The Kinect redirection continues – Herb Kim pointed me to a Flickr gallery by Audrey Penven who has been busy taking infrared photos of the “dots” that Kinect creates. Here’s how Audrey explains it

A series of interactions with Kinect's infrared structured light

With these images I was exploring the unique photographic possibilities presented by using a Microsoft Kinect as a light source. The Kinect - an inexpensive videogame peripheral - projects a pattern of infrared dots known as "structured light". Invisible to the eye, this pattern can be captured using an infrared camera. The Kinect uses the deformation of this dot pattern to derive 3D information about its subjects (an ability which has already spawned an explosion of incredible digital art).

As a photographer I am most interested in the nature and quality of light: how light behaves in the physical world, and how it interacts with and affects the subjects that it illuminates. For this shoot my models and I were essentially working blind, with the results visible only after each image was captured. Together, we explored the unique physicality of structured light, finding our way in the darkness by touch and intuition. Dancing with invisible light.

Check out the full gallery.

….but meantime, check out the latest Windows Phone 7 video of skydivers.

via adsoftheworld.com

I thought I’d found most of the tricks Windows Phone 7 has up it’s sleeve but no, this puppy has way more tricks up it’s sleeve. It’s one thing I love about the marketing…we’ve not had every feature explained to us in excruciating detail. The team behind it seem to know the delight and childlike glee of finding something you didn’t know was there…it reminds me of the days of Easter eggs.

Head to pocket-lint.com for 72 tips and tricks…here are 3 of my favorites.

38. Getting International dialing help
Always travelling, always forgetting to add the 0044 to your calls back to the UK? Then go in to Settings, swipe to Applications, choose Phone and then set International assist to On. Turning it on will help automatically correct some of the common mistakes while dialing international or dialing while abroad.

45. Finding the .co.uk shortcut on the touchscreen keyboard
Load up the keyboard in Internet Explorer and to save you valuable seconds you get a .com button for websites. But what if you are going to a .co.uk? Well press and hold the .com button and up pops .co.uk, .org. and .edu.

65. Shuffle tracks on an album
This one is hidden within the player. Tap on the album cover and it reveals two controls, a repeat and a shuffle icon. It's like you've found a special secret

A very nice find my by my UK pal Rob Margel  (though first spotted by the living legend that is Marc Holmes) - a Kinect interactive experience in Germany. Shoppers took control of the Stachus gate with their leaping, dancing and waving. I don’t know who Sylvie van der Vaart is but she has some HUGE hoop earrings and seemed to love it.

Meantime, it was great to hear Alex Kipman and Shannon Loftis talking to NPR about the “Kinect hacking” we’ve seen since launch. I’ve seen some impressive stuff so far on this front including a Roomba that has been augmented, a Kinect puppet with a Kinect and then this morning a Kinect controlling Windows 7.

I know wake up each morning waiting for the next installment of the adventures of Kinect. If it’s not controlling the traffic flow on Seattle’s roads tomorrow I’ll be deeply disappointed.

Welcome to NUI and as William Gibson would say, “The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed”. Well, it’s distributed to about 1m Kinect owners at the moment

My pal Kris Hoet came across the poster below and suggested it was missing one evolution of the controller - YOU!

Around Redmond campus, the bathroom mirrors have stickers that say "You're looking at 5 million years of R&D....you are the controller". Maybe we could add a small mirror to the image below in the last spot for Kinect? :)