It looks like you can just rotate the non-seat part of the chair (carbon-fiber armrests and legs) while keeping the seat steady to transform it from a rocking chair to a standard armchair, which is such a simple idea we can't believe we haven't seen it before. The seat itself is made of stretchy elastic like in some office chairs and we can assume the whole chair is very light—but not inexpensive. We're not sure if the chair actually exists to be bought anywhere, but an idea this simple probably won't stay conceptual for long. [Yanko Design via Boing Boing Gadgets]

The Rockterscale measures how hard a party is rocking via four different signals. One, if someone wearing the Hat of Rock and is thrashing their head around to music/a seizure, the party is deemed rocking. If people are dancing on the floor mat, that is also seen as a sign of rockage. Third, a crash barrier that senses if people are being pushed into it, a sign of a rocking party with a rocking amount of violence. And lastly, there's a webcam on the ceiling monitoring the total amount of movement of a crowd.

Alternately, the system can let you know when there's a riot going on, as it's basically the same signals. [SlipperyBrick via New Launches]

According to GameTank's CEO Jake Parks, the connection to the guitar would either work "via a guitar-USB adapter, a microphone, or directly to the sound card." He told us that they are planning to release for both Mac and PC.

The cool thing about Guitar Rising is that it isn't a simple videogame, but combines the fun of playing and beating scores to actually teach you how to play the real thing. While they "are in the process of licensing popular rock songs, and we'll announce them on our website as soon as we finalize the deals," there will be different songs for different levels of difficulty to ease the learning curve, as well as different speed settings, so you can start slow and progress until you master the song at real speed. In fact, they say that the song selection will include stuff easy for beginners but also songs challenging for experienced players.

In other words, you will actually learn to play guitar and try to be a Keith Richards-wannabe rather than just pretending to be Jeff Vader pretending to be Keith Richards. If you want to give it a try, they will be at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco to visit us in the OMPR/IBM Pavilion, booth 6241. [Guitar Rising]