MTV Games announced that the second installment of the popular "Rock Band" game will be released in September and will be initially exclusive to Xbox 360.  Like the original Rock Band, the game is being developed by the MTV-owned Harmonix games studio who also developed Guitar Hero. Details of the product will be announced at E3 in Los Angeles later this month but the developers have announced an unusual twist - it will be fully compatible with the original instruments, as well as the more than 100 songs that were available to download for the first "Rock Band so they have will be competing on more than the typical game planned obsolescence. 

In the original Rock Star, players can select are guitar, bass, drums or vocals as they hit the road as either an aspiring superstar solo act, or for the first time in game genre history take on the true collaborative and challenging nature of music as they form a band and jam together in multiplayer action from home or around the world.  Either way players will have to master their stage presence through the various game modes and polish their rock chops via the unrivaled Rock Band song list if they hope to make it out of the garage, into the clubs and finally on to the main stage.  Rock Band is a natural extension of the passion for Guitar Hero - and you know that there are lots of fanatics out there!

The English Cotswolds are known for their natural beauty but soon it will also be world famous for its Eco-Friendly homes in the Cirencester area.  One development,  The Lower Mill Estate, offers “distinctive, sustainable, modernist second homes, in a rural setting”.  The development was a 550 acre mining site which has been transformed into a seven lake reserve fed by three rivers and offers beautiful plant and wildlife.  The above, to-be-built house, known as the Orchid house exemplifies the uniqueness of designs where they have strived to achieve a harmony with the surrounding nature and yet blow your socks off with gorgeous, jaw dropping architecture.  

The Orchid house was designed by London based designer Sarah Featherstone and will boast many green features including  an underground geothermal heating system and a planet switch.  The project was recently sold for a price rumored to be more than $14 Million - that is one incredible second home! Other designers of properties in the Lower Mill Estate include  Richard Reid, Will Alsop .

Image Credits: www.dailymail.co.uk

Boston Dynamics has invented the most amazing autonomous Robot that they call BigDog which walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. This robot reminds me of a cross between RoboCop and a Star Wars’ Imperial Walker. The BigDog robot runs at 4 mph, climbs slopes up to 35 degrees, walks across rubble, and carries a 340 lb load!  They say, and you can hear, that it is powered by a two stroke gas engine and has articulated legs like an animal.  Those legas are controlled by an on-board computer that manages locomotion, servos and sensors.    The BigDog program is funded by DARPA.

Photo Credit: www.2dayblog.com

Wow, are we having a JFK or Gettysburg Address moment? Obama may have delivered the speech of our lives:

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787…. ” My favorite line - “As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity”

Listen here

I have been looking at outsourcing for years for call centers, product customer support and lightweight web development. Now for roughly $5,000 you can rent Indian surrogate mothers. This nominal fee includes agency costs, embryo implantation, and delivery. India has already established itself as an attractive place to conduct this sort of business because the hospitals are good and the costs are low and apparently there are plenty of willing women. In America, by contrast, a complete surrogacy process would cost closer to $50,000.

The leader in this new business wit the Akanksha Clinic at the Kaival hospital in Anand India. The staff at this facility are focused on infertility which boasts a 44% success rate and has a waiting list of more than 1,000 couples. Its created a whole new ecosystem around the service called “reproductive tourism” where hotels, restaurants and excursions are tailored to the donor couples. Lisa Ling who recently produced a piece on Oprah on the service has been taking some heat for her lack of a balanced report on womb outsourcing. I personally have no issue with the the practice for infertile couples but do think its a little scary as I do know a few busy women that probably would have paid the dough rather than going thru pregnancy and delivery. What do you think?

Photo credit: www.scienceclarified.com

I have been noticing a photo of a modern home on materials from Wired Magazine for a few months that caught my eye as the house looked like a Ray Kappe design. I see the photo all over the place on billboards and other magazines. So I was proud of myself yesterday when I was reading that it was in fact a Kappe design and the developer of the house was Living Homes which is an LA based company that is innovating in the green modular home space. The Wired home is in Brentwood and will be available for tour next month which is awesome since I live in LA. The photo above home is a different home built by LivingHomes which, I believe, that company’s founder lives in.

I can’t wait to see this house as it has a USBC Gold Leed rating and will use 36% less energy than a normal house. That is a lot of coal savings if they can achieve this in mass! The Brentwood home is being constructed literally as I write. You can check the web cam.

The folks at Living Homes say their homes cost $200 to $250 per square foot, utilizes the latest technology to maximize sustainability and the most amazing thing is that they can be assembled in a day. Living Homes has an awesome video showing a time elapsed install. Very cool. I just wish I had some ocean front property in Malibu to build one. Some day.

Image Source: LivingHomes
go on reading »

About a year ago the Victor Division of JVC announced they had invented a dodecahedral speaker where the entire 12-sided surface emits sound such that the listener is barely aware of the speaker location. Now they have teamed up with CopenMilan a Danish/Italian design firm that has taken those ugly engineering breadboards and created a work of art. I can’t wait to see these in person and and try them out. No word on the cost.

Source: Yanko Design
go on reading »

Hewlett Packard is offering a state of the art video conference solution, HP Halo, that they claim is a “high-bandwidth, full-duplex, no-perceived- delay connection experience between HP Halo studios.”

From the demo it looks like it rocks but then again for $450k per node it better. Oh and that is just the start, you get to pay $18k a month for the service which allow “remote diagnostics and calibration, ongoing service and repair, and a 24×7 concierge service, eliminating the need for enterprises to operate or otherwise service the HP Halo Studio.” I guess I will have to stick with GoToMyPC and Skype.

Source: HP
go on reading »

The jetpack is back! At first it was Skywalker Jets with their jetpack, now Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana have developed a "Rocket Belt". At first glance it looks more like a backpack then a belt. The rocket belt has been fully tested and is based on Military research done in the 1960s. The Military abandoned the project however because they found out it can only hold enough fuel to fly for 20 seconds. You can’t get much combat action during just 20 seconds of flight. If you have $250,000 laying around then you can own one of these Rocket Belts, but don’t worry your quarter million dollar rocket belt comes with maintenance, flight training and 24/7 expert support!

Source: Sci-Fi
go on reading »

Scientists at the University of Nevada have successfully created the worlds first sheep that is part human. The sheep is made up of 15% human cells, and 85% animal cells however it has human organs. If this technique can be perfected it may make mass organ harvesting possible. This could be accomplished by extracting stem cells from a donors blood, and then injecting them directly into a sheep fetus. Then when the sheep is born, it has human organs which could be used for transplants into humans. Anyone remember that Michael Bay movie…The Island? Yeaahhh…