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Canadian Tech News

Canadian Tech News, September 16th – Spark, Copyright, RIM, Boxee, Bell’s IPTV

Spark is Back
CBC’s brilliant technology radio show (available in podcast form) is back for another season of Nora Young‘s soothing voice and intelligent commentary on tech issues.

Official Opposition Opposes Copyright Bill
Digital Copyright Canada posted an email they received from the Office of the Official Opposition. TLDR

…we believe that Canadian consumers who have legitimately purchased a CD or a DVD or other product should also have the ability to transfer their purchase onto their iPod or make a personal backup copy on their computer, so long as they are not doing so for the purposes of sale or transfer to others.

RIM Acquires Documents To Go
Earlier last week RIM confirmed rumours of their acquisition of the makers of popular mobile app Documents To Go – a smartphone app that allows native editing of doc,ppt,xls and pdf. I guess RIM was feeling left out without their own documents offering.

Boxee Box out November 21st
OMGNOTTHATBOXXY! In Canadian product release date news: the long awaited D-Link Boxee Box – set-top media extender, online tv streamer of your nerdy dreams – is going to be available on the same date for the same price as the US. November 21st, for $199. It’s unclear whether this price is an introductory pre-order price or the final retail price. Hopefully Netflix Canada will have launched by then…

Bell Launching Internet-Based TV
I’m pleased to see that all the big telecom players are slowly coming on board with IPTV offerings. This move from Bell Canada mirrors service we’ve seen out west from the likes of MTS and Telus for a few years now. Once all cable TV providers offer phone service and all traditional phone providers offer TV, maybe we’ll start seeing some real country-wide competition.