Peon's Place

Lady GaGa has become the first artist in download history to have three songs (Poker Face, Just Dance, and now Bad Romance) hit the four million mark!

Truly remarkable. OK Go, step up the game! I love you guys though.

Oh no, one hit track after another, and it comes to this!

It seems Fergie and Will.I.Am are feuding! It’s gotten so tense that she refuses to commit to touring next year and is considering leaving the Black Eyed Peas for good.

Fergie is saying she wants out of the band and the second half of the tour isn’t confirmed for early next year. Things have gotten really bad with Will.i.Am. And it’s not just Fergie who is clashing with him. So is the rest of the band. His ego is out of control.

Fergie just wants to get away from the whole thing.

I don’t know if she’ll admit or deny it when it leaks out, but I do know that it’s 100 percent true, she’s got everything planned out and she says she can’t be convinced to change her mind.

And she really wants a baby with Josh. Between that and the bad blood with Will, it looks like the 2011 tour is in big trouble and she’s saying she’s going to split for good.

I hope it doesn’t go through. =(

Source are reporting that a final divorce agreement is being drafted for Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren and that their split should be official very soon.

Supposedly, at this stage, all the major points have been flushed out and because the pair were able to work out the details fairly privately, “both Tiger and Elin are very close to finishing the negotiations and filing and signing the paperwork.”

Insiders say that Elin is expected to receive approximately $750 million in the settlement.

Though gone too soon, Michael Jackson left a tall legacy and a tower of hits when he died at 50 a year ago on Friday. He also left debts, void contracts, unrealized dreams, grieving fans and lingering mysteries. The knottier conundrums and contradictions in the King of Pop’s life may never be explained, but even the simplest propositions can be vexing in the Jackson hereafter and its eternal maze of hype, sealed data and shifting spokesmen. USA TODAY addresses 10 questions that surface in discussions about the man in the rearview mirror, who may endure as pop culture’s best-known and least-known icon.

1. What happened to the promised all-star tribute concert?

Given Jackson’s enormous influence over a range of genres and artists from Usher to Justin Timberlake, an all-star musical sendoff seemed inevitable. His brother Jermaine’s attempts to stage one last year fizzled, and there’s no sign of the show he pledged to mount this month.

“Tribute concerts, especially ambitious ones, don’t get off the ground for a lot of reasons, the biggest being funding,” says Ray Waddell, Billboard‘s touring editor. “An obvious milestone hook was missed this time around with the one-year anniversary of his death, but Jackson’s legacy and appeal are not going to lessen in the foreseeable future.

“A star-studded tribute concert, most likely with a philanthropic angle, is not only possible but probable someday.The seal of approval of the estate and a deep-pocketed promoter would help tremendously in making it happen.”

2. What about the Jackson reunion tour?

The surviving members of the Jackson 5 announced in December that they would tour as the Jackson 4 and re-create the sound of their childhood band. That endeavor never got off the ground, but the brothers did do a six-episode A&E reality show called The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty.

Speculation persists that sister Janet will join such a reunion, and more than a year before Jackson’s death, she told CNN‘s Larry King, “I would love to open for them. … It would be an honor.” But Michael issued a statement saying he wouldn’t participate: “My brothers and sisters have my full love and support. … at this time I have no plans to record or tour with them.”

3. When is Jackson’s next album coming, and what else is in the recording pipeline?

Read the rest of this entry » A year later, we still re...

For iPhone owners, it always comes back to the antenna. Apple’s touch-screen smartphone has been a sensation since Day 1 three years ago, and many who own the device believe it to be almost perfect — if only it worked better as a phone.

So it is not surprising that as the first boxes of the new iPhone 4 landed in the hands of the earliest adopters late yesterday, Wednesday, the antenna’s reception quickly became an Internet obsession. What surprised many of them: the precious little bars that signal network connections inexplicably disappeared when they cradled the phone in their hands a particular way. Sometimes, but not always, the cradling resulted in dropped calls.

With no official word from Apple, iPhone fans turned to each other on the Internet in a zealous exercise in crowd-sourcing for answers to the mystery. They were all the more baffled because the iPhone 4 was designed to have better reception. A metal band that wraps around the edges of the device is supposed to pull in a stronger signal; software is supposed to choose the section of the signal with the least congestion. A user calling himself FFArchitect appeared to be the first to report the phenomenon on MacRumors.com, a site for the Apple-obsessed. He said that touching the band in various places caused reception problems. His report, like many that followed, included a video demonstrating the problem.

Soon after, Gizmodo, a popular site for gadget fans, picked up on it, calling the phenomenon “weird.” “When the guy holds the iPhone in his hands, touching the outside antenna band in two places, he drops reception,” Jesus Diaz, a writer for the blog, said. “Placing the phone down gets him 4 bars.”

Apple has not acknowledged any problems with the iPhone 4 and did not respond to requests for comment. For all the reader reports, and suggestions for how to fix the problem — Update 19: use nail polish to insulate the antenna; Update 21: enclose the phone in a rubber case — there appeared to be limits to the wisdom of this crowd. On Thursday afternoon, the mystery remained unsolved, though one report suggested that the problem with dropped calls when users cradled their phones, which also occurred on an older iPhone running Apple’s new operating system, iOS4, might come from software.

I’m pretty sure my sister and her boyfriend both have Xbox Live Gold accounts. I’m already on their AT&T family plan for my iPhone, I may as well pass them some more money to include me on this, too! While Netflix streaming is awesome for my large plasma TV at home, it wasn’t enough to keep me on a Gold membership once I expired this past September; most of the games I purchased at release date were single-player only, so there was no need for the online gaming aspect of Xbox Live.

At $49.99 per year, a subscription to Xbox Live Gold isn’t all that bad of a deal — unless you compare it to the newly announced Xbox Live Gold Family Pack. Starting in November, $99.99 a year will give up to four users access to all of the perks that the single user membership offers. You know, great stuff like multiplayer gaming, a Zune Pass, Netflix streaming, video chat and 3,500 live sporting events from ESPN.

An Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack includes:

• Up to four individual Xbox LIVE Gold memberships for the price of two – (US) $99.99.
• Family Center – a single, easy to use, destination for Family Settings and account management, accessible on the Xbox dashboard and on Xbox.com.
• The primary account member has the ability to purchase and dispense Microsoft Points to other Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack members.
• Activity monitoring reports viewable on Xbox.com to help encourage discussions about safer more balanced gaming and entertainment habits.
• Simplified billing that applies all purchase charges to the primary account holder’s billing account and the ability to authorize purchases, helping to manage the family’s entertainment budget.
• Exclusive family content and discounts.

The industry-leading, built-in Xbox 360 Family Settings are also being taken to the next level this November. It’s Microsoft’s goal to provide parents and caregivers with tools and resources to manage their children’s gaming and entertainment experiences, and these features are available to all Xbox LIVE members:

• Family Programming that removes all mature games, movies, and content from the dashboard, based on ESRB, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings and the TV Parental Guidelines system. Family Programming is password protected, and easy to turn on and off for each member. (Compatible with international ratings systems.)
• Title exceptions – the ability to allow your family members to play specific games above the console’s designated ESRB rating if you deem appropriate. (Compatible with international ratings systems.)
• Intelligent default settings for child, teen, and adult profiles. Xbox will automatically assign default privacy and activity settings for each member that can later be individually customized.
• Family Settings are displayed prominently in the MyXbox channel. Current tools include the Family Timer, which allows you to control the amount of time – either daily or weekly – your children may use the console.

Whether you want to play your favorite games, stream movies and music from Zune, or watch the latest sporting event together via ESPN on Xbox LIVE, Xbox 360 brings the best family-friendly entertainment straight to your living room.

The longest match in tennis history was suspended because of darkness at 59-59 in the fifth set at Wimbledon on Wednesday night. The first-round match between 23rd-seeded John Isner of Tampa, Fla., and qualifier Nicolas Mahut of France had already been suspended because of fading light Tuesday night after the fourth set.

They have been playing each other for a total of exactly 10 hours — 7 hours, 6 minutes in the fifth set alone, enough to break the full-match record of 6:33, set at the 2004 French Open. Never before in the history of Wimbledon, which was first contested in 1877, had any match — singles or doubles, men or women — lasted more than 112 games, a mark set in 1969. Isner and Mahut played more games than that in their fifth set and still did not determine a victor, although the American came close: He had four match points — four chances to end things with one more point — but Mahut saved each one.

Even a courtside electronic scoreboard couldn’t keep up, getting stuck at 47-47 when the score had really risen to 48-48 and then eventually going dark entirely. Yet the pair played on. All the numbers were truly astounding: They played 881 points, 612 in the fifth set. Isner hit 98 aces, Mahut 95 — both eclipsing the previous high for a match at any tournament, 78. And this cannot be emphasized enough: They are not finished. No one won. The match will continue, stretching into a third day.

The drama drew an overflow crowd on cozy Court 18, and others players watched the telecast in fascination.”I have almost no words anymore watching this,” defending champion Roger Federer said. “It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen and could imagine. I don’t know how their bodies must feel the next day, the next week, the next month. This is incredible tennis. For them to serve the aces they served and stay there mentally is a heroic effort. ”As we know, we have no draws in tennis, so there will be a loser. But I guess in this match, both will be winners because this is just absolutely amazing,” he said.

Shortly after 9 p.m., Mahut and Isner approached the net to discuss with a tournament official whether to keep going Wednesday.

“I want to play,” Mahut said, “but I can’t see.” Fans began chanting “We want more! We want more!” and then rose to salute the players with a standing ovation. In a courtside TV interview, Isner said: “Nothing like this will ever happen again. Ever.”

It’s been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke’s satellites have taken to space, and James Bond’s futuristic mobile technology has become common place, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us. But the future is here! Finally we can all take flight as Martin Aircraft in New Zealand releases the first commercially-available jet pack!

A BIT OF HISTORY…

Like many science fiction concepts, the jetpack design has become firmly entrenched in the collective psyche: ask anyone to draw you a jetpack and they will give you a man with two fiery pods strapped to his back gravitating him skyward. We owe much of this to James Bond’sThunderball, which served to advertise the most successful of all the jetpack inventions; the Bell Rocket Belt.

Developed by the U.S. military in 1961 with the aim of producing an all-terrain vehicle to move military commanders around a battlefield, the Bell Rocket Belt could only maintain flight for 26 seconds on a full tank of fuel. After the film was released the subsequent clamoring for sales only served to prove what a marketable product a jetpack might be if one could be properly developed. Sadly with such limited application the Bell Rocket Belt was consigned merely to film work and TV appearances.

More recently, aside from the exploits of a brave few like Yves Rossy, attempts to realize a one-person flying machine ranging from flying exoskeletons to ion-propelled and water-drive technology have failed to gain momentum.

In 1998 and Martin Aircraft of Christchurch New Zealand was formed with the specific aim to build a jetpack that improved on the Bell Rocket Belt’s record fly time by 100 times. The concept, developed by Glenn Martin, manager of Martin Aircraft in 1981, was verified by the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Since then nine prototypes have been developed and it is lucky number nine that in 2005 broke the mold and achieve sustained flight times.

THE TECHNOLOGY

The Jetpack is constructed from carbon fiber composite, has a dry weight of 250 lbs (excluding safety equipment) and measures 5 ft high x 5.5 ft wide x 5 ft long. It’s driven by a 2.0 L V4 2 stroke engine rated at 200 hp (150 kw), can reach 8000 ft (estimated) and each of the two 1.7 ft wide rotors is made from carbon / Kevlar composite.

There is always risk associated with flying so Martin Aircraft has been careful to equip the pack with redundant systems that will take over in the event that the main system goes down. If a crash-landing is required, a pilot-operated toggle will rapidly fire a small amount of propellant deploying a ballistic parachute (similar to a car airbag) which will allow the pilot and jetpack to descend together. It also has an impact-absorbing carriage, patented fan jet technology and 1000 hours engine TBO (Time Between Overhaul). Small vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL) are not subject to the same limitations as other helicopters and fixed wing aircrafts but Martin Aircraft have built it to comply with ultralight regulations and therefore suggest it as at least as safe to operate, and claim it is the safest of all jetpacks yet built.

The Jetpack achieves with 30 minutes of flight time and is fueled by regular premium gasoline, though you will undoubtedly earn some disbelieving stares at the petrol station. Since it has been built according to ultralight regulations no FAA recognized pilot’s license is required to fly one in the U.S., though this will depend on a country’s specific requirements. However, despite being significantly less complex than a helicopter to fly as pitch and roll are controlled by one hand, thrust and yaw by the other, Martin Aircraft won’t let anyone take receipt of their jetpack before completing their specially-developed Martin Aircraft Company approved training program. The pilot must also weigh between 140-240 lbs.

Tell what I really want to know: how can I get my hands on one?

After nine prototypes Martin Aircraft have an accurate expectation for how much a jetpack will cost, and suggest that at $86,000 it is pitched at the level of a high-end car. As sales and production volume increase they expect this to drop to the price of a mid-range car. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence; progress payments are made during manufacture with final payment due on delivery. Details and a deposit contract are available from their Martin Aircraft’s website.

And when will I be able drive it to work?

Again it’s a waiting game as currently air traffic control technology is not yet advanced enough to cope with jetpacks, but the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing “highways in the sky” technology – 3D highways based on GPS tracks. Initial tests have been positive but the technology is unlikely to be implemented for another 10 years yet so for the meantime initial use will remain recreational as with jet-skis, snowmobiles and ultralights. Until then we’ll keep waiting and watching the sky…

Ever been too lazy to get off the couch and get a beer? Or are you looking for a new way to impress your buddies? These instructions will show you how to train your pooch to fetch a beer (or any other drink) from the fridge.

Grabbing the Beer

1. Empty a beer can and play fetch with it. If necessary, wrap something around the can so the dog can grab it more easily.
2. Put the beer can on the lowest shelf of the fridge so that your dog can reach it. It helps to clear out any stuff around it.
   • Put something against the fridge door so that it stays open without you having to hold it.
   • Near the fridge, point to the beer can and tell your dog to “fetch”. If your dog doesn’t understand, as you give the command pick up the beer and place it in the dog’s mouth.
3. Give your dog praise. Give the “drop” command so that she drops the can into your hand. Give praise and a treat. Repeat until your dog can pick up a beer can and put it on your hand using only verbal commands.
4. Move further away from the fridge and repeat. Keep moving a little further away until you’re sitting on your living room couch in front of the TV, or wherever you’ll often be when you command your dog to fetch the beer.

Closing the Fridge

1. Open the fridge door slightly.
2. Dangle a treat so that your dog gets up on his hind legs and leans with his front paws against the door. This will close the door. Say “Close it” when you’re doing this, and reward your dog when he puts his paws on the door.
3. Move further away, leaving the fridge open. Tell your dog to “Close it”. Reward your dog whenever he closes the fridge.

Putting It All Together

1. Stand close to the fridge. Ask your dog to “Get me a beer”. He should now be comfortable opening the fridge door. While the fridge door is open, tell the dog to “fetch”.
2. Have him put the beer in your hand and reward him.
3. Repeat the previous step, but this time say “Close it” after he grabs the can and reward him profusely after he’s brought you the beer.
4. Move a little further away and say “Get me a beer”. Your dog should open the fridge door but if he forgets to, just grab the beer or close the fridge, and remind him verbally.
5. Reward him when he brings you the beer (having done everything he was expected to do). Keep doing this and eventually most dogs will complete all of the tasks with a single command: “Get me a beer”.

Miley Cyrus is no Adam Lambert … at least according to “Good Morning America.”  After simulating a girl-on-girl kiss while on “Britain’s Got Talent” two weeks ago (bottom left), the 17-year-old pop sensation performed on ‘GMA’ today (top).

Interesting move … considering they banned Adam Lambert from performing back in November after he kissed a male band member on the American Music Awards (bottom right).

Translation: Heterosexual underage female singer simulating a lesbian kiss = good. Gay male singer actually kissing a man = bad.

“I’m not trying to be ‘slutty,’” said Cyrus in a recent interview. “I’m not trying to be like, go to the club and get a bunch of guys … What I’m trying to do is to make a point with my record and look consistent, in the way my record sounds and the way I dress.”

What she wears has been put under the spotlight recently. Some thought the video for “Can’t Be Tamed” was too provocative, and others have criticized her for revealing too much skin in her outfits. Cyrus admits to being partial to shorts and hot pants. But she sees nothing wrong with flashing her legs. ”I’m really comfortable with my body, I work really hard to be fit and to know that I can wear whatever makes me most comfortable. I feel more comfortable dressing with a little less, which is just how I’ve always been,” she said. ”Now I’m able to do that a little more freely and, also, I’ve just grown up to be this way too. It’s not like this was me five years ago. It’s me now, presently.”

Maturing is Cyrus’ current mission. She’ll finally shed the blonde wig of her Disney pop star persona, “Hannah Montana,” when it ends this year. Then Cyrus will be free to embrace her solo stardom and sex appeal. ”When you’re 11, the word you would use to describe someone is definitely not sexy, and as you get older I think you grow into that. And I think I’ve done that but that’s not my schtick. That’s not what I’m trying to do to sell records. I want people to buy my record because of my music.”