Are you ready for the Kinect SDK?
What else could Microsoft be up to today? The company is holding a big Kinect press event, starting at 12:30 p.m. EDT that will go on for -- get this -- four-and-a-half hours!
According to a blog post by Microsoft's Nic Fillingham the Kinect event will be broadcast live from Channel 9. "The broadcast will be in IIS smooth streaming 720P so please ensure you have Silverlight installed and for the full high definition experience select 'Fullscreen' from within the player," he writes. So no Adobe Flash is required, but you'll still need Microsoft's alternative.
On Monday I posted "11 things Microsoft did right in fiscal 2011." No. 1: Kinect.
Kinect went on sale in November, with Microsoft reporting 8 million sales during the holidays. But the device is more than a game controller. It represents a whole new design philosophy for Microsoft around natural user interfaces -- of which the Office ribbon and Windows 8 UI are part.
Kinect has enormous potential as a transforming platform that could change how people interact with all kinds of devices. With Kinect, you are the controller -- the user interface. Kinect and the NUI concepts behind it could transform Microsoft. Execution is key.
Part of that execution is delivering the SDK, which Microsoft formally announced in February. Third parties didn't wait around. Weeks after Microsoft announced the SDK, SoftKinetic released its own.
The other essential part of the execution is positioning -- Microsoft formally and aggressively establishing Kinect as a broad development platform. Along with synchronization, NUI is the killer application for the connected world -- particularly as more and different kinds of devices are connected, from refrigerators to washers to home alarm systems and more.
Why not Kinect ATMs, where facial recognition and body motion control the transactions? There are limitless possibilities. Will Microsoft present them? We'll know by early afternoon ET.