The Kinect technology, according to Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, is the beginning of a new way of communicating with computers. For the past quarter of a century, computing has mainly meant typing on a keyboard and using a computer mouse to point and click on graphic icons on the screen — the graphical user interface (GUI). Kinect, a $150 add-on to the Xbox game console, points the way to a different model, a natural user interface, or NUI. Increasingly, the computers that surround us will understand our speech and hand gestures. The machines, in essence, will become a bit more human.
Microsoft announced that in the next month or so it would release an initial software developer’s kit for programmers who wanted to make applications using the Kinect technology. The first set of software developer tools is for academics and enthusiasts, who have already begun hacking Kinect to make home-grown applications. The tools will make it easier for them to write more sophisticated programs. The potential uses include inexpensive 3D design and modeling, photo-realistic human avatars and smart displays that might be able to direct two different visual and audio streams to two people sitting in the same room.
More information:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/microsofts-kinect-the-new-mouse/
More information:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/microsofts-kinect-the-new-mouse/