An installation prototype Emily Gobeille and  Theo Watson put together with the libfreenect Kinect drivers and ofxKinect.  The system is doing skeleton tracking on the arm and determining where the shoulder, elbow, and wrist is, using it to control the movement and posture of the giant funky bird!  Imagine all of the creative applications in entertainment and education.   Amazing  work Theo and Emily,  please pitch the concept to games makers.  If Jim Henson’s Muppets become available in a game, I’ll be the first one to buy it.

Speed project – made in a day using openFrameworks and libFreenect.
Concept and Production by design-io.com

The newest ComScore numbers arrived late last week and the results might be considered a little surprising. While everyone knows that Android is taking the mobile space by storm in recent months, I don’t know that anyone expected to see Apple lose market share around the release of their newest iPhone.

But, lose they did… ComScore shows Apple lost 1.3%, RIM dropped 1.8% and Microsoft dove 2.2%. Conversely, Android showed a 5% increase in total market share during the month of July. The final player, Palm, showed neither an increase or a decrease as they stayed exactly even.

If you listen to the pundits, you’d think that Microsoft was falling apart.  Technology media, by and large, seems to be pretty down on the software giant of late and if you are paying attention to them, it would appear as if Microsoft can’t do anything right.

I guess that just doesn’t apply to their ability to earn money though.  Driven largely by sales of Windows 7 & Office 2010, Microsoft has earned $16.04 billion in revenue for their fiscal Q4, calendar year Q2 for the rest of us.  That’s a $3 billion increase over last year’s $13.10 billion.

Image provided by techgadget.in

In April, Microsoft introduced a couple of new feature phones known as Kin.  These phones were geared toward the younger teen-age generation and were based on the idea of the user having all of their social and messaging info right at their finger tips.

There are four or five key players that take part in today’s browser wars and most of them claim to be the fastest browser available.  The key players are Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Based on many of the browser reviewers and my own personal experience, there is only one out of that group that really reigns supreme and another that might be able to make a strong argument for second place.  We’re going to maintain focus on what I believe are the top two in the market for performance.

Image provided by adenhepburn.com

Google, the tech giant best known for its industry leading search engine, has decided to move away from its use of Microsoft Windows as an operating system for its employees.  While Windows has been known for being a greater security risk than other options such as Mac or Linux, should we be surprised by this news?  Read on and I’ll explain.

Image provided by 134internet.com

In a dramatic day of tech stock trading on Wednesday, May 26th, Apple surpassed Microsoft in terms of total stock value and overtook it as the largest tech company in the world and the second largest company on the S&P 500 behind Exxon Mobile.   The final tally at the end of the day left Apple at a total market value of $222 billion while Microsoft fell to $219 billion.

It’s been a pretty busy week full of tech news and new devices.  This is our second DViceNews Notes segment of this week because we had so much we wanted to fit in.

Microsoft Kin 1 & Kin 2 Available Early at Verizon

In what was considered a little bit of a surprise move, Microsoft and Verizon made the Kin 1 and Kin 2 available for purchase earlier than originally expected.  We did a write up on Microsoft’s new feature phones that are designed to target the tweeners age group, back on April 12^th.