If you’re not an iPhone-toting Macolyte, you may be following the adventures of Windows Phone 7, the little operating system that could – and in particular, Nokia’s recent decision to ditch Symbian (the little operating system that couldn’t) to the curb in favour of it. Most tech heads, shocked at the partnership, cried foul, decrying the move as bad for both Nokia and Microsoft. But come on, guys, Windows Phone 7 isn’t that bad. It’s functional (in this blogger’s opinion, every bit as much as iOS) and if it isn’t the most gorgeous, chrome-free interface a phone’s ever seen, nothing is. Anyway,…

When Facebook, Microsoft, and a mysterious website known as Make-My-Baby go to town, everyone wins. Everyone, that is, except for us. The company uses a fairly simple affiliate marketing technique that is not only spammy but also potentially dangerous. It lures people in via Facebook ads… a lot of them. Only AT&T and Match.com contribute more to the $1.86 billion in yearly ad revenue that Facebook receives. Once visitors arrive at the site, they are prompted to install a toolbar plugin to “present an enhanced experience” for their users. At this point, you should run away. Once installed,…

Ever since Microsoft’s Kinect hit the market, it has been a hot accessory for the Xbox 360. However, it was only a matter of time before some clever hackers managed to break into its guts and use it to control even more than what had been initially planned. Now we have seen what those hackers could come up with, and it has ranged from the intriguing to the downright naughty. So here are a few videos to keep you in the loop with what people have been working on recently. Warning: some might be more disturbing than others. Here is a demonstration of how Kinect could be used in sex games, as if teens don’t have…

Microsoft was satisfied enough to announce that they had sold 1.5 million units of their Windows Phone 7 platform for the past six weeks it has been available. Not too amazing, sure, but it is a start. However, we were just thrown a curve ball when it was revealed that these numbers are not the actual sales to consumers. No, these figures represent the number of Windows Phone 7 phones sold by phone manufacturers to retailers and mobile providers. So the picture just became more complicated. The numbers might not be true sales to consumers, but they are — at least when argued by Microsoft — competitive….

Hands-free just got hands-on, as Microsoft’s would-be Wii-killer, Kinect, is the first to get its own sex game. Though the game (which at time of writing, is still nameless), produced by adult videogame developer ThriXXX, is not an official port – you need a PC running Windows 7 – it… sorta looks interesting, a little, I guess? There’s a video, but out of respect for the thousands of parents obviously browsing Techi with children on their laps, you’re gonna have to click Read More to see it. Basically, it works like every other Kinect game: wave your hands around to accomplish a task. You thought…

While skepticism remains high about how much success Kinect can achieve, Microsoft is proud to shove that skepticism in people’s faces. The company announced that they have sold over 2.5 million units of Kinect, with the potential of 5 million units shipped by year’s end becoming a possibility. Microsoft’s controller-less controller (that’s funny) is apparently doing better than many expected, especially with the Xbox 360 crowd assumed to be primarily hardcore first-person-shooter types. Even more impressive is the fact that Kinect is experiencing this growth while only having around…

This is intense. Are you seated? Of course you’re seated, that’s a stupid question – who stands around in their laundry room reading tech news? Anyway, if, in the unlikely event you are not seated, you would like to be, please take this opportunity, because I’m about to let fly with some totally rad shizz all up in your eyeballs, or something, and I’d hate for you to, like, fall and break your wrist on the awesome I just spread all over the floor. What a mess of an opening paragraph. Anyway, seems Microsoft is taking the concept of ‘touchscreen’ to its logical conclusion with a new patent, which will allow…

Surely you’ve seen your share of Kinect hacks in the last little while – hell, even last week I posted a couple here on Techi. Microsoft was originally not down with this, and implied potential legal action against anyone modifying their device. But it seems they’ve now had a change of heart, claming Kinect was always ‘open by design’, and that they’re happy to have folks write all sorts of drivers for all manner of Kinect-based ballyhoo. “What has happened,” says Microsoft’s Alex Kipman to NPR, “is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t…

Alright, so maybe I’m being a little cheeky by claiming that this robot is the most fun you could have with Kinect, but quite frankly, as far as I’m concerned, it sure beats some of the arm-waving minigames I’ve seen so far. MIT student Phillip Roebbel has hooked up a newly-hacked Xbox Kinect to an iRobot to create the coolest thing that I’m gonna see today – and with any luck, the coolest thing you’ll see, too. By giving the Kinect – which can already and judge terrain and distance – the ability to look and wander around, Roebbel has given it the ability to map its surroundings in 360 degrees, allowing it…

Because you’re awesome, have this quick video of Mehmet Akten playing with his prototype for a 3D art program for use with the newly-hacked Kinect. ‘Memo’ is short and sweet about it. The XBox Kinect is connected to my Macbook Pro, and I wrote a little demo to analyse the depth map for gestural 3D interaction. One hand to draw in 3D, two hands to rotate the view. Very rough, early prototype. Very well. But know this, Mr. Akten. You like to touch people? Well, we like to watch – and we’re going to be watching you very closely as this radness develops. You might say it… kineckts ass? No, that’s a really terrible…