Jomario Murta submitted a great writeup pertaining to his markerless, point cloud generated reference method for producing animations and MoCap. Here's what he had to say about it:

As you probably know, already exists some motion capture softwares using the kinect on windows, they are quite interesting once the capture is made without needing marks, and it can be exported to many compatible formats, like the BVH and the FBX.

Got a tip today from Matthias Wölfel who was kind enough to share his great gesture based recording and recognition tool used with the Kinect. The system is free to check out by downloading it from http://kineticspace.googlecode.com.

The software allows users to train the software to recognize specific gestures that can be implemented into other applications such as Max/MSP, Pure Data, VVVV, Resolume via OSC protocol.

Although this isn't exactly Kinect related, it does fall into the niche technology that this site aims to deliver in terms of reporting on NUI advancements. Microsoft; the guys behind delivery Kinect tech to the masses, are experimenting with a new type of technology that utilizes the Doppler effect with inaudible sound waves. Think sonar for your laptop.

The tech; tentatively called SoundWave, is able to detect motion based on the Doppler effect that detects movements and gestures based on their proximity to the computer.

I was just made aware of the great tool for creating volumetric video using DSLR cameras along with Kinect depth data. The toolkit is free to use with code available on GitHub if you'd like to take it for a spin. Tutorials and overview videos can be viewed on the official site at rgbdtoolkit.com

The good folks at ZigFu have just announced that the commercial version of their ZigFu Development Kit is now available. With the ZigFu development kit, you can develop feature rich websites, Unity games and Flash applications using depth sensing cameras such as the Kinect.

All application are portable across all operating systems, web browsers CV middleware and 3D sensors. They have a recipe list, API documentation and some great tutorials to get you started on your way to developing robust kinect applications.

This is a must have for all you future loving Kinect-o-phile music fans out there. Amulet Voice Kinect allows you to control your entire music catalogue by using Microsoft's Speech ZiraPro library along with a Kinect sensor.

If you're fortunate enough to be running a Windows 7 machine along with a decent sized library of music, this application will definitely be the centre piece at your next get together. It's free to download and needs just a few requirements to be met in order to get things up and running.

The Kinect wiz kids over in Redmond Washington are really flexing their Kinect SDK muscles with this one. All I know is that the near future will be full of automated personal assistants along this same vein and I can't freakin' wait!

One particular Kinect Use Case for people who want to get involved using Kinect tech but just can't picture how they would actually use it, is to offer up its depth sensing capabilities as a webcam - or depthcam in this case.

That's exactly what George MacKerron was able to piece together with a short Python script, a simple node.js server and a web based client to receive the depth data. It's all done in HTML5 and uses WebGL to render the 3D graphics in the browser.

If I said it once, I said it a million times. The Kinect has so much potential when it's applied to research and development in the realm of accessibility. It's in this area of research that the Kinect will leave its mark. Helping those in need is a great way to use technology.

You have to check out this hilarious hack by Mr. Theo Watson himself. Recorded at Art Hack Day, Theo treats us to a live demonstration of his Russian Roulette Simulator that was built in about 3 hours for the event. He's using openFrameworks 007 along with the ofxKinect library -- everything is pretty much self explanatory once you watch the video.

Enjoy this morbid/clever Dear Hunter moment brought to you by Theo Watson, ofx and developkinect. Have a great weekend!