English: The Xbox console with the S controller, made by Microsoft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I can see this having major educational uses. But it still feels version 1.0 with a long way to go. This will make new kinds of games possible. This will also get used by the porn industry. This could be used to create exotic backgrounds for parties you might want to throw.
Relive’s video projectors and Kinect combination is far too costly and large for living rooms right now, but Microsoft is imagining a future where this technology will be smaller and low-cost...... "There’s still lots to explore with RoomAlive as a gaming platform," explain’s a Microsoft Research spokesperson. "We envision a future where games can use physical objects as part of the game."
Users can touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that seamlessly co-exists with their existing physical environment. ..... focuses on interaction, and the new kinds of games that we can create with interactive projection mapping. RoomAlive looks farther into the future of projection mapping, and asks what new experiences will we have in the next few years? ...... The projector is used for display and the Kinect is used for tracking. Normally video projectors are used to display PowerPoint presentations on flat screens. RoomAlive uses cheap commodity video projectors to animate every square inch of your living room, this technique is known as projection mapping.
English: The Microsoft Kinect peripheral for the Xbox 360. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The NUI will be a bigger departure than the GUI, Graphical User Interface, was. This is a big one. Microsoft has some advantages here. But it will not be any one company thing. This will be a tectonic shift.
Laptops with 3-D sensors in place of conventional webcams will go on sale before the end of this year ...... Partners already working with Intel include Microsoft’s Skype unit, the movie and gaming studio Dreamworks, and the 3-D design company Autodesk ....... a startup called Volumental, lets you snap a 3-D photo of your foot to get an accurate shoe size measurement—something that could help with online shopping. ..... data from a tablet’s 3-D sensor can be used to build very accurate augmented reality games, where a virtual character viewed on a device’s screen integrates into the real environment. In one demo, a flying robot appeared on-screen and selected a landing spot on top of a box on a cluttered table. As the tablet showing the character was moved, it stayed perched on the tabletop, and even disappeared behind occluding objects. ...... the front-facing 3-D sensors can be used to recognize gestures to play games on a laptop, or take control of some features of Windows. ...... reminiscent of Microsoft’s Kinect sensor for its Xbox gaming console, which introduced gamers to depth sensing and gesture control in 2010. Microsoft launched a version of Kinect aimed at Windows PCs in 2012, and significantly upgraded its depth-sensing technology in 2013, but Kinect devices are too large to fit inside a laptop or tablet.
a matchbox-sized device that adds intuitive gesture control to any computer ..... The technology, which is also being adapted for mobile devices, could even leave the beloved pocket touch screen looking outmoded. .... The black glass on the Leap’s upper side hides two small cameras and a handful of infrared LEDs, which track the motion of a person’s fingers to an accuracy of a hundredth of a millimeter .... Leap provides the solution to “gorilla arm,” a term used to describe the dubious ergonomics of a person repeatedly lifting his or her hands from the keyboard or mouse and reaching out to operate a computer’s touch screen. Users of Leap’s device can lift their hands just slightly off the keyboard and make more economic gestures with their fingers. .... significantly faster than using a mouse and keyboard .... Holz says touch screens soared in popularity because they are more intuitive to use than keyboards and mice, but believes they are limited in a way the Leap is not. “The fact is that you can’t really do anything with a tablet, with tap and swipe, but it feels natural,” he says, meaning that people love touch screens but can’t easily create content using them. “We have that same natural experience but we have more power.” ..... since the [developer’s kit] is still in the preview stage, more features are being added that make capturing specific motions even easier. ..... over the longer term, the Leap will be used for very complex interactions. “You’ll be reaching into a 3-D world and grabbing hold of and moving things.” .... a chunk of simulated clay. He reached out and pushed and pulled with his fingers in the air in front of the monitor, creating a stylized human head in about a minute. ...... gestures can help remove a barrier between people and their technology ..... Leap Motion’s closest competitor may be Kinect, Microsoft’s body-tracking sensor for the Xbox games console
Seattle Times: Motorola wants patent royalties from Xbox, Windows 7 a court in Germany seems inclined to side with Motorola in the company's patent fight with Microsoft in which Motorola would like Microsoft to pay it royalties of 2.25 percent in sales of Windows 7 and Xbox 360, among other products. ...... Microsoft Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9, the Windows Media Player and the Xbox 360 infringe on those two patents. ..... have to do with video compression and decompression technology, covering methods for reducing the amount of bandwidth needed for video that is streamed online..... At stake are millions of dollars in royalties, along with strategic competitive advantages. ..... Microsoft itself has a number of patent agreements in place in which manufacturing companies pay royalties to the software giant. Microsoft has not disclosed how much it gets in royalties, but Microsoft attorney Brad Smith has suggested in the past that about $5 per mobile device "seems like a fair price."
Granted the Google Motorola integration has not happened yet, the purchase has not gone through, but don't tell me the people at Motorola do not feel the need to get on the right side of their future boss, Larry Page. They know exactly why he bought Motorola.
Or if these legal steps have been a long time coming, just goes on to show how software patents need fundamental reform, for everyone lives in glass houses.
But until that reform happens, the Android people have to simply fight back. Owning Motorola patents helps.
You get off the 6 train on Astor Place, and you just can't miss the Starbucks. It's right there. Thursday 9.15 AM. So that totally weeds out those who are just out for beer. Jobholders and entrepreneurs are two different species. If you should be at work at 9.15 in the morning, you probably don't belong here.
Nic Butterworth has the relaxed ways of someone who has already proven himself before. You feel easy around him. He is talking, then at the same time he is taking one step back and being his creative self. Parts of him keep churning what he is good at churning out even when he is very much with you.
I met him first on Tuesday evening at Scott's Tech MeetUp. (Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0) Nic's thing basically was that on YouTube you get lost. If you are into snowboarding, and you want many super clips of one particular move, you can't do that on YouTube. You come to Nic. This kind of vertical niche search has enormous value. He is definitely adding some serious value, and that is where the riches are.
That is the key question entrepreneurs have to ask themselves. Am I adding value?
I was the second person to sign up for it: The New York Open Coffee Meetup. So I am thinking, will it be just him and me? My train had a 20 minute delay, and so I was about five minutes late. And the place was full. It was crowded. How did he do it? How do you go from two on Tuesday midnight to 22 on Thursday morning? I am thinking, maybe the guy is famous.
Apparently most people had already introduced themselves. I got up, said my name, and talked up the IC for 20 seconds. The IC is a doughnut. It is not Nobel Prize for Physics material. It is meant to be a commodity.
The group broke into three, finance, real estate, and something else. I stuck with finance. The lead person had been in the Silicon Valley for 20 years. He made it sound like the East Coast, West Coast thing in tech and venture capital was no different than it is with rap music. New York is more conservative. Here people are not used to taking chances. You already should be churning some profit for them to pump money into you. Whereas in California, the idea sells.
I am not going anywhere. My market is right here. NYC is my number one market. Got contact info for one angel investor.
Met Christine, hardware Korean, software American. Cheerful. She was adopted by a South Dakota family when she was five months old. ("I have been to South Dakota.") She has worked at Microsoft in its XBox division. She is multicultural. She has lived in Paris a few years, for example. ("I have been to Wisconsin. It is like another planet.") She has that entrepreneur DNA, it is so obvious. Her company is called Mao Networks. And I am thinking Chairman Mao. She says it is an island off of Spain. Well then, that island must have been named after Chairman Mao.
And there was this London lady just passing through town. And three ladies around a table staying late. "Men don't change. Inside they are the same. Outside it looks different." Summary: it is a sexist world, and you feel that inside corporations, inside relationships.
There were so many good ideas floating around. It was so educational to get inside peeps into many startups at different stages of their growth. Frankly, I could not have enough of this. It could have gone on a few more hours, and I would still stick around.
Good thing this will happen every Thursday morning. Now I know what rush hour train rides are like.
It is important not to lose focus though. These meetings should not be the sharpening pencils sessions as a way to postpone actually doing the homework.
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