MSR's home page lists some 800 researchers working in eight locations around the world, including Asia, India, and Egypt. Some of its projects include (a "camera for the web" ), (a tool that lets you stitch photos together to create panoramas), and , a tool to generate musical accompaniment that matches a singer's voice. All told, they list in the hopper.

What do you get in the starter kit? According to Microsoft, "access to deep Kinect system capabilities such as audio, system APIs, and direct control of the sensor." The company plans to follow with a commercial version of the SDK farther down the road, though how much farther they're not saying.

Kinect for Windows SDK apparently dovetails with Microsoft's Natural User Interfaces (NUI) initiative, which includes Kinect for Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7, Microsoft Surface 2.0, and Bing for Mobile and Office 2010 Mini Translator.

While this probably won't stop hackers from continuing to poke around in the margins, it should increase the volume of "who'd 'a thunk?" motion-control ideas. We've certainly amused ourselves here at PC World collating Kinect hacks the past few months, including , a , Far Away, and our .

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