Academics, Enthusiasts to Get Kinect SDK

Ever since the Kinect for Xbox 360 was announced I wanted it to have support for PC. But unfortunately at that time Microsoft did not thought in the same line as we computer enthusiasts.

However it was fortunate that community was really keen to get the Kinect to work with PC one way or other . And numerous hacking attempts began to surface. http://www.pcworld.com/article/210494/kinect_hacked_to_work_on_pcs.html

And finally it seems Microsoft has listened to the community and decided to  release community release of SDK of Kinect for PC.

And it’s interesting to learn that the mastermind behind AdaFruit Industries' Kinect hacking contest was former core member Johnny Lee from the Kinect team.

"Back in the late Summer of 2010, trying to argue for the most basic level of PC support for Kinect from within Microsoft, to my immense disappointment, turned out to be really grinding against the corporate grain at the time (for many reasons I won't enumerate here)," Johnny Lee had said. "When my frustration peaked, I decided to approach AdaFruit to put on the Open Kinect contest. For obvious reasons, I couldn't run the contest myself. Besides, Phil and Limor did a phenomenal job, much better than I could have done. Without a doubt, the contest had a significant impact in raising awareness about the potential for the Kinect outside of Xbox gaming both inside and outside the company."

References:

http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2011/02/windows-drivers-for-kinect.html

[Posted with Windows Live Writer™ 2011 on Windows 7 64bit]

Windows Live™ Writer 2011

I had been using the Windows Live™ Writer for blogging ever since it was introduced. Since it did not had emoticon support out of the box in first versions I had been using a 3rd party plugin for the requirement. (Can’t remember which I did used but think it was Insert MSN, Yahoo and Custom Smileys)

But during last months I happened to find that it had broken the compatibility with Live Writer™. Just today I realized why Microsoft had released new versions of Windows Live Writer™ 2011 which of course has the emoticon support out of the box. (It even has the ability to auto format emoticon phrases to relevant emoticon automatically)

Among other features are ability to insert Bing Map locations, Post tags and more Windows 7 like user interface layout.

Only problem I found to be is no longer I can change the size of the emoticons which I can accept for the time being.

[Posted with Windows Live Writer™ 2011 on Windows 7 64bit]