This week, Donald and Eric explore the idea of hearing with your mouth, seeing in 12 dimensions, and shooting lightening with a wave of your arm. Yes, it's wizard tech week, apparently. To that end, we show off an illuminated staff that can divine the strength of your Wi-Fi signal and a DIY project for all you pinball wizards out there.
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Whether you're one of the 10 million who bought a Kinect or one of those who mock its existence, there's no denying that Microsoft's Xbox 360 motion control device is doing more than letting players tickle digital tigers.
Using the camera and motion recognition built into the accessory, the techies at Triangle Productions are using a hacked Kinect to make a motion capture--or "mo-cap"--movie. They're utilizing the professional animation programs Maya and MotionBuilder, open-source programming software OpenNI, and a Kinect tool called Brekel, to capture their own actions, which characters then mimic in "Under the HUD," a new animated Web series.
In the process, they've probably saved themselves from spending sleepless nights animating frames while creating what looks to my eyes to be high production value--at what's most likely a fraction of the cost.
While the Web series hasn't aired yet (the creators are aiming for an early-May release), the sneak-peek video below details the production process, as well as the mo-cap capabilities of Kinect.… Read more
Between computer love and our frustration at Apple's capricious review-unit shenanigans, today's show ends up a tiny bit off the rails. However, in the straight dish, Kinect is the fastest-selling consumer device, Safari falls to hackers in record time, AOL has some brutal layoffs, and Discovery lands safely and is headed for the museum. Sniff. --Molly
Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (640x360) | RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS (640x360)… Read moreLinks from Thursday's episode of Loaded:
Mozilla ready for Release Candidate 4 test
IE9 gets a release date
Kinect breaks iPad sales records
New Apple iOS 4.3 now available
Shuttle Discovery's last flightMicrosoft announced today that it has sold 10 million Kinect sensors since the Xbox 360 accessory launched in November. In addition, Microsoft reported that over 10 million Kinect games have been sold. The global sales figures, according to a company spokeswoman, were tallied through the end of February.
Since its launch, Kinect--which allows gamers to control on-screen action with only the movement of their bodies rather than a controller--has surpassed expectations. Microsoft initially expected to sell 5 million Kinect units through 2010. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, however, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that the company actually sold 8 million units … Read more
It seems you can do almost anything with robots and Kinect--perhaps even save lives. Students at the U.K.'s University of Warwick are using the motion controller on a robot that's designed to help find victims in quake-hit buildings.
With a look that seems inspired by "Short Circuit" star Number 5, Warwick's Teleoperated Search & Rescue Robot (PDF) can crawl over obstacles and fit into cramped spaces.
It has six tracks and a sensor-laden "head" on an articulated arm, and is powered by two Roboteq AX3500 motors.
It can use its new Kinect sensor to map terrain in 3D, perhaps identifying areas in a collapsed building where victims could be trapped.
The Kinect is an improvement to past versions of the robot that saves significant sums compared with Lidar laser sensors, which use light to image objects and create maps.
The team also wants to equip the crawler with a manipulator that could help bring food and medicine to trapped victims.
The robot won the European rescue championship at RoboCup last year in Germany, and aims to win this year's world competition in Turkey. … Read more
SAN FRANCISCO--The wave is one of the most universal ways of saying hello or drawing attention, but how do you create an entire language of gestures that people know, make sure they work with your specialized camera system, then make it work around the world?
Microsoft faced that problem while developing the Kinect, which the company discussed today during a session here at this year's Game Developers Conference, which kicks off in earnest on Wednesday.
On hand was Kate Edwards, who is a geocultural content strategist for Englobe, a company that specializes in geopolitical and cartographic consultation. Edwards briefly … Read more
Kinect has turned out to be a big success for Microsoft, and Monday's news that the company is planning to officially bring the technology to Windows users marks an important step in Kinect's progress as a platform for new types of software and gesture-based user interfaces.
That said, if you take a look back, it's not like we didn't see this coming.
Even so, Kinect has turned out to be more successful than Microsoft originally imagined, with sales that dramatically beat estimates. It's also helped reform the image of the software giant from a company … Read more
Just after Microsoft announced a Windows software development kit for its hit Kinect motion controller today, a former "core" member of the device's development team said the idea for a bounty contest to hack the Kinect was his.
In a post on his personal blog, former Kinect team "core contributor" Johnny Lee said that he was happy to see news of the new SDK from Microsoft and that it was something he'd been promoting internally before he left in January to join Google as a "rapid evaluator." In the post, Lee also … Read more
In a move that was widely rumored, Microsoft said the Kinect for Windows SDK will allow third-party developers to create software titles that use a Kinect motion sensor plugged directly into a Windows PC. This noncommercial "starter version" SDK will give users access to deep Kinect system information such as audio, system application-programming interfaces, and direct control of the Kinect sensor, Microsoft said. The company also plans to release a commercial version at a later date.
"Microsoft's … Read more
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Christina Milian and the gadgets she loves
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