canada

The BlackBerry Z10 had a nice start, after all.

BlackBerry said it nearly tripled the sales of its best performance over the first week in the U.K., while it had its best first day ever in Canada.

"In fact, it was more than 50 percent better than any other launch day in our history in Canada," BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement sent to CNET.

While BlackBerry hasn't been known to have explosive first-day sales in the manner of the iPhone, the accomplishment is encouraging for a company looking to climb back into the … Read more

We Canadians love innovating our money. We're printing plastic banknotes and chucking out useless coins.

Last March I said I wouldn't mourn the passing of the Canadian penny.

And yet today, as the Royal Canadian Mint officially stopped distributing the cent to banks, I have mixed feelings. I saw the Google.ca animated doodle honoring the coin and felt a tad nostalgic.

So I fished out a few pennies from my pockets and considered the brazen image of Queen Elizabeth and the maple leaf. … Read more

The only thing that can top building something incredible with Legos is taking a good photo of it. Chris McVeigh does both.

The graphic and Web designer is a wizard with bricks and a lens. His latest creation marks the recent 29th anniversary of Steve Jobs' release of the original Apple Macintosh in January 1984. It's just too cute for school.

Based in Halifax, Canada, McVeigh has designed custom builds and images for Gizmodo, Esquire Malaysia, and Toronto magazine Spacing. When he first gets an idea for the classic Mac or, as seen in the gallery below, a vintage camera, he uses Lego's modeling app for designers, Lego Digital Designer.

'The advantage of starting off a project digitally is that I can play around with thousands of bricks without actually having them sitting out in front of me, which can be a problem when you have as many bricks as I do," says McVeigh, who gets his bricks from stores or online retailers. "But that said, I always seem to need bricks that I don't have with each new build." … Read more

One of the world's most popular cross-platform applications "violates" international privacy laws, according to the Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities, because it requires users to provide their entire contact list to the service.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Dutch Data Protection Authority today announced their findings for what they called a "collaborative investigation into the handling of personal information" by the California-based company.

WhatsApp, an instant messenger application for iPhone, Android devices, and BlackBerry smartphones, provides a free service to rival text messaging, and sends more than 1 billion … Read more

Amazon Prime has expanded its coverage to Canada, but not all benefits will be part of the package.

Starting today, Prime will be offered to Canadian consumers for the yearly fee of $79.

The service's unlimited two-day shipping will be available in most of the country, according to Canada's Times Colonist. People in rural areas can grab the unlimited shipping but with no two-day guarantee. Those in certain locations will be able to upgrade to one-day shipping starting at $3.99 per item.

Steve Oliver, the country manager for Amazon.ca, told the Times Colonist that the shipping … Read more

If you're heading to the International Space Station, try to bunk in the Japanese section. It's as quiet as a Zen temple.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recently went aboard the ISS and has been recording what it sounds like. It's not quite the elegant "2001: A Space Odyssey" experience you might expect. It's more like a noisy tin can.

After recording last week the ambient sounds of the U.S. lab, with its noisy air pumps and fans, Hadfield managed to get samples of what the ISS toilet sounds like, as well as the relative serenity of the Japanese Experiment Module (aka Kibo). … Read more

In a stunning repudiation of a United Nations summit, an alliance of Western democracies including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada today rejected a proposed treaty over concerns it hands repressive governments too much authority over the Internet.

"This conference was never meant to focus on Internet issues," said ambassador Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to the Dubai summit. "The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years -- all without U.N. regulation."

Delegates from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, the Philippines, … Read more

While Americans are all trying to blow out their electrical circuits with insane light displays, Canadians are busy creating elaborate edible gingerbread structures. A gingerbread "Star Wars" Millennium Falcon is blowing away the competition in Canada's National Gingerbread Showcase 2012.

The insanely elaborate creation comes from the Canoe Brewpub in Victoria, B.C. The spaceship appears to have landed on Hoth, judging by the presence of tons of shredded coconut snow and a Wampa. Chewbecca also lounges near the ship. … Read more

Her majesty looks fantastic in plastic.

A polymer portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is in many Canadian wallets now that a new $20 bill packed with anti-forgery tech is in circulation.

The plastic note follows the circulation of new plastic $100 and $50 bills, but since it changes hands with greater frequently, more Canadians are taking notice.

Reactions to have been mixed. Some say the bills tend to stick together in stacks and ATMs, others have praised their security features, and some say they look like play money.

Apart from Braille-like raised dots for visually impaired users, the twenty's … Read more