First Hotel on the Moon Finally Opens

August 23, 2025 - Today a new chapter in space tourism was written. Rod Markham and his wife-to-be Susan Millster arrived safely to the moon to spend 5 days as the first guests at the Starbright Hotel that was set up for this purpose two years ago.

Not are they only the first hotel guests on the moon, they also set a new record for expensive accommodation since the price was US$ 3,7 million per night, per person. However, the exclusive transfer from earth to the hotel was included in the price.

The hotel itself will probably have a tough time just to try to gain one star at any hotel rating system, since there is no room service, the guests have to do the cleaning of the room themselves and there is no bathroom in them. However, they have more stars than they need just outside their window.

Rod and Susan will get married through link by their local minister in San Diego, California at 9.00pm EST tonight, and the wedding will be broadcasted live by several major TV networks in a 1-hour special including the preparations for the trip.

They were accompanied by six other astronauts that during the stay will set up further accommodations for the guests that have made reservations at the Starbright Hotel next year. The hotel has so far no employees, only temporary staff when guests.

Argument: Apart from the few tourists that already have been out in space, commercial space flights will be available in 2008 through companies like Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic, even though they will just be out in space for a short time. Since several organizations plan to put the first man on Mars by 2030, new trips to the moon will take place around 2015-2020. That combined with the increasing interest in space tourism in the next decade will open up to the possibility to make a reservation on the moon.

Questions: How will the first permanent accommodations on the moon look like? Will we be able to follow space flights live on TV, like today's reality shows? What will a vacation on the moon be like, what would the exclusive attractions be apart from the view?

Read More

Electro humanity

Read More

10 Upcoming Technology That May Change The World

We have seen great leaps in digital technology in past the past five years.Smartphones, cloud computing, multi-touch tablets, these are all innovations that revolutionized the way we live and work. However, believe it or not, we are just getting started. Technology will get even better. In the future, we could live like how people in science fiction movies did.

(Image Source: YouTube)

Today’s post is about 10 upcoming, real-life products that is set to revolutionize the world as we know it. Get ready to control the desktop and slice Ninja fruits with your eyes. Get ready to print your own creative physical product. Get ready to dive into the virtual world, and interact with them. Come unfold the future with us.

1. Google Glass

Augmented Reality has already gotten into our life in the forms of simulated experiment and education app, but Google is taking it several steps higher withGoogle Glass. Theoretically, with Google Glass, you are able to view social mediafeeds, text, Google Maps, as well as navigate with GPS and take photos. You will also get the latest updates while you are on the ground.

(Image Source: YouTube)

It’s truly what we called vision, and it’s absolutely possible given the fact that the Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin has demo’ed the glass with skydivers and creatives. Currently the device is only available to some developers with the price tag of $1500, but expect other tech companies trying it out and building an affordable consumer version.

2. Form 1

Just as the term suggests, 3D printing is the technology that could forge your digital design into a solid real-life product. It’s nothing new for the advanced mechanical industry, but a personal 3D printer is definitely a revolutionary idea.

Everybody can create their own physical product based on their custom design, and no approval needed from any giant manufacturer! Even the James Bond’s Aston Martin which was crashed in the movie was a 3D printed product!

(Image Source: Kickstarter)

Form 1 is one such personal 3D printer which can be yours at just $2799. It may sound like a high price but to have the luxury of getting producing your own prototypes, that’s a reaonable price.

Imagine a future where every individual professional has the capability to mass produce their own creative physical products without limitation. This is the future where personal productivity and creativity are maximized.

3. Oculus Rift

Virtual Reality gaming is here in the form of Oculus Rift. This history-defining 3D headset lets you mentally feel that you are actually inside a video game. In the Rift’s virtual world, you could turn your head around with ultra-low latency to view the world in high resolution display.

There are premium products in the market that can do the same, but Rift wants you to enjoy the experience at only $300, and the package even comes as a development kit. This is the beginning of the revolution for next-generation gaming.

(Image Source: Kickstarter)

The timing is perfect as the world is currently bombarded with the virtual reality topic that could also be attributed to Sword Art Online, the anime series featuring the characters playing games in an entirely virtual world. While we’re getting there, it could take a few more years to reach that level of realism. Oculus Rift is our first step.

4. Leap Motion

Multi-touch desktop is a (miserably) failed product due to the fact that hands could get very tired with prolonged use, but Leap Motion wants to challenge this dark area again with a more advanced idea. It lets you control the desktop with fingers, but without touching the screen.

(Image Source: Leap Motion)

It’s not your typical motion sensor, as Leap Motion allows you to scroll the web page, zoom in the map and photos, sign documentss and even play a first person shooter game with only hand and finger movements. The smooth reaction is the most crucial key point here. More importantly, you can own this future with just $70, a price of a premium PS3 game title!

If this device could completely work with Oculus Rift to simulate a real-time gaming experience, gaming is going to get a major make-over.

5. Eye Tribe

Eye tracking has been actively discussed by technology enthusiasts throughout these years, but it’s really challenging to implement. But Eye Tribe actually did this. They successfully created the technology to allow you to control your tablet, play flight simulator, and even slice fruits in Fruit Ninja only with your eye movements.

(Image Source: Eye Tribe)

It’s basically taking the common eye-tracking technology and combining it with a front-facing camera plus some serious computer-vision algorithm, and voila, fruit slicing done with the eyes! A live demo was done in LeWeb this year and we may actually be able to see it in in action in mobile devices in 2013.

Currently the company is still seeking partnership to bring this sci-fi tech into the consumer market but you and I know that this product is simply too awesome to fail.

6. SmartThings

The current problem that most devices have is that they function as a standalone being, and it require effort for tech competitors to actually partner with each other and build products that can truly connect with each other.SmartThings is here to make your every device, digital or non-digital, connect together and benefit you.

(Image Source: Kickstarter)

With SmartThings you can get your smoke alarms, humidity, pressure and vibration sensors to detect changes in your house and alert you through your smartphone! Imagine the possibilities with this.

You could track who’s been inside your house, turn on the lights while you’re entering a room, shut windows and doors when you leave the house, all with the help of something that only costs $500! Feel like a tech lord in your castle with this marvel.

7. Firefox OS

iOS and Android are great, but they each have their own rules and policies that certainly inhibit the creative efforts of developers. Mozilla has since decided to build a new mobile operating system from scratch, one that will focus on true openness, freedom and user choice. It’s Firefox OS.

Firefox OS is built on Gonk, Gecko and Gaia software layers – for the rest of us, it means it is built on open source, and it carries web technologies such asHTML5 and CSS3.

(Image Source: Mozilla)

Developers can create and debut web apps without the blockade of requirements set by app stores, and users could even customize the OS based on their needs. Currently the OS has made its debut on Android-compatible phones, and the impression so far, is great.

You can use the OS to do essential tasks you do on iOS or Android: calling friends, browsing web, taking photos, playing games, they are all possible on Firefox OS, set to rock the smartphone market.

8. Project Fiona

Meet the first generation of the gaming tablet. Razer’s Project Fiona is a serious gaming tablet built for hardcore gaming. Once it’s out, it will be the frontier for the future tablets, as tech companies might want to build their own tablets, dedicated towards gaming, but for now Fiona is the only possible one that will debut in 2013.

(Image Source: Razer™)

This beast features next generation Intel® Core i7 processor geared to render all your favorite PC games, all at the palm of your hands. Crowned as the bestgaming accessories manufacturer, Razer clearly knows how to build user experience straight into the tablet, and that means 3-axis gyro, magnetometer, accelerometer and full-screen user interface supporting multi-touch. My body and soul are ready.

9. Parallella

Parallella is going to change the way that computers are made, and Adaptevaoffers you chance to join in on this revolution. Simply put, it’s a supercomputer for everyone. Basically, an energy-efficient computer built for processing complex software simultaneously and effectively. Real-time object tracking, holographic heads-up display, speech recognition will become even stronger and smarter with Parallella.

(Image Source: YouTube)

The project has been successfully funded so far, with an estimated delivery date of February 2013. For a mini supercomputer, the price seems really promising since it’s magically $99! It’s not recommended for the non-programmer and non-Linux user, but the kit is loaded with development software to create your personal projects.

I never thought the future of computing could be kick-started with just $99, which is made possible using crowdfunding platforms.

10. Google Driverless Car

I could still remember the day I watch the iRobot as a teen, and being skeptical about my brother’s statement that one day, the driverless car will become reality. And it’s now a reality, made possible by… a search engine company,Google.

While the data source is still a secret recipe, the Google driverless car is powered by artificial intelligence that utilizes the input from the video cameras inside the car, a sensor on the vehicle’s top, and some radar and position sensors attached to different positions of the car. Sounds like a lot of effort to mimic the human intelligence in a car, but so far the system has successfully driven 1609 kilometres without human commands!

(Image Source: Wikipedia)

“You can count on one hand the number of years it will take before ordinary people can experience this.” Google co-founder, Sergey Brin said. However, innovation is an achievement, consumerization is the headache, as Google currently face the challenge to forge the system into an affordable gem that every worker with an average salary could benefit from.

Read More

Steve Ballmer thinks the future of Windows Phone is Android—and he may be right

Is another Windows Android phone a possibility, or just a pipe dream?

Mark Hachman |

Senior Editor, PCWorld

• Dec 3, 2015 1:27 PM

Windows 10 Mobile has barely launched, and Microsoft's former chief executive is already burying it—though in doing so, he may be pointing toward a better way forward for the company.

At the Microsoft shareholder conference this week, Bloomberg reporter Dina Bass was in the right place at the right time: She picked up former chief executive—and still shareholder—Steve Ballmer criticizing chief executive Satya Nadella and other Microsoft management. One of Microsoft’s faults, according to Ballmer? Ignoring Android apps.

There really isn’t much news here, just a fraction of a quote:

Ballmer also criticized Nadella’s answer to an audience member questioning the lack of key apps, like one for Starbucks, on the company’s Windows Phone. Nadella responded by citing the company’s plan to appeal to Windows developers by allowing them to write universal applications that work on computers, phones and tablets, targeting a larger array of devices than just Microsoft’s handsets that have just a single-digit share of the mobile market.

“That won’t work,” Ballmer commented as Nadella spoke. Instead, the company needs to enable Windows Phones “to run Android apps,” he said.

Was Ballmer right? Possibly. But how does Microsoft convince Android developers to port apps to Windows? Increasingly, it seems like another Android phone might be one answer.

Apps don’t seem to be working out

Microsoft’s app store clearly lags behind its competition. True, the list of the most downloaded free mobile Windows Phone apps reads like a who’s who of the Web: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, and more, especially when you compare them against the most downloaded free apps on Android, for example. But look closely, and several apps, including Instagram and Twitter, are either listed as beta apps or are simply nowhere near the quality of apps offered on other platforms.

It just gets worse when you consider paid apps: Plants vs. Zombies, Terraria, and Need for Speed are all popular apps available for Android, but not Windows Phone. Both Android and iOS simply generate more revenue for developers than Windows phones do, and Windows Phone’s miniscule 1.7 percent market share certainly isn’t helping. Most developers neglect or outright ignore Windows Phone as a result, and fewer apps only mean fewer would-be Windows Phone buyers. It's a vicious circle.  

It’s not clear exactly what Ballmer meant by his comments, however. Was he implying that Windows Phones need to run apps that were originally designed for Android, and then ported over to Windows? In that case, he’s probably aware that Project Astoria, the Windows “bridge” tool that will allow developers to port Android apps to Windows, has been reportedly put on hold. If developers are going to run Android apps on Windows, they’ll need to take their iOS port—if they have one—and then port that code over to Windows with the complimentary “Islandwood” bridge.

Islandwood is still listed as a “0.1 Preview” as of Nov. 19, however, which seems to be about as far away from a piece of finished code as you can get. 

An Android fork?

At this point, Microsoft has several other options. One of these clearly is its current strategy: Seed as many apps and services onto other platforms as possible, both as a revenue-generating opportunity (Office 365 subscriptions) and also to woo as many customers as possible to Windows. As Microsoft’s financials indicate, the bulk of the company’s revenue still flows from Windows, Office, and other enterprise services; once you start using the Outlook app for iOS, for example, you might be interested in signing up for more robust collaborative features that Microsoft’s office suite offers. 

Ballmer's cryptic comment could also imply that he thinks an emulation layer might be the best bet. I have a hard time believing that's the case, though BlackBerry tried emulation with BB10, apparently somewhat successfully. (BlackBerry now manufactures Android phones, however.) 

The other option? Well, as strange as it sounds, a Windows-branded Android phone might not be so far-fetched. You can already jury-rig a “Windows Android phone” by using Cortana, Bing, Outlook, Skype, the Office apps and more into an (almost) all Microsoft, all the time creation. 

But given that Android is an open operating system, there’s really nothing stopping Microsoft from actually crafting its own fork of the Android OS, as long as they adhere to the correct open-source licenses. Google’s Play Store and related services require their own agreements and licensing, but Microsoft wouldn’t have to tap into that, as Amazon’s own Fire OS also sidesteps those restrictions. In other words, Microsoft could use its own Microsoft Store for users to launch and download apps.

The problem, as Greenbot’s Jason Cross tells me, is that many Android apps use Google Play services, which means that either Microsoft would either have to exclude those apps, or else ask developers to craft special versions for Microsoft—though that brings Microsoft right back to square one in a way. But where attracting users to Microsoft's apps and services without luring them to its platforms is a customer-facing philosophy, the company could continue pursuing a similar strategy with developers, providing app makers with backend APIs to its services.

FLORENCE ION

The Nokia X: an Android phone that wasn’t long for the world.

It’s important to note that we’ve gone down this road before. Shortly before Microsoft acquired Nokia’s device business, Nokia developed the Nokia X: an Android powered phone with an array of Windows-like tiles. Stephen Elop, the chief executive of Nokia who joined Microsoft as part of the acquisition, promised that the Nokia X would live on. It didn’t, and Elop left this past summer.

So far, there hasn’t been the faintest hint that Microsoft is developing its own Android OS or phone, however. And with Microsoft already hurling billions of dollars at its own Windows Phone and device development, it may be that management will balk at spending more. But the nagging question remains: If Microsoft has hitched its wagon to “cloud first, mobile first,” you need a viable mobile platform to ride. And isn’t that increasingly looking like Android?

For comprehensive coverage of the Android ecosystem, visit Greenbot.com.

Read More

Future of Gaming: 5 Exciting Emerging Trends

Technology evolves in amazingly rapid speeds. If you need any real observable proof of the speedy advancement of digital technology over the years, take a look at the gaming industry. From the very early years of black-and-white 2D games like Pong (1972) to the first 3D game, 3D Monster Maze in 1981, and from primitive first-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D (1992) to complex, life-like shooters like Battlefield 3 (2011), there’s no doubt that the gaming industry has seen its fair share of technological evolution.

It’s has been exciting ride for all of us gamers, both casual or hardcore types. Most of us have a wishlist for how games will turn out in the future. Well, it’s hard to say if they will come true, but we might very well extrapolate from existing trends, which is the whole point of this article. Here are 5 features you can expect in the future of gaming

1. Immersive Gaming: The Return of Virtual Reality (VR)

Some of you may be surprised to know that 3D films have existed since about a century ago. The technology just didn’t really didn’t take flight since then due to high costs. It is not until In the recent years that we’ve experienced the revival of 3D technology not only in films like Avatar, but also for gaming screens.

We have also seen the evolution of video games in terms of its graphical quality, so much so that one would have difficulty differentiating a video game from a real-life scene today. It appears that there is a movement towards more immersive digital entertainment, from movies to games. The question is, where do we go from real-life 3D graphics and beyond?

A Virtual Reality Comeback

With major leaps in technology that resulted in improved hardware capabilities, virtual reality (VR) has started to resurface in the gaming industry. Of particular note is the upcoming Oculus Rift, a VR head-mounted display (HMD) created by Palmer Luckey.

Due to be released early next January for a mere $300, Oculus Rift features amassive field view (107 degrees), quick-response (ultra-low latency) head-tracking system, and incorporates immersive stereoscopic 3D rendering capabilities as well. Its prototype which was showcased in various gaming conventions has already received numerous positive reviews from game developers and internet reviewers alike.

RECOMMENDED READING:5 Jaw-Dropping TED Videos You Should Not Miss

2. Secondary Screens for Gaming

With the booming market for handheld devices like smartphones and tablets, the console war between the three major brands (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) has intensified, with a rush to invent a secondary gaming device for players.

Wii U

Consider the newly released Wii U GamePad, which features a built-in touchscreen that can serve as a supplement to games. In first-person shooter games, a second screen lets you access the map or your inventory seamlessly without leaving the game field. What you can do with a secondary screen is not limited to that, it adds to the gaming experience which is demonstrated wonderfully in this ZombiU gameplay trailer out for an inside view (Warning:the video contains gore and violence).

SmartGlass

Even Microsoft is catching up with the competition with the advent of Xbox SmartGlass. However, unlike the Wii U, SmartGlass is an app that acts as an additional tool for gamers to interact with. It can be downloaded into and accessed from smartphones and tablets to enhance the gaming experience.

Sony Cross-Play

Sony has taken its first step to integrate their Playstation 3 console with their handheld device, PS Vita via the Cross-Play feature, allowing the gamer to stop playing on one device and resume on another device.

3. Open-Source Gaming

Look at the number of free (or cheap) homemade games available in the mobile market today and you will have an idea where future games may be heading: Open Source! For instance, Ouya is an Android-powered, upcoming video game console (to be released April 2013, pre-order here) that works under the concept that games should be cheap to build and cheap to buy.

Independent developers do not have to purchase an expensive software development kit (SDK) to create games and release them to the market. Ouya offers 1080p gaming experience and contains tons of free-to-play and affordable games at only $99, it’s hard not to see where the attraction lies with Ouya.

Game Development

The console itself is the development kit, so anyone can build a game if they wish to do so. Making game development easier and cheaper creates more creative gamemakers, giving rise to more variety of free-to-play games for everyone. Games of the future may no longer be monopolized by major game developers, much like how video-making has been made mainstream by Youtube.

4. Augmented Reality (AR)

On top of seeing your actual physical environment, in Augmented Reality you will be fed with additional information or data overlay, digitally, in real-time. One good example of AR in action will be the mobile app, Wikitude. Holding up your smartphone and pointing towards your surroundings, the screen reveals nearby restaurants, ATMs, hotels, etc for your navigation.

In gaming, there’re already gaming apps like DroidShooting, a simple shooter game which lets the player interact with the surroundings in real-time. Holding your smartphone up, you will need to shoot targets appearing from everywhere around you. This is very primitive gaming, of course, but there is a window of possibilities for such a gameplay concept.

Eventually we may even have a gaming session with wearable UI like Google Glass where you don’t even need to hold up a console or device, and playing a game almost feels like you’re on the ground in the gaming realm.

ALSO READ:8 Next-Generation User Interface That Are (Almost) Here

5. Cloud Gaming

With more reliable and faster internet connections, the technology of cloud computing has begun to gain some momentum. The Sims creator Will Wright embraces the idea of cloud gaming as a crucial part of the future of the industry. For one thing, the gaming industry sees it as an oppotunity to make games as easy to access as music and movies.

With Cloud Gaming, we need not wait forever to get updates to high-quality games. It’s all in the cloud and all we have to do is connect to it with a stable Internet connection and play to our heart’s content. Games will also be cheaper and more easily accessible via computers and even tablets. How much longer need we wait for this? In August 2012, Sony has purchased Gaikaithe world’s largest and most widespread cloud gaming service for $380 million and is expected to incorporate it into Playstation 4. So, not long, fingers crossed.

Read More