Should Santa Bring Xbox 360 Kinect This Year?

One of the latest and greatest gadgets for whole family entertainment is without doubt Microsoft's Kinect controller for their Xbox 360 gaming console. Maybe you haven't heard about it yet, so here's short description what it is: previously you've always needed some gaming controller (gaming bad, keyboard, mouse etc.) for playing games - Kinect is the thing that changes all this. With Kinect all you need to do is to stand on front of your TV and use your own body for all the movements needed in the game.  Kinect requires a small sensor that you should be placed near your TV. With this sensor it can see your body, hand, head, leg and other movements and transfer them into the game you're playing.

Kinect Sensor

Kinect sells currently at about $150 (i.e. at amazon.com) and you usually get some game with the sensor package too.

So what kind of games are there available for Kinect? It probably isn't a surprise that many of the games try to get you moving as much possible. You can try for example doing some fitness practices or maybe dancing? The cool part is that instead of passively sitting on front of TV, you are actually standing up and moving. Many of these games are also great fun to play with your friends. Little bit lengthier video review of Kinect sports probably shows best the little flaws that the system still has, but also the huge fun factor that playing with your friends can bring :).

The part that I like the most is that Kinect brings back some of the old school fun to the games. Many of the Kinect games are quick to start and you don't need to play countless hours to "finish" them. Instead you can just start, play for and half an hour and be done with it. Multiplayer games are also more like they used to be before Internet. Instead of playing online with other anonymous people, you can ask your friends to come by and have for example short Kinect sports session with them. And seeing your friends or kids swinging their hands in air like crazy when trying to complete some movement is definitely much more fun than any online game!

Kinect Dance

 

 

 

-K-

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Small Kitchen Gadgets That You Need

Are you wondering whether you already have every useful gadget in your kitchen? Have you tried following:

This digital video memo from iwantoneofthose allows you to record short video messages that other family members can then later on watch. No more situations where both the paper and the pencil are no where to be found! :)

Kitchen timer can be nice little detail for your kitchen. This measuring tape timer from amazon.com is both nice looking and extremely easy to use. It's also easy to see how much time is left, even from a little distance.

Above electric pepper mill is from chefsresource.com. Electric pepper mill might sound useless at first sight, but is it really? In reality, when cooking, it would often be so much easier if you didn't need both hands for the pepper mill. Maybe you would like to use your other hand for mixing the ingredients or maybe your hands are dirty and you don't want to wash them all the time. Either-way, I think there is a good case for having this little gadget :).

Adjust-A-Cup from amazon.com is a measuring cup that can replace all your old measuring cups. The bottom moves up and down so it's size can be changed depending on the measurement needs. It works great with all the sticky ingredients as once the measurement has been done, the bottom can be pushed back up and the cup gets emptied and cleaned at the same time.

-K- 

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The Coffeemaker That Knows You

The Xelsis Stainless Steel coffee machine is for everybody who want to enyou morning coffee exactly as they like it. This machine is able to do wide range of beverages from strong Italian espresso to a mild American-style coffee, cappuccino to latte. Before First usage you select paremeters of your favourite coffee and from that time on you just put your finger on fingerprint scanner, machine recognize you and prepare your baverage fully automaticly.

Source: www.saeco.com

~d~

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Transparent Toaster

For people who want total control in the process of toasting bread, the Inventables Concept Studio prepare transparent toaster. It is still prototype but all needed technologies are fully functional. It is only question of time when we can put this modern piece of technology to our kitchen.

Via Design Milk    ~d~

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