Google Engineer Sponsors New Kinect Bounties

ashidosan writes "Hot on the heels of the Adafruit competition, Matt Cutts (a search spam engineer at Google) is sponsoring two more $1,000 bounties for projects using Kinect. 'The first $1,000 prize goes to the person or team that writes the coolest open-source app, demo, or program using the Kinect. The second prize goes to the person or team that does the most to make it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux.'" Relatedly, reader imamac points out a video showing Kinect operating on OS X.

That's good

[Chrisq]

When the driver was hacked I thought it was cool, but it would probably be a long time before someone actually used it for something nice. This might attract a few people.

Ok, Google:

[balaband]

You are committed to improve user experience and implement cool toys in Linux?

Then do something about better graphics drivers (help the guys developing them, or put pressure on manufacturers to open specs). You are going to need it for Chrome OS eventually, and you will gain a lot of good karma from the geeks around the world.

Re:Ok, Google:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I strongly suspect that Google either considers the matter of Linux drivers largely solved(ie. Intel anything except that GMA 500 crap will work fine, just not very fast in any OS, NVIDIA spits on OSS; but mostly knows how to make the trains run on time within their binary blob world, AMD/ATI has made substantial commitments to improved openness and to their closed source stuff not sucking) or something to be solved with much larger piles of money, quietly "We have every expectation of shipping 1-2 million ChromeOS devices a quarter. It is our comittment to our customers, and a requirement of our product design, that the graphical experience be both rich and rock-solid..." *raises eyebrows significantly at meeting room full of competing vendors*.

While I would certainly like to see them buy the Nouveau guys some beer or something, I suspect that, for the purposes of an entity like Google, graphics is either a solved problem, or an area where they don't need to go with penny-ante public announcements.

(In addition, of course, this current competition is sponsored by a guy who just works for Google. Obviously it is unlikely that Google is going to sack him for it, but their only support for the competition is by the indirect means of paying the guy's salary for work he does for them, leaving him with the cash to offer a prize. This isn't a Google competition.)

Re:Watch!

[JohnBailey]

And a lot of that profit goes to the over $200 million they spent to license and develop the technology. The plans didn't appear out of thin air.

So selling the bloody things might possibly be a good idea yes?