Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

I can't remember which episode, but a few years ago I mentioned on my podcast that I didn't understand why companies were spending so much time with touch screens and multi-touch input devices when we all have a perfectly good input device staring at us, unused, everyday - our webcams. Minority Report was not only a great movie, but a great user experience idea.

Johnny Chung Lee (I thought he and I had a bromance going, but it's just a fauxmance. It's one way, sniff, he doesn't know I'm alive! ;) did some amazing work in this space using the Wii remote a while back.

Ever since I saw Minority Report, perhaps even before since it's such an obvious idea, I've been searching and trying to figure out when and how this is going to happen. From my point of view, there's just no reason I shouldn't be able to make a small gesture and push a window over to another monitor. Swipe down in the air, minimize. It if was reliable, it'd be a perfect and elegant addition to the mouse and keyboard.

Johnny now works for Microsoft, and recently we learned that he's been working with the team that is doing Project Natal. If you've been under a virtual rock, here's a video what Natal does. Basically it tracks your body and you become the game controller. If it works, it'll be epic. If it fails, it'll be sad. The real question is WHEN. My bet is Christmas, only because it's obvious.

From Johnny's Blog:

The 3D sensor itself is a pretty incredible piece of equipment providing detailed 3D information about the environment similar to very expensive laser range finding systems but at a tiny fraction of the cost. Depth cameras provide you with a point cloud of the surface of objects that is fairly insensitive to various lighting conditions allowing you to do things that are simply impossible with a normal camera.

But once you have the 3D information, you then have to interpret that cloud of points as "people". This is where the researcher jaws stay dropped. The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I've seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product. At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature “Manhattan project” with developers and researchers from around the world coming together to make this happen.

Before the world (or I) had ever heard of Project Natal, I pounced on interviewed Johnny at Mix 09 in Las Vegas. Recently Raleigh Buckner mentioned on Twitter that there was a lot "said without actually saying" in that interview, and darn it, he's right. I asked the right questions, and Johnny answered, but we (the collective) didn't see!

Now, go watch the interview again, this time with the knowledge of Project Natal's existence...

Wow. I just bumped into Johnny Lee in the halls here at Mix09. I'm a huge fanboi with a man-crush on this dude. You've seen Johnny before on Channel 9 talking to Robert Hess.  Johnny's a legend (in my mind) in the computer vision space, and he put up with me gushing at him here at Mix09. We chatted in the hall about computer vision, what he's working on, how he got the gig at Microsoft and where he sees the future of human-computer-interaction.

Crazy stuff. I'm very excited to see how far they can take this.

So I installed and have been playing QuakeLive. Here's the Review part. It's fun. It's Quake. Fast, pretty, twitchy, fun. Quake. Good fun.

Here's the Rant part. I'm having trouble understanding is why this is interesting in any way?

Folks on the 'tubes are saying, "OMG, this is a Browser-based game?"

To say, browser-based game, to me, implies effortless installation. More importantly, it also implies a reason to be in the browser. See the screenshot below? That's the MSI installer I ran as Admin.

See this screenshot? That's IE requesting permission to run this plugin. There's a separate MSI if you want to run it in Firefox. I download and installed both installers separately.

Here's a sample error message:

** GLW_CreateWindow: could not register window class
Please report the the problem you encountered on the Quake Live forums.
You must reload the web page to make this display go away.

A web (or web-enabled) app that doesn't phone home with errors? Hm. Doesn't seem like a web app to me.

See this screenshot? That's my %appdata% folder with 266 MEGS downloaded. It gets downloaded in the background while you "train." Why do you think they train you for 10 minutes in a single level? It's because they are downloading the other 1/4 gig of content.

I'm sorry, but this is a re-imagining of Quake III Arena, compiled as a DLL and running inside my browser. It's the same PAK file concept and format that you (possibly) remember from ten years ago. Yes, 1999.

Yes, there's social aspects, background content delivery, easy multi-player matching, but why is this a DLL living inside the browser's memory space and not an EXE that jumps out of the browser? Do I want something that I think of as a browser plugin downloading 256megs+ of content for me? Why is no one pointing out that the emperor frag-fest has no clothes?

Apparently this is interesting to the young people today because the ones playing Quake Live because they weren't alive when Quake was released originally.

I would rather that a game company like ID spend more time really innovating in the gaming engine space (and I know they are), rather than repackaging the same game in different ways for a decade.*

Quake Live is NOT an interesting game. There are more interesting ways to distribute games that have been working nicely for me since 2003. GuildWars is another GREAT example. It was a <1meg EXE to bootstrap and streamed the levels you needed. There's no reason for QuakeLive to be shoe-horned into a browser plugin.

Now I'm off to delete 256 megs of Quake III from %AppData%\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3.

End of rant. Move along.

*Quake and its four sequels, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

What's all this talk about gaming on the Xbox 360? I can't remember the last time I actually played a game on the thing, but I can say that both The Wife and I use it daily. I'd even say she uses the Xbox 360 more than I do.

She plays music from the Zune and iPod, she runs photo slideshows for the boys and when we have company.

Recently we had a party for my Dad and the Xbox was showing slideshows of him over the years with his favorite music running in the background. My wife and I didn't think anything of it (it seems pretty obvious to us) but oddly enough it was the hit of the party. A half-dozen people were literally freaking out. The Xbox can do that?

Why You Should Buy an Xbox 360 Even If You Don't Play Games

Here's my list. What's yours?

• You can just plug in any MP3 player or Digital Camera that uses USB connectors and immediately view photos and play music.
  • I've had company come over a number of times with a camera or an SD card, and I've just attached them to the Xbox and we've watched their slides. Just use a USB adapter for camera cards or plug the camera USB connector into the Xbox directly. The same works with Zunes or iPods.
• You can stream movies from Netflix (some in HD)
  • This is new and pure hotness. I've been beta testing the New Xbox Experience (NXE) and I don't miss the old Xbox at all. I cancelled by Blockbuster account 6 months ago in anticipation of this. There's about 12,000 movies and 300 in HD. I just happed to watch "Outsourced" (recommended) and it was in HD. The Wife digs it, and we can easily catch up on TV. I hope that someone gets Hulu.com in there and then I could die happy.

• You can easily stream video and music from your Windows (or Mac) machine to your Xbox.
  • You can use any uPNP streaming software like Twonky, or just use Windows Media Player. Click the down arrow on "Library" and click "Media Sharing." It's even easier in Windows 7. Just click the Windows button and type "Share." You can share throughout your network, or on a device by device basis.
  • We have a Zune Pass which basically lets you "lease" music for $14.99 a month. Basically for the price of 1 CD a month we can listen to all the music we like on our two Xboxes and two Zunes. The music streams from my main machine that runs the Zune software.

• The Xbox360 can console H.264 and MPEG4 video files, but the device you're streaming FROM needs a codec, like 3ivx. I discovered that the Flip video camera that I bought includes the 3ivx codec. I connected to my Windows Home Server and installed the Flip Software by connecting the Flip to the Windows Home Server (WHS). That got me a free 3ivx codec, and now I can easily stream those files to my Xbox. Bam. (Totally unsupported, remember, I don't work for ANY of those teams.)
• You can use Connect360 to stream content from your Mac to your Xbox360.

• The Xbox 360 is a Windows Media Center Extender.
  • You can basically remote into your Windows machine and watch TV if you have a tuner card, watch saved shows and movies, and browse the web (with a Media Center add-on app). It looks and acts just as if you're running Media Center on your PC.

We use the Xbox in this way so often that we have two, one old Xbox 360 bought early on and an Xbox Elite with HDMI bought more recently. Both of them seamlessly upgraded to the final NXE this morning.

The (NXE) New Xbox Experience

I won't even try to review the NXE, but suffice to say, it's awesome. Check out the Joystiq videos and reviews of the Xbox NXE for great details.

Buying a Xbox 360

Here's a screenshot of the very awesome and complete Xbox 360 SKU chart from Joystiq, trimmed to remove discontinued models.

If you're looking for balance, the Pro is the best deal. It's $300, has decent storage and supports HiDef via RGB Component Cables. If you want HDMI, you'll need the Elite, but you'll double your hard drive space. (Update: It USED to be the case that the Elite had HDMI but now all Xboxes have at least the port, although the Elite comes with a cable also.) You can use that space to store movies, videos, photos, etc, but really it's only useful for storing games or ripping CDs.

OK, I'm off to NOT play games on my Xbox.

I like my Nintendo Wii, although, so far it's been basically a $200 Tennis Simulator. The most fun is watching people play it for the first time. We had some friends over last week and they mentioned the Wii, and my wife said "you HAVE to try Tennis!" And they loved it, and it was good. However, as much as I try to get into other Wii games like Metroid and Zelda, I just don't.

But, I am a glutton for punishment, and while I spend more time using my Xbox, the Wife and I thought we'd give the Wii one more try with the Wii Fii Balance Board.

Before you read this review, by all means, watch this horrifically brutal and true Wii Fit Parody.

Ok, now that that's over with, YES, I know the Wii Fit is silly and YES I know it's a waste of money and YES I know I could "just go outside." We do go outside, and we walk and hike and run as a family, so that said...

The Wii Fit is a hoot. It's a lot of fun. Ultimately it's just a scale that knows where your center of balance is because each of the 4 corners is an independent scale. It constantly "re-zeros" itself between activities as you step on and off it, so in the week I've had it I haven't had any issues with its accuracy.

It's questionable as a fitness tool as it made my little Mii Avatar quite fat because apparently 187lbs (a number I'm not proud of) on a 5'11 frame is smack in the middle of overweight. (That's 180cm and 85kilos, by the way) After I entered this info in, my little on-screen dude swelled up and will stay there until I hit 165lbs it seems.

Regardless, I can see how the Wii Fit could act as a motivator for folks, like me, who prefer to workout at home rather than at a club. I actually prefer working out while watching TV, such that I'm forcing my self to work to watch my shows. The Wii Fit is fairly cheap, about US$89, and includes the game disc.

There's "over 40 mini games" according to the box, but in reality there's 4 categories with 12 or so games per. There's strength (all isometric), yoga, balance games, and aerobics. There strength and aerobics sections are fine, but not extraordinary. The games are a blast, especially downhill skiing, but the Yoga section is really nice. I think I'll use the Yoga for 30 minutes or so each evening and see how that goes. I have a number of Yoga DVDs, but I find the balance feedback that the Wii gives you to be invaluable for finding correct posture.

A few years back, the CEO of my then company, Corillian, left and started a company that created a game called Yourself Fitness for the Xbox. I thoroughly enjoyed this program, specifically it's crazy intense aerobics sections. It had a HUGE library of exercises that dwarfs the Wii Fit's. It's like 500 to 20. I'd love to see this application ported to the Wii and supporting the Wii Fit - THAT would be something special.

Still, I'm happy with the purchase, it's not that much more than a good quality electronic scale and if your expectations are set appropriately and you remember it's neither a game nor a really good workout system, I think you'll have fun also. Don't take my word for it, go try one at one of the many locations that Nintendo is setting up as the Wii Fit goes on tour.

It was epic. Truly epic. Thfe stuff you tell, if not your grandchildren, your middle-aged nerdy neighbor about. We had a great time at Cinetopia and raised a lot of money for the American Diabetes Association.

You can make a tax-deductible donation today!

Big Thanks to Everyone involved:

• Jason Mauer and Microsoft Portland for the Xboxes, the Halo 3 games, organization, logistics and his tireless work and two 42" plasmas.
• Rich Claussen for all things business, negotiations, and convincing Cinetopia we had a good idea.
• Greg Hughes for his press-contacting expertise and for spreading the word in creative ways in the Oregonian, the Willamette Week and on KXL radio.
• The SAO for their sponsorship and for all their help the evening of the event!
• John Poore, Michael Willits, Jennifer Bernstein and everyone at Robert Half Technology for their sponsorship and their commitment to the community!
• Wendy Fatz and Rodger DeGeorge from CompView for believing in the dream and loaning us two projectors.
• Lee Williamson and PADNUG for the Food and Drinks!
• Aivea for their sponsorship and generous donation!
• Rudyard and the team at Cinetopia, a locally-owned rockin' sweet luxury theatre, for shutting down 2 of their 8 Super-HD screens!

And lastly, to everyone who donated and everyone who was powned or dispensed pownage all evening long!

Let's do it again soon!