Kinect Hacks and Modding Potential
Who would have known that a motion controller ad don for the Xbox 360 would turn out to be such a hit in the hacking community? I think I have heard more about the mods than the actual game play with the Kinect. It's also good to see that Microsoft has changed it's initial hardliner stance on hacking the Kinect and will hopefully embrace the goals of the modders with some official XNA support.
The best part is that it only took a week for hackers to break down the Kinect's security and offer it up on a silver platter to everybody to enjoy. I went from thinking it was going to be another dumb motion control gaming gimmick to seriously considering picking one up to play with. It may not be as a gaming device, but as an artist it would make for a cheap way to work into a fairly sophisticated interactive art piece. It's great to see that something like the Kinect has much more use and potential outside of being an Xbox gaming peripheral and that modding can be very beneficial to the community. The community also comes up with some pretty interesting things like the Minority Report interface for your Windows 7 computer. Would befun to control your computer like that for a little bit, but I'm not sure it would be all that comfortable after awhile.
If you are looking at the nuts and bolts of how to hack the Xbox 360 Kinect, Endgadget has a pretty good writeup on it. Make Magazine also has a neat article on how the infrared camera works in the Kinect. Now I've just got to convince the SO that I NEED a Kinect for my Xbox S, If only she would let me buy this one.