Kinect Modifcations

Video games are a popular technology available to many consumers.  One of the popular systems for video games is the X-Box 360, which has recently released a new product called the Kinect.  This product allows for users to become the controllers due to the motion capture software and cameras within it.  Recently there has been a large surge of people tinkering with Microsoft Kinect to use it for more than just playing games on the X-Box.  The product was released nearly over a month ago, and within a week of a company named Adafruit Industries offering a reward to the first person who created an open-sourced driver for it was one released.  After it's release there was many youtube videos hitting the internet showing off people using the Kinect for 3D drawing programs, multi-touch gesture-controlled photo viewers, and much more.  This was all done using an open data channel through the Kinect's USB interface.  This simple product opened up a wave of innovative ideas and uses for the type of technology that the Kinect uses, even though it was to be used primarly for playing games on the X-Box 360.  This sort of technology allows for a tremendous amount of innovative features and uses, ranging anywhere from playing indie games to possibly being used for things like augmented reality, in which users can touch and interact with a virtual product, which would be a new tool for advertising.  This is certainly a technology for people to keep their eyeson because it offers such versatility.