Canesta's president and CEO, James Spare, formerly served as business development director for Microsoft's TV platform group.

Microsoft has been promoting the idea of natural user interfaces for years, since before founder Bill Gates, who spoke of the concept often, stepped down from his leadership position at the company. Just two weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer named natural user interface as one of the next big revolutions to come in technology. He said so in response to a question from a computer science student at the University of Washington during a talk there on Oct. 15.

While using a mouse to direct a PC once seemed natural, it doesn't seem so now, he said at the time. A more natural way to interact with machines would be to speak to them or gesture, like Kinect allows, he said.

The IDG News Service