First up, our resident Kiwi and HR person, Lucy Armstrong, wanted to share this awesome piece of Rugby World Cup inspired Lego-based wonderment –
When we asked ‘Why is this cool?’ to the rest of the office, the simple answer was ‘BECAUSE IT IS LEGO!’
However, one thing that did come out of this was the amount of time and effort that goes into some of these cool things. The above stop-motion video leads quite nicely into another high-effort delivery, aka: cool thing number two –
Regular readers will know that we like our big Follow Fridays here at 1000heads and last Friday was no exception. The Nokia community team were in the office helping to create the above #FF message out of post-it notes. @My_E72 was over the moon with our message and well, we thought it was pretty damn cool too.
Our third and final cool thing came from one Joel Diamond. Joel had managed to locate what is being labelled as an ‘Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment.’
Recently, I decided to treat myself to the technological wonder that is the Xbox Kinect. But, before we crack on, let me make one thing absolutely clear –
The Xbox Kinect is, without doubt, the most exciting piece of technology I have ever brought into my house (by a clear country mile) and, quite possibly, the most amazing thing I have ever bought. Ever. Full stop.
It really is that good.
What’s worrying, however, is that for a short while I didn’t even realise it.
Returning from my parents this past Christmas (I believe it was Dec 27th), I stopped off in town to pick up the Johnny-5 head-shaped bad boy and left him by the TV for a couple of days, before breaking it open just before New Year and cracking on.
“This’ll be fun” I thought “I’ll give it a whirl”
See, as you may know, I am a gaming geek (some would argue more so than a mobile geek), and so getting my hands on the latest awesome periphery for my current console of choice was fairly high up on my list of priorities.
“Gaming is going be awesome with this…”
Honestly? It’s been over a month now and I’ve hardly played the games at all. Don’t get me wrong, Kinect Adventures IS fun and I’m informed that the yet-to-be-opened Dance Central is pretty damn good also. However, the Kinect has changed something so significant, so utterly mind-blowing that most of the time, I switch it on just so I can play with IT.
Why?
It’s all about the interface. Things that live on my Xbox (aside from the games) include (but are not exclusive to) Last.fm, Sky TV, Twitter, Facebook and – thanks to a handy piece of software called Connect360 (no relation) – my entire music, photo and video collection that resides on my Mac.
[Nearly] everything is available to Kinect with… and it rocks.
Introducing such a fundamental step-change into the way I interact with my main media channel has, perhaps unsurprisingly to some, drastically shifted my usage patterns along with it. Last.fm, formally an Xbox Gold ‘nice to have’ extra that I only used on occasion is now the main reason for switching the Xbox on in the morning/afternoon/evening…
Forget the wavey-roundy, gesture sensitive motion capture stuff (although that’s quite cool also) the Kinect, for me at least, is all about the voice activation.
Let me show you: .
I can be in the shower in the next room and be yelling out my instructions AND IT STILL HEARS ME! Music, is everything…
In the same way that nobody knew they needed an iPad (and yet now suddenly they now wonder how they ever did without them), the Xbox Kinect slips into your day to day life like the smoothest of gloves onto a well-worn hand. Within a couple of days you catch yourself wondering why on Earth everything in your household doesn’t run in the same way.
“Kettle? Boil.” or “Shower? On.” and of course, “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.“ are suddenly so desperately close to hand but also, in the same breath, achingly far away. The Xbox Kinect really is the technology of the future boys and girls and believe it when I tell you; we’ve not even scratched the surface.
Maybe it’s the hours upon hours that we spent back in my SpinVox days talking about the future of speech technologies that has got me so excited about all this, maybe it’s because at heart, I’m a massive Star Trek fan and being able to talk to my computer is a pipe dream I’ve lusted after ever since I first saw Jean-Luc do the exact same thing all those years ago… or maybe, just maybe it’s just because that deep down, I am a geek – through and through – and I just love new technology.
