With Kinect Controller, Hackers Take Liberties @ NYTimes

Excellent front page business section article in today’s NYTimes –

…a crowd of programmers, roboticists and tinkerers who are getting the Kinect to do things it was not really meant to do. The attraction of the device is that it is outfitted with cameras, sensors and software that let it detect movement, depth, and the shape and position of the human body.

Companies respond to this kind of experimentation with their products in different ways — and Microsoft has had two very different responses since the Kinect was released on Nov. 4. It initially made vague threats about working with law enforcement to stop “product tampering.” But by last week, it was embracing the benevolent hackers.

In just one week we’ve seen dozens of amazing Kinect “hacks” from puppets to robots to interactive art and music – along the way Microsoft also embraced this eruption of creativity – congratulations to everyone in the open source community, I can’t wait to see what is created next.