Hacking Kinect: Setting sci-fi in motion

In the two-plus months since the creation of open-source drivers for Microsoft's Kinect made it possible to hack the popular motion controller, the device has been used as a sophisticated piano, to add voice control to popular video games, to create 3D renderings of a car's path, and even for a demo of soft-core porn. Indeed, the open-source tools have snatched control of the device from Microsoft's proprietary hands, and each new day sees the emergence of some new kind of Kinect hack. But as the community of techies investing time in these types of imaginative--and unauthorized--works grows and each new hack pushes the envelope a little more, it's natural to wonder just how far hackers can go. What are, in other words, the outer limits of Kinect hacking? "I truly believe that those who [say] that the sky is the limit [have] limited imagination," said Kristoffer Risanger, the founder of a site called Kinect Hacks that aggregates the latest efforts by the fledging community to do things with the device that Microsoft never intended.