Microsoft’s Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 definitely brought out the most Oohs and Aahs at my family’s Thanksgiving gathering. I mean, you control menus and games with just your voice and hand gestures. It’s like the future, but in the present!
But is there enough substance with the device to keep yourself entertained once your nieces, nephews, and grandparents go back home?
If you’re an enterprising member of Fluid Interfaces at MIT’s Media Lab, then the answer is a resounding “duh!” They’ve developed an open source JavaScript interface for navigating web pages on a Windows PC using hand gestures on the Kinect called DepthJS.
Nevermind the fact that hand gestures may not be the most efficient way of browsing the web – it’s just so damn neat-o! C’mon Caltech, step up your game!
Are shadow puppets more your cup of tea?
Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille whipped up this sweet puppetry demonstration in just a day of work! Again, it was done via open source code and drivers.
Finally, German company Evoluce, has probably what is the most mature “hack” for the Kinect yet. They’ve created a bridge to allow for multi-touch manipulation of photos and drawings in Windows 7 using the Kinect. They’ve even finagled a way to allow multiple people to draw and manipulate at the same time! Just imagine how cool your next presentation at the office will be if you and your partner go all Minority Report at the meeting.
Unfortunately, their technology is not open sourced, so you’ll probably have to wait until they have a product to sell you before you can play with it.
Convinced you want one now? It should be no surprise that the Kinect is in fairly short supply so far this holiday season. However, Amazon just sent word that they got some more of the Xbox 360 4GB Console with Kinect bundles (that’s both a console and a Kinect sensor) in stock today for $299.99 in time for the Black Friday feeding frenzy. If you’re in the market for an Xbox 360 and Kinect, you might want to pick it up fast before it inevitably sells out.
