Tag archive: canada

On January 18, millions of concerned Internet citizens and companies banded together to successfully combat the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and the “PROTECT IP Act” (PIPA), pieces of legislation that many believe could annihilate the Web as we know it. Thanks to this mass effort, those bills are now political poison, and have been shoved off the congressional agenda indefinitely. Unfortunately, the victory over SOPA… Read More

It may not be the kind of burning issue that keeps you awake at night, but the findings of a recent survey carried out by dating website Match.com may raise a smile nevertheless. The survey looked at the dating habits of Canadians and how they corresponded with the type of smartphone they own. The results showed that Android owners were more likely to have sex on a first date compared to owners of Apple’s iPhone or those with BlackBerry devices.… Read More

It was probably a rather small step for Lego but it was certainly one giant leap for a Lego man when he was launched into space by a couple of Canadian teens recently. The mission was the result of the hard work and ingenuity of friends Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, who worked on their project during free time on weekends. It took them four months to complete and cost just $400. The space-bound contraption the two 17-year-olds came up with… Read More

Apparently, Santa brought a few unlucky Canadians lumps of clay over the Holidays. Thanks to a new scam, customers who bought iPads from various retail chains in the country were treated to bags of modeling clay when they opened up their iPad 2 boxes. According to CTV News, the scam artists had bought the Apple tablets with cash, removed the devices from the packaging and then resealed the boxes with modeling clay to replicate the weight of the… Read More

Despite a few false starts, Apple has started its international rollout of iTunes Match, their cloud-based music-matching service. The UK was among the first countries to report the service's activation, and it was soon joined by users from Ireland, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. iTunes Match scans your music collection and matches titles found in its own iTunes music database, then makes them available for… Read More

What is going on with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus? The hotly anticipated debut phone for Google's Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system should be for sale on Verizon, but is nowhere to be found. Verizon won't give a firm answer on anything and now the phone seems to be disappearing on the day it should be launching. Instead of launching the Galaxy Nexus today, Verizon has removed the Galaxy Nexus page from its website. More… Read More

Launched during January 2011, Starbucks Mobile Pay allows customers of the coffee chain to make purchases with an iPhone, Android phone or BlackBerry using a mobile application. The initial launch allows customers to make mobile payments at approximately 6,800 Starbucks locations as well as 1,000 Target locations. However, this number has climbed to 10,000 locations over the past eleven months by adding Safeway Starbucks stores and locations in… Read More

For several days, millions of users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, India and other regions of the world lost their core BB services like BlackBerry Messenger, email, and Web browsing. Now, it appears that reports of problems are continuing to spread, with outages now hitting users in the United States and Canada. Reuters reports. The extent of the North American problem is unknown, but many users have reported delayed or… Read More

There have been a good number of streaming music announcements lately, and not to be outdone, today Microsoft chimed in about some changes being made to its Zune service. The software giant will be lowering the price of its Zune Music Pass and taking the Zune Music Marketplace up north to our Canadian neighbors. Microsoft Zune Music Pass will be cut from $14.99 to $9.99, a price which mirrors many of the music streaming competitors such as Rdio,… Read More

If watching people speak to themselves on Bluetooth headsets wasn't weird enough, now everyone may start kicking and flailing their legs around to control their smartphone or tablet. A group of researchers at the University of Bristol, UK and the University of Manitoba, Canada want to replace some touch actions on your phone with leg movements and kicks, reports New Scientist. While there are a number of potential issues with this… Read More

Back in September 2010, Netflix first launched streaming video service to Canadian customers; today, the company is proudly touting that it has signed up its one millionth streaming customer in Canada, Amanda Bell James of the delightfully named (and delightfully remote) mining town of Flin Flon, on the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border. “We're thrilled that Canadians have embraced Netflix so rapidly, and we're equally proud to… Read More

In an unusual move, video rental and streaming service Netflix is admitting that it has reduced the quality of streaming video it sends to Canadian subscribers — all in the name of making it easier for users to stay within broadband usage caps. Netflix says it has reconfigured its systems to consume two-thirds less bandwidth so users can enjoy more video programming while remaining under their usage caps, with only a “minimal… Read More

Customers of Canadian ISP Rogers have been complaining for months that performance of the MMORPG game World of Warcraft has been poor and sluggish even though Rogers' network appears to be operating just fine. Canada's Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) sent a formal inquiry to Rogers asking what was going on, and now Rogers has come out with a flat-out admission (PDF): it is using traffic management… Read More

Canadian industry minister Tony Clement announced that “CRTC must go back to the drawing board,” on his Twitter today, indicating that the recent metered Internet ruling will be undergoing some changes. Clement expressed concern over “how it would impact consumers, how it would impact Canadians generally, how it would impact small business, how it would impact on small business on our economy, on innovation.” Earlier this week, the Canadian… Read More

Our  neighbors to the north may now pay their Internet service providers based on how much they use the Web. Canadian telecommunications regulators made a ruling last week that would largely make it possible for smaller ISPs to continue to offer pay-per-month data plans. Currently, many smaller Canadian ISPs lease bandwidth from larger ISPs on a per-customer basis, which allows them to offer customers unlimited bandwidth, and bill them monthly.… Read More