Kinect

One of the to-date reliable observations which guides my professional life is that a technology has "made it" when O'Reilly Media decides to cover it. Not that any of us in the embedded vision industry had any doubts until now, mind you, but it's time to extend congratulations to the concept of hacking the Microsoft Kinect.

Two weeks ago, when I first wrote about Microsoft's upcoming Kinect for Windows, I wondered how substantially it'd differ from the Xbox 360-intended model, and whether the changes would reflect evolution in software, hardware or both.

I've often heard it claimed that Microsoft's Research Labs is the only remaining substantial-sized industry R&D arm, subsequent to the demise of Bell Labs and the downsizing of folks like Xerox PARC. While I don't have any particular interest in confirming or refuting the claim, what I will say with confidence is that the multi-site, multi-geography organization founded in 1991 comes up with some pretty amazing inventions.

Back in early August on this site, as well as a few weeks later in BDTI's monthly email newsletter, I mentioned that Microsoft had recently made two notable embedded vision announcements: