Early adopters of the new Kinect hardware will have the opportunity to purchase the device before it officially goes on sale. For $399 you'll get a pre-production model, the SDK as well as the consumer-level version when it becomes available.
Ask any developer, having a utility library available when building applications can save a you a lot of troubles. As part of a project to create gestural based character movements in second life (Armadillo); John McCaffery has developed NuiLib, a library which works with the Kinect in order to alleviate much of the heavy lifting and provide a means to ease integration of NUI devices into 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!
In the spirit of development and just getting to know things in a better way, Rik Sabino recently put together a very cool project that ultimately has ended up being one of the most impressive presentation of a resume…ever. What a creative way to present your portfolio to a potential employer! The software is free to download so go check it out over at http://n0n4m3.codingcorner.net/?p=557.
I practically died when I seen this one. Dan Thyer set up a Netduino operated garden hose which is controlled by a program that uses a servo to change the direction of the hose. By pushing a button, he's able to have the hose continuously spray water in a pattern which machos the inner lining of his pool.
He's also able to manually take over by using a kinect which uses it's skeletal tracking abilities to precisely control where the hose is directed. He can essentially sit on his porch and blast water at anyone in the pool with a fair amount of accuracy.
This is what I like to see. A crisp, clean, seamless user interface with accompanying code for us all to try out! If you skip past my boring ass synopsis and go straight to the video, you'll be treated to one of the slickest video manipulation programs using a natural user interface to date. You heard right folks, this demo is a thing of beauty.
As the video illustrates, close to 500,000,000 people in India do not have access to the resources necessary to learn how to read and write. Many attempts have been made to introduce technology to these less fortunate people, but there is still a huge barrier that exists between using a computer properly and not knowing how to read.
One of the most practical uses of the Kinect's technology and low price point is introducing it into the classroom as a means of transitioning from archaic, dry teaching methods into a fun, interactive user experience. This is a great way to engage students by having them interact with and witness the effects of the lesson in real-time.
One of the original founders of the OpenKinect community, Joshua Blake, has been hard at work, toiling in his secret gesture recognition laboratory hidden somewhere deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Now I'm not sure about the validity of that previous statement, but that's how I envision where really smart people go to do their best work. Anyway, I popped by the OpenKinect Google Groups page and noticed that Mr. Blake posted something very interesting the other week.