Kinect For Windows: Now Shipping (Along With "Gold" Software), Plus Developer Demos

As I previously reported in early January, Microsoft's Kinect for Windows hardware began showing up in various retail channels on February 1, right on schedule. A month back, when I first checked Amazon's website, it was showing a several-week lead time, but the product is now reportedly in stock and ready for immediate shipment. And the companion SDK and runtime are now out of beta, too. Kinect for Windows normally costs $249.99. However, if you're a "qualified educational user", Microsoft has special $149.99 pricing for you.

Microsoft's KinectWindows Twitter feed is the primary means by which I learn about all of this news. And it recently gave me a heads-up about another cool resource. Check out the company-sponsored Coding4Fun site, specifically the Kinect page, for nearly two-dozen pages' worth of interesting projects based on the gesture interface hardware and companion software. I gotta hand it to the developer community; they sure have fertile imaginations!