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Kinect: a Great Idea, Realized at Last

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Arcade fighting games
Image via Wikipedia

A lot of people have heard of the new Kinect from Microsoft. And that’s great, because they have been all but bombarding everybody in the modern world with the message about the thing for several months now. If you want to get a pretty decent workout but hate to go to some gym or outside to do so, this can be a nice little compromise between a technology craving and a desire to flex a little bit. A body in motion tends to stay alive longer, as the old saying goes. But did you know that, like almost everything else in this world, the Kinect is not that new of an idea? Believe it or not, it has a lineage which goes back to when Microsoft was still growing like a weed.

Back in the early 1990s, there was a device put out by Sega for its Genesis system. Known as the Activator, it used infrared beams to track where you were moving, and put a whole new shine on fighting games. Unfortunately, it suffered from a few setbacks which the designers of that era simply could not reconcile. The world just was not ready for the movement based games that are becoming more and more common place today. However, it is definitely for the best that such an attempt was made back then.

Some people say that the average baby tries to walk (or even to get up into a crawl) hundreds of times before they finally succeed in doing so. While some scientist somewhere has probably studied infants to the point where they know exactly how many tries it takes to learn how to take those first wobbly steps, the point is that falling down is not that big of a deal. The problem happens when someone tries to do something, falls down and just assumes that it can’t be done. It’s a good thing Microsoft does not think that way, isn’t it?

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Raise Your Heart Rate With a Game

December 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Do you remember when people used to go outside, in order to have fun? It really did not matter whether it was hot and muggy out, or if the humidity in your breath seemed to freeze as soon as it left your throat- going outside used to be a great way to have a good time. But of course, parents have become rightly afraid that their kids might disappear in some way or another if they leave the relative safety of their home. And considering that we live in a land of abundance, it is very easy for most parents to afford all sorts of indoor distractions, that can keep their kids from wandering into the dangerous world that lives outside their triple locked doors.  Now music can be listened too and shared with ares p2p and movies watched with software like vlc player and by using something like aresgalaxy, you never have to leave home to swap things with your friends.

Of course, habits become ingrained, and what “professional” person wants to be seen goofing around outside? The only time many people ever see the Sun without a window in the way or small fresh air is when they do yard work. And for a few bucks, the guy down the street will be happy to do it for you. So who needs to go outside, anyway? This is the sort of reasoning (coupled with the idea that more grease is somehow an “extra value”) which has led our society to get progressively fatter. Two out of three adults are either overweight or obese, which means people of a healthy weight are now a minority.

After you are over the horror of a thought like that, consider that the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction, in a sense. Nowadays, people are not playing as much outdoors to work up their sweat, but they do have plenty of indoor options to consider. For instance, you have certainly heard of kinetic gaming devices, such as the Wiimote and the Kinect. In cases like those, you can do a lot of physical activity without leaving a comfortable room. That’s pretty good for us.
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The joy of Kinetic Gaming

December 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment
MIAMI BEACH - NOVEMBER 04: Peter Martin places...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Have you ever noticed how easily accessible the Wiimote and the Kinect are to the gaming public? It almost does not matter whether you are a die hard “gamer” who doesn’t care all that much about bathing or having a social life, or if you just happen to pick up a game in between your horseback riding lessons and your soccer game… kinetic gaming is fun. It’s even where they got the name “Kinect” in the first place. Kinetic gaming refers to the use of physical energy, which is also known as kinetic energy (if you were able to stay awake during science class). When you use kinetic energy, technically speaking, work is done. But when what you’re doing is fun, you don’t see it as work.

You see it as nothing more than a game. Kinetic gaming is the best invention related to human beings having a good time since somebody invented the processors that allowed us to move beyond Pong. No disrespect to Pong, but how great would it be to play full body Pong on the Kinect? Throwing yourself wildly around the room trying to stop the ball before it impacts your precious wall might just turn into your next obsession- there goes all of the holiday weight you were thinking that you might want to lose.

That is the best part about kinetic gaming. Your mind thinks that you are just trying to do some kind of game oriented task. But your body, on the other hand, thinks that you are still stalking wildebeests out on the savannah, just like our ancestors did. Human bodies are made to stay in motion, if we are going to accomplish anything that is worth doing. So when you use one of the modern kinetic gaming devices, you are not just embracing the modern era. You are also going old school, and showing some respect to where our species came from. Before they invented couches.

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The Kinect: A Neat Device

December 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you have never heard of Microsoft’s new super toy (called the Kinect), you must have been living under something that’s both solid and igneous. After all, Kinect has only been publicized to the very furthest reaches that are possible for our species. If you are living in the modern part of the world (where there is actually electricity to even run an Xbox 360), then you have undoubtedly heard of this bad boy. And you have also most likely heard about the fact that all you have to do is stand there, and it then snaps a picture of your whole body. Now, it doesn’t do anything perverted, of course. It only takes a pic so that it will know when you are moving, and how much.

Once your game starts up, you just stand there and move in a way that basically makes sense. Kinect reads you using some kind of fancy technological voodoo, and then translates your real life movements into the same kinds of movement inputs that would normally be done from a little game pad. Only instead of just flapping your thumbs or typing, you are actually jumping, dancing, flailing your arms, and just generally acting goofy without anybody caring. It’s a neat little calorie burn, if you get really into it. And the possibilities for when people want to challenge each other to games are going to be awesome.

Just think about how life is going to be when a person on one continent can challenge someone who lives on another continent to a boxing match, a sword fight, and a race… and neither one of them has to leave their respective rooms. Well, your imagining time is up, because you can totally do that right this minute. Well, if you don’t have an Xbox 360 and a Kinect, you would technically need to go to an appropriate store or website and pick them up- but it’s worth it.

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