Sony held the finals in their annual cross-country Campus Cup Tournament here in Toronto on Saturday. The match brought together twenty students, each representing a Canadian university or college, to participate in five hours of competitive video game racing. At the end of the night Chris Rayson from Windsor University came in first place and was awarded a $6,000 cheque to pay for his tuition fees, a Sony Vaio notebook computer, and a PlayStation 3 system. Make no mistake there were no losers in this competition which [More]

When they are not busy creating special effects for movies like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy or King Kong, the gurus at WETA like to design fantasy Rayguns that have that Flash Gordan appeal with a touch of Victorian-era engineering. The collection is called "Dr Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators" and includes rayguns such as the Goliathon 83, which can produce infra-wave undulations that can "dissolve 7/9ths of an African Elephant in 10 earth seconds", and the ManMelter 3600 ZX which comes packaged with "Phlogiston cannisters, cleaning apparatus and wingdings". More than just a collection of drawings, WETA has produced a set of movie prop-like models, some they occasionally sell as collectables to their most hard-core fans (the Goliathon 83 goes for $690 US). WETA's Rayguns can be considered part of a growing sub-genre of Science Fiction called Steampunk that imagines fantastic technology in the Victorian Era. [More]

For those of you who plan to swarm the barriers along the red carpet at this weekend's Juno Awards in Saskatoon, keep your eyes out for the gang from eTalk Daily as they will be handing out some fantastic Gelaskin iPod vinyl wraps. For those of you who plan to swarm the barriers along the red carpet at this weekend's Juno Awards in Saskatoon, keep your eyes out for the gang from eTalk Daily as they will be handing out some fantastic Gelaskin iPod vinyl wraps. Last Friday eTalk had me on the show to officially reveal the skins as part of their Spring Tech Preview and it gave me a chance to see the wraps up close. They turned out fantastic. The rising sun [More]

Nintendo Canada is working with my favorite vinyl toy collectable shop Magic Pony to comission six one-of-a-kind Nintendo Wii systems that have been hand-painted by some choice ecclectic Canadian artists. Iillustrator Gary Taxali, Hoi-An Tang, punk group illScarlett and Arnold Tsang of Udon Entertainment have been revealed as the masters behind four of the painted consoles, the remaining two will be revealed later this month when Nintendo will give all six consoles away to some lucky winners chosen from their TheArtOfWii.ca website. [More]

It's Friday! As we close the end of the week, it is time I shut you away into one of the internet's many puzzle rooms. This week I encourage you to be brave as The Doors has a very creepy, almost distrubing vibe to it, and yet, there are no scary moments waiting for you. You are trapped in an old, sophisticated mansion that is filled with doors, cryptic symbols, and secret passages. The goal is to click around and collect the pieces you need to complete a series of small puzzle boxes that in turn act as keys to other sections of the house. Somewhere in that mansion is a way out. Click here to see the other puzzle rooms in this section and as always, you can e-mail me at krisabel@gmail.com for clues and hints [More]

A slight disclaimer, I'm not entirely sure that this will work for everyone, but the idea itself is interesting enough to warrant attention. The Center For Biological Diversity is offering a colection of free ringtones made up of the rare calls and sounds of animals from the endangered species list. The collection includes a wide selection of rare owls, frogs, toads and birds. According to the Center, the most popular selections have been the Orca Whale, Polar Bear, and Mexican Wolf. The idea behind the collection is to create awareness to the status of these animals, to get people to think about the idea that, as we walk around with these sounds emitting from our cellphones, the real sounds may be fading into silence in the wild. To that end, the Ringtones themselves are free, the only charge you will incur is from your service provider who will charge you for the cost of the text message and data transfer (it depends on what plan you have). To set the transfer up, you'll need to give the website your e-mail address and then [More]

When your job requires you to spend a great deal of time talking in the media, you're bound to slip up and say something embarassingly obtuse. When it comes to celebrities, some seem to be more prone to doing so than others. Celebrity Wit is a website that collects the most amusing mental lapses from popular celebrities as published in mainstream magazines and journals. For example, here's Brooke Shields speaking for a Federal Anti-Smoking campaign: "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." These samples of celebrity wit are organized alphabetically into a growing database and they accept and encourage visitors to their website to submit any examples they might have found. [More]

To coincide with Dell Canada's first aniiversary of having a customer contact centre in Ottawa, Mayor Larry O'Brien has declared today as "Dell Day". It also helps that Dell has just unveiled a new recruitment drive and has confirmed that they will be undergoing significant growth. Since opening the centre one year ago, the number of employees has grown from 50 to 1,500 people, all working to answer the phones and help Americans and Canadians with their [More]

It's such a little thing, such a common sense change that it is amazing that Apple didn't offer it right from the beginning. Now when you buy a song from Apple's iTunes Music Store you will receive a credit for that song's worth towards the album it belongs to. You see, up until now, if you bought a single song that you liked, gave it a listen, decided you liked the band enough to pick up the whole album, you had the choice to either a) buy the remaining songs on the album, one at a time at 99 cents each or b) choose the "purchase album" feature and grab them all for the album price. Because of the number of tracks on most albums, it usually worked out to be cheaper to go with option B. The twist is that you'd end up buying that same first single twice. So, if you're still following me, Apple is now recognizing [More]

While Telus may not have been the first to bring in the Motorola KRZR K1m in its original blue, they've since made sure to be the one to offer it in the widest choice of colors. Going for the minimalist look that is the popular trend in gadgets these days, Telus has snapped up both the White and Black versions. Still considered to be one of their luxurious handsets ($400 without a contract), the KRZR is Motorola's answer to offering the thin-featured packed design of the RAZR with the tactile comfort of the PEBL. It sports a 1.3 Megapixel camera, a one-touch music playback button, and comes with 2 MB of optional memory and a headset in case you want to use it to listen to a song or two. Click on "more" for bigger photos. [More]