It examines the straight male protagonist dominated games scene, discusses the importance of making games more inclusive, and looks at how gay gamers (and game developers who dare to include gay characters in their games) are frequently attacked and persecuted online by angry, anonymous voices.

A healthy assortment of interviewees representing most sectors of the LGBT community and much of gaming spectrum (developers, community organizers, players, and a professor) take turns providing insights and opinions on these issues, sometimes peppering the conversation with personal experiences – including a memorable story from Joey Stern, founder of the online community Geeks OUT!, in which he recounts the time he played against someone online who kept calling all of his moves “gay.”

But while important messages are communicated and valid points made, Gaming in Color never quite manages to craft the sort of cohesive argument that its topic deserves.

For every interesting, provocative, and thoughtfully communicated idea – like Portal being the “queerest” triple-A game yet made; how games are an aesthetic expression of systems; and the notion that mainstream games and their developers have been knowingly embarrassing themselves for a long time by purposefully excluding gay characters – there’s a stereotyping remark about how straight gamers are primarily interested in competitive play, bits that feel like promos for GaymerX rather than legitimate documentary segments, or a random homophobic YouTube comment the origin and function of which isn’t always evident.

One of the film’s most distracting issues is its reliance on pop-up text graphics that display too briefly while subjects are talking. They often disappeared before I could read them and usually caused me to lose track of what the interviewee was discussing. After about 15 minutes of this I found myself pausing the movie to read them whenever they popped up, only to realize that many are unattributed, could potentially be out of context, or aren’t directly connected to anything the current interviewee is talking about.

In the end — and as with many documentaries — Gaming in Color is at its best when the filmmakers step back and simply let the people they’re interviewing do the talking.

Like when several interviewees equate their trouble fitting into gay culture as a gamer to having trouble fitting into mainstream culture as a geek — a clever comparison that ought to help a broader audience of gamers understand the double isolation of being a gay gamer.

Or when others talk about how the best way to make straight gamers more accepting of the LGBT community isn’t via online games in which players communicate with each other, but rather simply to create gay characters with whom the protagonist — and by extension the player — bonds as friends.

Or when George Skleres, an engineer with Riot Games (League of Legends) and one of the film’s most charismatic and engaging personalities, talks about how frustrating it is to have to cooperate with homophobic players when playing team games online, explaining that sometimes he doesn’t want to crusade, he just wants to play.

Gaming in Color isn’t without interesting ideas and authentic stories. It just needed more work in the editing room.

It is, at the very least, worth watching for any LGBT gamers who feel isolated and excluded. Even if you can’t attend GaymerX (which is being held in San Jose in December this year), you’ll at least come away with the names of some safe and welcoming online communities to look up, plus a list of some great games designed with queer gamers in mind.

That some of these games even exist is proof that the people interviewed in Gaming in Color are starting to make an impact in the industry.

You can rent and stream Gaming in Color on VHX TV for $2.99.

Virtual machines running the open-source QEMU hypervisor contain a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to move between virtual machines and attack the host.

The bug, known as VENOM (Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation), is a flaw in, of all things, the virtual floppy disk controller component of QEMU. Even if the component is disabled, the bug can still be exploited.

The problem is mitigated by the fact that the market-leading hypervisors, VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, are not based on QEMU, so are not affected. However XEN, KVM and other virtualization platforms run QEMU, including Oracle VirtualBox 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 prior to 4.3.28, Oracle VM 2.2, 3.2 and 3.3, and Oracle Linux 5, 6 and 7. Patches are now available, according to Oracle’s security bulletin.

In addition, Citrix XenServer is affected, and the company’s security advisory says that it, too, has released patches. There’s also a fix for the open-source hypervisors from Xen.

The vulnerable code is embedded in some versions of Linux as well. Red Hat has released patches; all versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are affected. A patch for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 is also available, with patches for more of its products forthcoming.

Venom isn’t new. The vulnerability has existed in the QEMU code since 2004, when the virtual floppy disk controller was added to QEMU, according to CrowdStrike, whose researcher discovered the bug. It is just that – a programming error that allows attackers to access the system in unsanctioned ways.

CrowdStrike provides a list of patches and advisories about the problem on its Venom page, as well as a description of the bug, what it does, and how attacks can occur. On the page, CrowdStrike describes the potential impact of an exploit, saying, “Absent mitigation, this VM escape could open access to the host system and all other VMs running on that host, potentially giving adversaries significant elevated access to the host’s local network and adjacent systems. Exploitation of the VENOM vulnerability can expose access to corporate intellectual property (IP), in addition to sensitive and personally identifiable information (PII), potentially impacting the thousands of organizations and millions of end users that rely on affected VMs for the allocation of shared computing resources, as well as connectivity, storage, security, and privacy.”

All affected vendors are recommending that users patch their systems as soon as possible, and confirm with their hosting and cloud providers that their systems have also been updated. Although no attacks have been reported yet, researchers expect some, now that the flaw has been made public.

There’s 4K, Ultra-high-definition (UHD), and Retina.

Every manufacturer has a different term for televisions, mobile devices and computer monitors that exceed high-definition 1080p (1080-pixel) video resolution, which is generally seen as the current industry standard.

Televisions packing an additional pixel punch are often pegged as the next big thing for displays. Today, most people own an HD television and if television manufacturers’ bold claims are to be believed, in just a few years, the majority of people will soon own a 4K television instead.

More consumers may be looking to 4K TVs now that its average price has fallen dramatically over the last year and television manufacturers have made it clear they believe 4K is the future of TV. In March 2015, a 55 inch 4K TV was priced at an average of US$1,370, compared to an average of US$2,660 for a 4K television of the same size in March 2014 – a drop of 49 per cent.

Yet 4K TVs have been on store shelves for a number of years now and there’s one big drawback the industry still has yet to overcome: The amount of content natively available in 4K still isn’t enough to warrant the additional cost of a UHD television.

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4K resolution displays are defined as 4096 x 2160 pixels, a number that refers to the display’s horizontal resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Ultra-high-definition (UHD), depending on the manufacturer, can sometimes feature a slightly less pixel-filled screen – 3840 x 2160. The term 4K and UHD, as well as even Retina, are often used interchangeably by manufacturers even though each buzzword often refers to a different resolution.

“4K gives you four times the standard resolution of an HDTV. This also allows you to move closer to your TV and get a bigger screen TV that maybe initially wouldn’t fit in your room,” said Pat Bugos, vice president of sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics Co. “UHD is a big part of our strategy for 2015 and is a growing segment. We estimate that this year the UHD market will actually quadruple in size.”

Sony Corp. Canada’s TV marketing director, Dan Phillips, echoed similar sentiments about the technology, placing an emphasis on how important 4K televisions are to the future of Sony televisions.

“North American consumers and consumers in general, want larger and larger TVs. So the trend in the market is that 50 inches and up TVs are more popular than ever and growing every year. So that’s what retailers are attaching themselves to because they’re trying to keep the whole basket of goods at a high price,” said Philips. He also explained that the improvement in 4K technology becomes more apparent in larger televisions.

“Inherently the issue is that regardless of how big a standard HDTV is, it still has the same number of pixels in it,” said Phillips.

With a standard high-definition display, whether it’s a large television screen or small Android/iPhone display, a 1080p or 720p screen shares an identical number of pixels. This means that with a large 70-inch 720p or 1080p TV, or any television over 55-inches, many people will begin to notice small grid marks known as pixels, especially when sitting close to a TV. This is an issue 4K’s higher resolution solves and is perhaps the biggest benefit of the technology.

Samsung’s Bugos also explained “up-converting” is a big draw for consumers thinking about purchasing a 4K television, giving those interested in future-proofing their expensive television purchase an immediate option when it comes to 4K content.

“The [4K] TVs themselves have a fantastic remastering engine inside of them which actually allows you to take whatever content you do have and up-convert it to a near 4K quality. Content is less of a story when you have a television like ours that takes the current source that you have and turns it into 4K,” said Bugos.

While the above statements largely stick to the main marketing talking points surrounding 4K technology, most of what television manufacturers are stating about 4K televisions is actually true to some extent, especially if market predictions and current sales statistics are taken into consideration.

Inherently the issue is that regardless of how big a standard HD TV is, it still has the same number of pixels in it

According to a recent report by market research firm NDP, during the first three months of 2015, 4K televisions maintained a relatively small market share, contributing to just five per cent of overall television sales. However, since most 4K TVs cost considerably more than a standard definition television, 4K sales accounted for 16 per cent of dollars spent on TVs, a two per cent increase over the same period last year.

“Regarding the outlook for 2015, much depends on the course that the industry will take on setting prices, particularly during the holiday shopping season. If prices continue to drop at their current rate, and given the broad number of 4K models currently being introduced into the market, I would expect the unit share of 4K to increase from the current 5 per cent to approximately 15 per cent by the end of the year,” said Mark Haar, director, consumer electronics and home at NPD Group.

The main drawback of 4K TVs is that there just isn’t much native content available to consumers.

Television manufacturers such as Sony and Samsung often boast about 4K televisions’ ability to upscale 1080p content to a higher resolution. Upscaling takes a standard 720p or 1080p high-definition resolution video, and then increases the pixel count to 4K, adding additional detail and improved visual fidelity in the process.

But critics say upscaling isn’t worth the additional cost. Geoffrey Morrison, a journalist with CNET who frequently reviews and writes about televisions, says most people will notice a marginal improvement over standard 1080p when content is upscaled, but that the improvement is hardly worth the current cost of a 4K television.

“Unless someone is planning on getting a really big TV (over 60 inches) the added detail of 4K won’t really be noticeable. Since nearly all content is 1080p (or lower) and will be for many years, even people wanting to ‘future proof’ will probably be fine with 1080p for this TV,” Morrison said.

Morrison believes the more noticeable improvement in televisions will come from what is referred to as “high dynamic range” – technology that makes a TV’s picture more closely resemble how the human eye views objects – and expanded colour, which makes colours more vibrant and realistic, rather than the additional pixels of 4K.

“TVs aren’t really worth the premium over a good/cheaper 1080p model. 4K TVs will be better and cheaper next year,” said Morrison.

Another barrier to 4K televisions is the amount of content available in 4K is still very minimal. Consumer physical disc versions of 4K movies or television shows still don’t exist, although 4K Blu-rays and players are expected to arrive at some point in 2015. Because of the lack of physical content, movie and television shows, streaming platform Netflix has become the leader in 4K content.

But in Canada slow Internet connections and restrictive bandwidth caps are an obstacle for those interested in subscribing to Netflix’s slightly higher priced $11.99 4K subscription plan (a basic Netflix subscription costs $7.99).

“Increasingly most of our live action originals are available in 4K. That started with House of Cards season two and rolled into season three, Bloodline and Daredevil. It’s the largest selection of 4K content available outside of Sony’s set-top box,” Cliff Edwards, Netflix’s director of technology.

Waiting until 4K becomes a more viable resolution platform for content creators is likely a better option than purchasing a 4K television right now, which some experts estimate could still take a number of years.

Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter, has been perhaps the biggest advocate of the company. Now, he’s ready to speak his mind.

Sacca, an investor with Lowercase Capital who says he still owns “a lot” of Twitter stock, explained in a blog post on Thursday that he has cheered the company on for nine years without expressing his thoughts about what needs to change. “I haven’t been as candid as I could be in public discussions about Twitter,” Sacca writes in the blog post. “I am soon going to post a few things that I personally hope the Twitter team will accomplish.”

Twitter, which became a public company in November 2013, is dealing with slowing user growth and sales. The product is awaiting improvements that may take a while to drum up a larger audience, if they do at all, and the ad sales team is finding that a strategy that worked for more than four years is in need of change.

While Sacca is taking off the kid gloves, don’t expect him to turn into an enemy. He describes Twitter as a “great investment,” and says “the stock is cheap.”

Bloomberg.com

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