Microsoft has confirmed this weekend that the Zune HD is now available in Canada, years after its launch in the United States.
However, the Zune Music Marketplace is not available as a choice, yet, even though the video store is available.
It is unclear when the licensing issues will be corrected.
Available via Zune Originals, the 16GB model is $170 and the 32GB version is $200.
Canada is now the second country to get the Zune HD, as Microsoft has moved most of its development towards Windows Phone 7.
Result for: canada
Last night’s showing of “Jeopardy!,” which featured former champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter taking on IBM’s supercomputer Watson, was the highest rated episode of the show since 2007, drawing an 8.7 household rating.
The taping’s draw was 24 percent higher than the show’s 2010 average, and a similar (or higher) rating is expected for tonight’s continuation episode.
After the first day of the three-day event, Watson was tied with Rutter at $5000 each, with Jennings lagging behind at $2000. The winner will receive $1 million. Second place gets $300,000 and third gets $200,000. IBM will donate all their winnings to charity and Jennings and Rutter will donate half.
At the end of day 2 (which just aired) Watson had taken a commanding lead, with $35,734 to Rutter’s $10,400 and Jennings’ $4,800. However, the machine did make a huge blunder in the ‘Final Jeopardy’ question which was in the category “U.S. Cities.”
The clue was: “Its largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second for a World War II battle.” Watson answered ‘Toronto’ while both human competitors answered correctly, with ‘Chicago.’
IBM made sure to post an explanation for the Toronto answer:
David Ferrucci, the manager of the Watson project at IBM Research, explained during a viewing of the show on Monday morning that several of things probably confused Watson. First, the category names on Jeopardy! are tricky. The answers often do not exactly fit the category. Watson, in his training phase, learned that categories only weakly suggest the kind of answer that is expected, and, therefore, the machine downgrades their significance. The way the language was parsed provided an advantage for the humans and a disadvantage for Watson, as well. “What US city” wasn’t in the question. If it had been, Watson would have given US cities much more weight as it searched for the answer. Adding to the confusion for Watson, there are cities named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. It probably picked up those facts from the written material it has digested. Also, the machine didn’t find much evidence to connect either city’s airport to World War II. (Chicago was a very close second on Watson’s list of possible answers.) So this is just one of those situations that’s a snap for a reasonably knowledgeable human but a true brain teaser for the machine.
Result for: canada
Paramount has announced this week that it will begin releasing 10 feature films with Silverlight-enhanced features for Windows Phone 7 devices, starting with the launch of ‘School of Rock.’
The other 9 movies will be available in the U.S, Canada and some international markets by the end of the year.
Each movie “app” will have the full film, a menu, bonus features and Web-connected content.
The next Paramount Silverlight Enhanced Movies for Windows Phone are ‘Zoolander,’ ‘Waiting for Superman’ and ‘GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.’
“Through our relationship with Microsoft, we’re able to provide consumers new, enhanced ways to enjoy movies from anywhere on Windows Phone 7,” adde Geremie Camara, Vice President Product Development for Paramount Digital Entertainment, in the press release. “Using Silverlight technology and adding interactive and social networking features, our enhanced movie apps transform the movie viewing experience into a true entertainment experience.”
Enhanced movie apps will have ‘Scene It?’ pop-up trivia, the ability to cut custom clips, and “Movie Info,” giving consumers a chance to identify actors, music, places and objects in the movie.
