How cool is that? An April’s Fool prank brought into reality!
On Friday last week I wrote about the new Gmail feature called Gmail Motion. I was thrilled, as you were, when I watched the introduction video to find out what the esteemed gurus at Google had treated us with this time. Ready to use, like many of you, I clicked on ‘Try Gmail Motion”. I held my breath while the loading bar snaked its way to completion… Only to find out that it was 1st of April and I had been had.
I laughed…in an awkward and silly sort of way and spent the rest of the day telling people the joke and telling them how ‘I knew right away’. Oh, come on! You tried to do that too.
However, today is not the 1st April and the folks at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are no fools. These guys have made the gag into a reality with the help of Kinect controller for Xbox 360 console.
In a video called “ICT MxRLab’s Response to Google’s Gmail Motion” (You can find it on You Tube) the researchers explain the technology behind the invention.
To achieve the final result, they used self-developed software FAAST. The researchers also created ‘middleware’ called SLOOW and made Kinect actually do what Gmail Motion only pretended to do.
The researchers even copied the gestures used in the Gmail Motion April video to demonstrate their invention.
This is all very clumsy at the moment and you will not catch me using it at home, however, I can see it being streamlined and commercialised in no time at all.
So, Google, who is the fool now?
Over and out
Mobile Geekette
