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In the best Kinect application since the device turned a dude into Ultraman, doctors in Toronto are using Microsoft's camera tech to speed up surgery, reports The Canadian Press. Surgeons at Sunnybrook Hospital have been using a special Kinect software suite to manipulate images via hand motions, which saves them from having to leave the sterile area around the patient. (Having to re-sterilize mid-surgery can take as long as 20 minutes, so the Kinect "hack" adds up to pretty significant time savings.)

It's a neat development, but we imagine at least one doctor's bound to speak up, "Sure, this is pretty slick, but there's no way I'm gonna move my coffee table out of the OR every time I want to use the Kinect."

#video Forget Homefront, Fantastic Pets for the Xbox 360 and Kinect is where THQ is going to make the big bucks. What other game projects a flying unicorn or robot cat into your living room? More »

#kinect Researchers at a German university have built an apparatus that, while clunky in its proof-of-concept stage, could assist the blind as they cross streets, walk down hallways and open doors. It uses the Kinect as a sensor. More »

No, not that WipEout -- Wipeout ... the ABC game show (and yes, we have to remind you every time). Activision is expanding its licensing deal with the television network and Endemol, the show's producer, to release Wipeout In the Zone for Kinect this summer, following the obstacle course sim's debut on Wii and DS last year.

Featuring the "the infamous 'Big Balls,'" Wipeout In the Zone will include more than 30 obstacles that will have Kinect users "running, ducking, dodging and wiping out" within 6 square meters ... or however much space is between their couches and TV sets.

"Everyone who watches the show wishes they could try the obstacle course -- and now this is their chance!" hypes Activision's David Oxford. "The show is all about absurd movement and well-timed balance, so it's a perfect fit for a Kinect game." Huh, and here we thought the perfect fit would be sensible movements and a well-thought-out balance between functionality and novelty.

[Photo credit: ABC/Patrick Wymore]

Don't worry, guys -- the video after the jump is from the jokesters at CollegeHumor, so we're pretty sure that it's a fake. Since it's portraying the very terrifying, very possible future of self-aware consumer entertainment devices, we pray to all powers holy that it's a fake.

After the dismal Fighters Uncaged, the words "Ubisoft," "Kinect" and "fighting" have not been uttered in the same sentence here at the 'Stiq, for fear of summoning a sequel to the game. We must now use them, though, to describe what Ubisoft has -- perhaps unintentionally -- revealed via its web store: a Kinect fighting game called PowerUP Heroes coming "summer 2011."

According to the description provided, the title will let players transform their Xbox 360 Avatars into superheroes, acquiring the abilities of defeated foes by taking their "super suits," Mega Man style. Mentioned are a necromancer suit that summons skeletons and a mentalist getup that can "break into your enemy's mind."

The listing also includes a price: $50, so we're talking a full retail title here. We're contacting Ubisoft to find out what more we can about this Kinect fighting game. Gah -- we did it again!

Lima Sky's often-imitated mobile hit Doodle Jump is going to make you jump, jump, in an upcoming iteration. The developer has announced that a Kinect version is on the way. There are no details about this console port yet, like a release date or even how you would play that. Tilting your body to control the direction of the character's movement, we suppose?

In addition, Lima Sky is marking the app's two-year anniversary with other forthcoming Doodle Jump additions, including a multiplayer update for iPhone, an iPad version, and tie-in toys and comic books. Presumably the comics will have a bit more narrative depth to them then "Doodler jumped up onto platforms forever."

Dance Central is clearly stamped with a "Requires Kinect Sensor" label, but the opposite is also true: Kinect requires Dance Central. Amazon is proving this point -- for a limited time, while supplies last -- by offering Dance Central for free (along with a bonus 240 Microsoft Points -- hello Paula Abdul!) with purchase of the 4GB Xbox 360 system bundle with Kinect, which already includes Kinect Adventures. Check out Amazon's promotion page for more details.

But here's the $130 question: What's missing from the picture? Ding-ding -- that's right! A hard drive. But Amazon has that on sale too, for just a dime under $91. So, buying the 4GB system bundle with Kinect and the 250GB hard drive separately is actually a shade cheaper than buying the 250GB bundle with Kinect -- plus Dance Central's tossed in there. That's a good deal.

#video It may not be the most useful of creative Kinect hacks, but for underlining a point about your plans to conquer the world with a pair of Tesla coils, Bright Arcs' Evil Genius Simulator can't be beat. More »

#technology The University of Minnesota has saved more than $100,000 in research funds by using the Xbox 360 Kinect to aid in research on the diagnoses of mental disorders in children, according to a Minnesota Daily and AP report. More »

#video This man is playing Dance Central, a dancing video game for the Xbox 360's Kinect sensor. He's at Boston's PAX East gaming convention. He is dancing to Bell Biv Devoe's Poison, a song that taught children of the 90s never to trust a big butt and a smile. More »

#kinect Despite being presumed dead in the water, Lionhead's Project Milo was once one of Kinect's most interesting titles. What originally appeared to be little more than an AI chat program eventually was revealed as an adventure game, something we're only now getting our first real look at. More »

In a list of inevitable, but glorious things, someone figuring out how to get Kinect working with Garry’s Mod appeared near the top. And Bit-Tech brings us wonderful news of its happening. The program allows the user to manipulate objects within Source, taking advantage of the engine’s physics. Which primarily involves kicking boxes. And better still, innovator John Boiles has made a truly brilliant video to prove it. It’s below. Watch this.

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#pc Boiles' work getting Garry's Mod to recognise Microsoft's Kinect isn't the most impressive video of its ilk we've seen. It is, however, the most entertaining. More »

Congratulations to Microsoft, who took what I thought was going to be a modest hit and making it a giant one. Now let's get that next wave of games coming! [GuinnessWorldRecords.com] More »

Xbox bigwig Aaron Greenberg tweeted today that Microsoft has sold 10 million Kinect units and 10 million Kinect games. The news comes a little over a month after Microsoft announced it had sold 8 million units.

The sales pace of the Kinect isn't just face, it's apparently record breaking. Guinness World Records announced today that the Kinect is the "Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronic Device" of all time. The device sold an average of 133,333 units per day in its first 60 days (starting Nov. 4, 2010). Shockingly, the pace was reportedly faster than that of the iPhone or iPad for the equivalent period.

Microsoft today announced it has now shipped 10 million Kinect units worldwide to retailers - not sold to consumers - since launch in November. The company also said it shipped over 10 million Kinect first and third-party software titles to date...

#xbox360 Halo Wars survived Microsoft's assault to take down its leaderboards late last year, showing that the game still has some fight in it. 343 Industries, Microsoft's new internal studio handling the Halo franchise, tipped its cap to the console RTS, calling it sequel- and even Kinect-worthy. More »

Okay, it's actually a tech demo, but indie studio Pixel Ninja's Zombie Holdout is still pretty neat. Built using OpenNI and Unity, the demo features a lone survivor fighting off hordes of zombies with a pair of pistols. Both hands aim independently and, honestly, the demo has given us a better appreciation of the difficulty inherent in dual-wielding (Lara always made it look so easy!).

Pixel Ninja will release a downloadable version of the Zombie Holdout Kinect demo on March 7 for PC. In the meantime, you can catch a video of it in action after the break.

#hacks When I punch a man in real life, no cartoon words pop up in front of my fist. But on the 1960s Batman TV show that kind of thing happened when heroes traded fists with villains. More »

#bling Australian pop singer and tragic one-shot Doctor Who companion Kylie Minogue's European tour is sponsored by Microsoft Kinect and Dance Central, and this crystal-studded Kinect sensor is the by-product of that union. More »

What's an "iisu," you ask? It's an acronym for "The Interface Is You," of course! It's also the name of SoftKinetic's "3D gesture recognition" software development kit, available now for "qualified developers" to license for free. The iisu SDK is said to work with "all major 3D depth-sensing devices," which we're told includes support for Microsoft's Kinect.

The free version of iisu is strictly a "non-commercial" SDK, though a full, commercial version can be purchased. The dev kit offers tools for building both games and applications, and includes Unity 3D and Flash support. Interested parties can get the ball rolling by applying for a free license on SoftKinetic's application page.

Between SoftKinetic's SDK and those from Evoluce, PrimeSense and even Microsoft itself, there will soon be, like, so many SDKs available for Kinect. We're gonna start stretching right now in preparation for the eventual results.

Of all the projects teased by Microsoft Research's Applied Sciences branch, we certainly hope that this is the one that makes it to market. In the video demonstration posted after the jump, Steven Bathiche shows off a few of the interfaces and displays the company's currently researching -- the coolest of which is a "wedge" lens which allows the screen to generate and overlap individual images directed at your eyes, creating a holographic-esque image.

As radical as that sounds, Bathiche took the science one step further: The display can also track two viewers using Kinect, and show each of them a seperate image on the same screen. Considering the number of times we've had to strain our eyes to get our couch co-op Halo: Reach on, the possibility of split-screen gaming that doesn't actually split the screen is infinitely titilating. Check out the video demonstration below!

Thanks to an inventive, and kind of bizarre, project, people have immortalized themselves as Kinect sees them. The Fabricate Yourself project uses 3D models captured by Kinect as the basis for a 3D-printed figure.

Designer Karl D.D. Willis came up with the project as an interactive installation for the Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction conference. Attendees's shapes were captured by Kinect, and then turned into pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. But the implications are larger than just a cool thing at a conference. As 3D printers become cheaper, it will be possible for more people to use this technology to take 3D snapshots as if they were taking Polaroids.

It will also be possible to make a tiny action-figure version of yourself to fight with the Hulk. Not that we, as totally mature adults, have any interest in such a thing, of course.

#kinect An earthquake fixed attention and sympathy this week on New Zealand, where more than 100 died and more than 200 still are missing. Authorities probing the rubble surrounding Christchurch find some buildings too unsafe to enter. A Kinect-enabled robot, developed by British researchers, could help in such situations. More »

Back at E3 2010 we learned that Tetsuya Mizuguchi's latest creation -- Child of Eden, the spiritual successor to Rez -- can be played using a standard controller, not just the Kinect sensor for which it's become a showcase title. Last night at Microsoft's preview event in San Francisco, we found out that Child of Eden can use 360 pads, plural, for more than aiming and shooting.

A rep for developer Q Entertainment told Joystiq that the finished game will support vibration feedback effects spread across up to four controllers, the idea being that you can stick them in pockets, rolled-up sleeves -- anywhere, really -- to über-compensate for Kinect's lack of physical feedback. Mizuguchi himself told us "When I play the Kinect, I need some feedback" at last year's E3. It would appear that he's devised a quite novel, if not a bit absurd, way to satisfy that need -- not to mention out-crazy Rez's Trance Vibrator peripheral.

#video The next game from Double Fine, the developers of games like Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, is a Sesame Street title. Here's our first look at the game in action. More »

The first bit of footage from Double Fine's Kinect game, Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, has found its way online, revealing what appear to be some on-rails segments and a Cookie Monster in flight. And here we thought cookies and gravity hated each other.

The announcement that Double Fine's next game would be a licensed (!) Sesame Street (!!) game for Kinect (!!!) was something of a shock. In an interview with Gamasutra, studio head Tim Schafer and project lead Nathan Martz explained how the project grew out of a shared love of Muppetry and an original idea that just happened to be perfect for the franchise.

Martz came up with the idea for an "uplifting" game during the same Amnesia Fortnight event that spawned Costume Quest and Stacking -- a game that involved "cute, furry little monsters, making music and having fun," as Schafer described it. As work continued on the prototype, which already featured cute Henson-esque monsters like "Marco" (above, the one who isn't Cookie Monster or Elmo), the idea of pursuing the license came up -- and then when Sesame Street and WB made a deal for games, Double Fine saw an opportunity.

The game focuses on the Sesame Street idea of the "Whole Child Curriculum," teaching social and emotional skills as well as healthy living habits. In addition, though, Schafer asserts that it will be funny. He calls Sesame Street a "secret comedy show" and intends to keep the same tone in the game. "They're satirical -- they don't just make bland shows for kids, they make them actually funny," Schafer said. "I think that's important for the kids and especially for the parents who watch them together. We're hoping that this is something parents play with their kids."

#video If you are looking for success in the Xbox 360's uphill battle in Japan, look no further than this. More »