Yesterday, Colorado's state legislature finalized a bill to increase the state's renewable energy standard to 30 percent by 2020.

Colorado was one of the first states to adopt a renewable energy standard at all, committing in 2004 to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2015 and increasing that to 20 percent by 2020 in 2006.  This latest measure puts the state right behind California, who has the highest standard at 33 percent by 2020.

The bill also requires utilities to get 3 percent of their electricity from distributed sources like rooftop solar and other smaller wind and solar installations in order to give a boost to local renewable energy and construction companies.  That requirement alone will be responsible for 1 GW of clean energy, save 6.8 billion gallons of water and reduce emissions by 30 million tons of CO2 a year.

Colorado Approves 30% by 2020 Renewable Energy Standard

Viacom President and CEO Philippe Dauman officially outed Rock Band 3, due for release this holiday season, when it will "will innovate and revolutionize the music genre" all over again.

Dauman revealed the game while speaking at the Credit Suisse Group Global Media and Communications Conference this morning, quickly followed by Tweets from several members of the Harmonix staff, relieved to finally be able to discuss what they've been working on, as well as this new entry on the Rock Band Facebook page:

Harmonix is developing Rock Band 3 for worldwide release this holiday season! The game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts, will innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again, just as Harmonix did with the original Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. Stay tuned for more details!

How could Rock Band 3 possibly revolutionize the music genre any further? Will there be harmonies? Will it accept your own MP3s, converting them on the fly? Look for the answers to these questions and more whenever Harmonix feels it's a good time to give them to us.

And no, that's not the official logo.

Rock Band 3 Revolutionizes The Music Genre This Holiday Season - Rock band 3 - Kotaku

A massively multiplayer game based off popular science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica is due to launch this fall, license holder NBC Universal announced today.

A client-free and browser-based affair said to pack "state of the art graphics," Battlestar Galactica Online is being powered by Unity--the same technology used by EA's broswer-based Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online.

Development of the game is being handled by independent Norwegian studio Artplant, the previous works of which include Riding Club Championships. Going by its website, Artplant "aims to become one of the leading massively multiplayer web game developers" and "developed our own MMO server tailored for Unity 3D web games."

As far as actual details on the game itself, all we know can be found below:

Players will be able to choose to play as cylons or humans in a constant struggle to control the universe or just survive its perils. A blend of tactical space combat, exploration, and mission-based gameplay will provide a diverse experience. The dramatic missions will define the game's overall storyline, enabling the player to delve into mysteries of the Battlestar universe. Battlestar Galactica Online will create a new standard for web games, with beautiful 3d graphics and innovative game mechanics bringing a new level of game play to browser based MMOG. Assets from the television production will be integrated into the game to deliver an even more authentic experience.

According to today's announcement, "the game...will launch worldwide exclusively this fall on Syfy.com for a 30 day period" and will be published by content provider Bigpoint.

Battlestar Galactica MMO Announced - Shacknews

Portal 2 is real, and coming this Christmas, Valve said Friday. And it looks like Mac owners might get to share the love.

The Seattle gamemaker announced that it would release the sequel to Portal, its space-time-bending, hilarious 2007 sleeper hit later this year. If you want to know more, you’ll have to pick up the next issue of Game Informer magazine. And Valve’s not done making waves: A slate of teaser images released this week that the company is bringing its games, and Steam direct download service, to the Mac platform.

Portal 2 also had its share of teases: On Monday, an update to the original game brought with it a pile of hidden clues that suggested a sequel was inbound.

Right after leading fans down the Portal rabbit hole, Valve started teasing the notion of Steam for Mac. A series of ad parodies that mash Valve’s characters into retro Apple ads more than suggests that the company will be launching their game marketplace and social network for Mac computers in the near future.

We’ll make sure Valve gets us the official news when it’s ready to stop being such teases.

Portal 2 Is Official… And Maybe for Mac | GameLife | Wired.com

Activision Blizzard will release new games in the Call of Duty first-person shooter series in 2010 and 2011, plus a game that takes the series into the action-adventure genre, it said Tuesday.

The details of the blockbuster war-game franchise follow the shocking news that Jason West and Vince Zampella, the top execs at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward, were ousted from the company. Activision confirmed the pair’s departure today but did not give any further details, although it said that two “Activision publishing veterans” would be placed in control of Infinity Ward.

This year’s Call of Duty will be produced by Treyarch, the team responsible for 2008’s Call of Duty: World at War (pictured above). The action-adventure game will be produced by new Activision unit Sledgehammer Games, formed by former Electronic Arts developers who created Dead Space.

Activision also said that it will form a dedicated Call of Duty business unit that will oversee the franchise much in the same way that Blizzard Entertainment handles its products. Tuesday’s press release says that the company will pursue “new digital business models” and “high-margin digital online content,” which sounds like that Call of Duty MMO we keep hearing about.

Activision Confirms Departures, Announces 2 Call of Duty Games | GameLife | Wired.com

Portal's eerie symbolism was ramped up another notch this week when Valve announced a patch that has gamers playing what seems to be an alternate reality game within the platformer. The update to the game doesn't seem to include much new content at first glance, but what has been added is clearly only the beginning of a much bigger trip down Valve's latest rabbit hole.

Today's announced update was accompanied by a short, cryptic note: "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations." When you next boot up the game, there is a radio in your cell that broadcasts morse code when you hold it and stand on the red button in the first level (as seen in the video below). It turns out there are a total of 26 different radios in the game now, and they all have morse code.

The game's new achievement, "Transmission Received" is unlocked when you discover the first morse code radio broadcast. Not only that, but the sound the radios make when a radio is thrown into a force field is extremely unnerving.

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