Wal-Mart To Get Exclusive Rights To AC/DC Version Of Rock Band

Wal-Mart has inked a deal with MTV that will see it get the exclusive rights to sell AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack in the United States through Wal-Mart stores, Sam's Club, and the Wal-Mart website (walmart.com). In the deal, Wal-Mart will create a special area in each of its stores to display AC/DC's new album "Black Ice" and the Rock Band game, as well as other CDs, DVDs, T-shirts, and licensed AC/DC clothing. “If you want to be a physical band, you better make an alliance with a strong physical retailer,” said Steve Barnett, chairman of Columbia Records. “It’s a great way to sell the new album, the catalog, the game, merchandise and DVDs.” The game, is scheduled for release for all consoles in early November, and will reportedly cost less than most new games, selling for about $40 instead of the traditional $60 range. This price point works well for Wal-Mart which has always aimed to be a price leader. New York Times article.

Hubble Telescope Stops Sending Data

A mission to repair the Hubble Telescope scheduled for two weeks time has been put on hold by NASA until it understands the problems experienced by the telescope over the weekend. The space shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to rendevous with Hubble in two weeks, but a new unexpected problem with Hubble appeared on Saturday night and the astronauts would potentially have new repairs to contend with, repairs that haven't trained for. Because it will take time to identify the failed part and train the astronauts to repair or replace it, the mission originally scheduled for October 14th will be postponed until early next year. Discovery Channel.

Space Truck's Crash Zone Assigned

The European Space Agency's massive space freighter the 'Space Truck' will be destroyed in a suicide plunge today that could see about 100 pieces of the vehicle survive and fall to earth. The "entry zone" is a strip in a remote area of the South Pacific 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) long by 200 kms (120 miles) wide, said Mike Steinkopf, in charge of the operation at European Space Agency (ESA) mission control. "We [have] notified the competent bodies in order to prevent ships and airplanes going through this area during the re-entry phase," he said. Discovery Channel.

MIT's Autonomous Wheelchair

MIT researchers are creating an autonomous wheelchair that can learn the locations in a given building, and take its occupant to any given place in reaction to a verbal command. "It's a system that can learn and adapt to the user," says Nicholas Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and co-developer of the wheelchair. "People have different preferences and different ways of referring" to places or objects, says Roy, the aim is to personalize each wheelchair to its user and the user's environment. The wheelchair requires a first time guided tour to learn about it's environment, with the user providing verbal clues as to where it currently is. For instance, as the wheelchair is pushed around for the first time, the patient or a caregiver would say: "this is my room" or "here we are in the foyer" or "nurse's station." MIT News has the complete story here.

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Tom Clancy's EndWar, With Voice Command

G4's The Feed has posted the video below describing the voice command features of the up coming Tom Clancy's EndWar! The game, the latest in a very successful series of Tom Clancy titles from Ubisoft promises to be available in time for holiday gift giving and is available now for pre-order at the EndWar website. Check out the other impressive trailers there! EndWar plays on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS. This game looks incredible, can't wait to enter the battle!

Ballmer On Microsoft

Ina Fried's Beyond Binary blog captures some of the highlights of Steve Ballmer's address to the Churchill Club in which he discussed the battle over search, cloud computing, the phone business, and the Seinfeld-Gates ads. "I think at the end of the day, cloud computing will be dictated by the interests and the degree to which you capture the imagination of developers," Ballmer said of cloud computing. As for the ads Ballmer said "It was a two-week campaign but man did it get people talking for more than two weeks,"

I'd love to see / hear the discussion... So far I've only managed to find this short segment on YouTube. Please send me any links that you are aware of.

China Puts 3 Into Orbit

Yesterday China launched it's most risky space adventure to date, sending 3 astronauts into orbit. During the 68 hour flight the 3 will attempt the nation's first ever space walk. The launch of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft took place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and was attended by President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders. The Chinese President is quoted as saying "I have come to send you off, to wish you success," Now that's an inspirational speech if I've ever heard one! Discovery Channel story here.

Google Offers $10 million For Ideas That Will Better The World

Google has announced a new program / contest called 'Project 10 to the 100th' which is a call for ideas that will help as many people as possible and in doing so, change the world. Submissions will be accepted until October 20th or this year and can fall into one of several categories:

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

The winners will be picked in part by votes from the public who will identify the top 20. An advisory panel consisting of Google employees aided by industry experts will then choose the winner(s). The $10 million will be divided among the entries chosen as winners, if 2 are chosen they will get $5 million, 4 chosen and they each receive $2.5 million, etc... the awards will be used to bring your ideas to life.

The criteria for judging submissions is:

Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea's impact last?

Put your thinking caps on and change the world!

Robotic Web Cam Video

WowWee is getting set to launch it's new ROVIO roving web cam this Friday. The little robot can be controlled via a web connection from anywhere you are. Equipped with LED lights for night time running, microphone, speakers, a self docking feature and in home gps, ROVIO looks to be an interesting little device. Roomba manufacturer iRobot is also preparing for a robotic web cam with the announcement of beta testing of it's ConnectR robot. The ROVIO will be available through Amazon and Hammacher Schlemmer. It will be interesting to see which company dominates this market, I'm inclined to favour the iRobot offering over that of a toy maker but then again I own a Roomba, a Scooba, and have offered my name to the ConnectR beta test so I may be a little biased. The ROVIO videos are quite impressive though...

Welcome To The Holodeck

If the designers at NAU have their way the Star Trek holodeck could be a thing of our future. Actually it's more of a Cocoon than a deck but the idea is similar, it could even be compared to The Minority Report where the user reaches out and touches data.

"You've got display, sound and interaction all combined to create this fully immersed digital experience," explains Tino Schaedler, one of the designers at NAU.

"It is completely different from me sitting in front of a screen, looking at a little picture and typing something in -- almost like the experience is reduced to my brain and my fingers. In the Cocoon we have the whole body immersed inside."

NAU hopes to have a prototype by October of 2009 and expects that commercial versions will be available in 2014!

CNN story here.