Microsoft is holding a special event today to announce the availability of the Xbox Kinect SDK beta. The live streaming event is put on by the Channel 9 MSDN group. It includes the announcement, technical information, demos, and plenty of Q&As for the next 4 hours.
You can watch the live streaming event at http://channel9.msdn.com/live while it’s live (Silverlight required).
The Kinect SDK is the Software Developer Kit for the Kinect that has been successful and revolutionary on the Xbox gaming console. It provides developers the interfaces and APIs needed to fully utilize the technology. We’ve seen some hacks using the Kinect before but this will only further the development and new things we’re able to see with the Kinect as well as help people understand what’s behind the technology that allows your body to become the controller.
You can download the Kinect SDK for Windows from Microsoft Research.
The launch event is supposed to include many resources to help get developers interested and off the ground with utilizing the SDK beta. There is also a series for Kinect SDK Quickstarts and a Coding 4 Fun blog focusing on developing for the Kinect.
Check it out and let’s see what cool things can come out of this.