Kinect co-creator now working on Microsoft’s smartwatch
Wearable technology is getting popular and now reports suggest Microsoft's 'Father of Kinect' is working on a Windows smartwatch.
Kinect co-creator Alex Kipman, general manager of Xbox incubation projects, is heading the company’s plans for wearable computers and customizing Windows to run on even smaller screens.
Kipman has earlier worked on various projects for Microsoft including the Kinect sensor and Windows Ultimate edition. According to rumors Microsoft is testing a smartwatch with a 1.5 inch display screen, a surface connector and a Google Glass like eyewear. Kipman is working on Kinect glasses that support Wi-Fi or 4G connectivity and augmented reality support.
Microsoft’s head of devices, Julie Larson-Green, recently hinted at a wearable future for the company. “So sensors are going to become a big part of how you think about things,” said Larson-Green at the UBS Global Technology Conference in November. “So some of the things we’ve been talking about — you see all these fitness devices that people wear on their wrists and they do some interesting things. What’s the extension of that?”
Larson-Green hypothesized that future devices could read your heart rate and suggest exercise patterns or sense your location and notify you when a bus is running late. “Just as the mouse was an invention, touch was an invention, there will be the next new way to interact,” said Larson-Green. “And that’s why we’ve been focusing on natural user interface for a while, working on that.”
However Microsoft’s wearable technology work is still in early stages. The company is still working on bringing the Kinect glasses from incubation stage to a real product. Microsoft is also working on making a single version of Windows that can be tailored for desktop, PC’s, phones, tablets and Xbox One.
Google, which had launched its Google Glasses, a while back has rolled out a update recently which allows users to click images with just a wink of the eye. The Google glasses have also added support for Hangout and Video uploading to YouTube. It has also added some new security features that allows you to lock the screen for Google Glasses.
Source: The Verge