The way developers are hacking Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller to lead it into all sorts of exciting new directions continues to impress. While some are using it as a musical instrument controller, others have taken it into the world of dance.
This impressive video was sent through to us from Singapore. Edwin Toh, a developer at Kinetic Singapore, expains that it was created as a marketing stunt for drinks brand F&N. “Dancers are transformed into colourful bubbles which react and replicate the dancers’ moves,” he says. “As dancers groove to the music, sounds will be triggered. Depending on which screen region the dancers move to and trigger, different pitches will be produced, leading to a unique mish-mash of creative sounds and movements.”
Beyond the fact that brands are now jumping on the Kinect hack bandwagon, what’s exciting about this video is that it looks just like a pop video but rendered in real time. If developers are doing this mere months after Kinect’s initial release, what will they be doing in a year from now?
Tomer Tishgarten is vice president of technology at Engauge, one of the nation’s largest independent advertising agencies. Follow him @tomerific.
If you’re among the many marketers trying to grasp the game-changing impact of Xbox’s motion-controlled add-on Kinect, you’re not alone. Even Microsoft didn’t realize what it had on its hands. When launching in November, Microsoft predicted sales of 3 million units by the end of 2010. Instead, the company sold 8 million in two months and recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest-selling consumer electronics product in history. For brands, the excitement is just beginning — and so are the challenges.
In addition to sensing motion, Microsoft’s newest periphery for the Xbox 360 recognizes voices, captures facial expressions in real time, and can even tell players apart. It’s arguably the biggest advance in mainstream digital interface design since the widespread adoption of the computer mouse in the ’80s.
Kinect and its underlying PrimeSense technology promise to open new doors and could explode our conceptions of what’s possible online. Today’s online world remains governed by the conventions of preset hyperlinks and point-and-click devices, but over time, those constraints will be shattered. The popularity of touchscreens on smartphones and tablets suggest we were already headed in this direction. Marketers may play an important role in determining how quickly Kinect technology crosses the chasm from hardcore gamers to mainstream adoption.
The Engagement Potential for Brands
Big brands, including Burger King and Samsung, jumped in first with Kinect gaming promotions. But the marketing potential of Kinect extends far beyond video games. In the near term, marketers could leverage Kinect technology to create eye-opening trade show displays and in-store promotions. Freed from the gaming console, the technology can draw people into an immersive, interactive experience.
Innovative web-based applications will also be worth considering as the technology reaches a critical mass of 15% of households or users, a point at which adoption rates tend to accelerate.
With Avatar Kinect, Microsoft will soon move into augmented social media. Microsoft’s plans for the new technology clearly go beyond gaming. And Kinect’s controller-free environment should appeal to casual gamers, not just the hardcore console jocks, which will heighten appeal for mass marketers. Indeed, the pitch to advertisers from Microsoft is that women, younger children and tweens are “joining in the fun” with Kinect. Most importantly, perhaps, the price is relatively inexpensive; approximately $150.
In the future, it’s conceivable that consumers scanned into the system could theoretically interact with three-dimensional models of products. Why couldn’t Ford, which recently launched an exclusive Xbox campaign for its C-MAX, put consumers behind the wheel and let them take the newest model for a spin?
For catalog clothing brands, the ecommerce implications are immense. Why couldn’t Eddie Bauer let consumers try on clothes virtually? In the travel industry, the applications are even more numerous — a walking tour of the cabanas at Club Med, anyone? And with the capacity to scan an entire room, why couldn’t The Home Depot let customers design the layout of new kitchen cabinets or Ikea showcase sofas within digital models of consumers’ living rooms?
Peak Expectations Meet Practical Challenges
Marketers have tremendous opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competitors in this new environment. Yet they also face the challenge of developing those experiences without instructions or precedents.
Before agencies and developers can create the architecture of this new world — and customized applications for brands — they must first study what makes the new technology tick, which is why developers have been so busy “hacking” Kinect.
The development tools for Kinect are still fairly immature at this stage, but they do provide enough capabilities to build some interesting applications. As more work is done to support these tools by Microsoft and the larger development community, the possibilities for Kinect will grow exponentially.
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As Kinect hacks go, this one’s not going to bowl you over with its technical complexity, but the effect of what it does is quite dramatic. One of Microsoft’s sensor-rich, camera-laden Xbox accessories has been repurposed to communicate with a Pufferfish spherical projection display — via the magic of WPF and openni — with its motion tracking algorithms serving to control the image on the giant ball. Naturally, the first thing the tweakers behind this mod thought up was a Tolkien-inspired eye that follows people around the room. Sadly, the single Kinect box isn’t enough to provide 360-degree coverage, but it’s probably just a matter of time until they splice an array of them together and creep us out completely. Video after the break.
Update: You asked for the eye of Sauron and now you’ve got it. Second video added after the break.
A Microsoft lawsuit, unsealed earlier today, is responsible for causing government raids last Wednesday that lead to the downfall of the world’s biggest spam network, Rustock.
Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit used information gained in its 2010 takedown of the Waledac botnet to work with the U.S. Marshals Service in locating and obtaining evidence from five hosting companies in seven U.S. cities.
“DCU researchers watched a single Rustock-infected computer send 7,500 spam emails in just 45 minutes – a rate of 240,000 spam mails per day,” said Richard Boscovich, Senior Attorney at the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, in a blog post. With approximately one million computers worldwide infected by Rustock, the botnet was able to send 240 billion spam messages in a single day.
Symantec revealed in August last year that botnets were responsible for 95% of the Internet’s spam, and that 41% of botnet spam came from the Rustock botnet. This means the dismantling of the Rustock botnet could mean a reduction in global spam by 39%–at least for a little while.Image Credit
Windows 8 is perhaps the hottest unreleased Microsoft product in the world, with millions of content Windows 7 users curious if there is an upgrade in their near future.
The OS is supposed to be a dramatic refresh of the Windows line, something that Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer has called the company’s riskiest product bet ever. There has been rumor of a new, perhaps Metro (Microsoft’s design ethos behind Zune and WP7) inspired UI called “Mosh” in the OS.
Until today, we have very little to go on in that regard. However, fresh leaks have brought a new name to our attention: Aero Lite. Yes, a msstyles file was uncovered that shows quite plainly that Windows 8 is going to have an Aero Lite option. Could it be Mosh? We think that it is a strong possibility.
Also recently leaked, while you were sleeping, is some of the iconography of Aero Lite, which look like this:
We recently found several screenshots of Windows 8 which you can see here.
What do we think of Aero Lite? We are in love with the Windows Phone 7 user interface, and could not be happier with the Zune Desktop software, so if indeed Aero Lite builds off of those other products’ design, we are thrilled.
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