MS mulls Kinect business apps

eWeek.

The Kinect SDK, which legitimises hacks which have been executed on Microsoft's games console interface since its release, was shown at Microsoft's MIX 11 event in Las Vegas, but simultaneously took centre stage as part of a new research thrust, at Microsoft Research's European Software Summit in Paris.

ZDNet says the Kinect SDK will give software developers tools to create applications that use motion sensing and hand gestures.

Microsoft expects developers to come up with ideas that could be applied in a business environment - and generate huge paydays.

“I think it could be a meaningful business,” said Anoop Gupta, a scientist at Microsoft Research who is overseeing the project.

Ever since Microsoft unveiled Kinect at the tail end of 2010, developers have been clamouring for access to the device on PCs, states The Inquirer.

Microsoft has said that it will provide a Kinect SDK for Windows 7 and it has now it put out a little more detail on what academics and enthusiasts will get when it releases the Kinect SDK.

Microsoft got the important question out of the way by saying that it will release the Windows 7 Kinect SDK later this Spring, tending to suggest that it will tip up in the next couple of months.