A group of surfers, mountain bikers and auto racers are turning Half Moon Bay into “Silicon Bay.”

The town is home to the world’s best-selling HD camera. It’s one you can wear on your shoes, or your surfboard, or your parachute, and now it’s 3D. It’s the latest gadget in the drive to discover “user-generated” thrills.

Nick Woodman enjoys racing, surfing, mountain biking, and other things that don’t lend themselves to holding a camera. So, he built a camcorder you can wear on your wrist, and your helmet, and your snowboard, and on the end of a pole. At the end of breathtaking run in his Lotus, we kidded Nick Woodman, founder of family-owned camera maker GoPro.

“We’re in your office with you! And you’re working!”

“Yes,” he replied. “And, that’s why Half Moon Bay is such a fantastic place forGoPro, because of the surf, the mountain biking.”

Today, GoPro sells in 60 countries, sales grow 300 percent per year, and the company grew from nine employees to nearly 50 in the last nine months. The next step is a 3D version. But, instead of a camera, there is a housing that encloses two cameras. They are connected by a special port already built into every GoPro. This enables them to synchronize left eye and right eye views with no drift, or simply to be used as a couple of 2D cameras.

You think the shots taken with this camera are exciting? Wait until you see them in 3D!

“3D,” says Woodman, “just adds that extra dimension, one more sensory input to really get you into the moment. We have people jumping off of cliffs, and racing cars, and surfing, and traveling to exotic places. We get to see what our customers are doing every day on our Facebook page.”

source: http://www.today3d.com/

video source: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=7758683

Microsoft building a huge arsenal of 3D capabilities. /

It seems Microsoft’s motion-sensing ambitions don’t begin and end with Kinect on the Xbox 360. As the acquisition of Canesta strongly suggests.

Microsoft’s supposed moratorium on acquiring companies (which actually turned out to be exaggerated anyway) is at an end, with the company buying Canesta. Canesta is a small Silicon Valley firm which specializes in motion-sensing and gesture-recognition technology.

The long (although entirely non-technical) explanation of the kind of technology Canesta produces is that it allows people to interact with computers and other pieces of technology using their bodies rather than a dedicated control method such as a mouse or touchscreen. Hands and fingers are the obvious example, but other parts of the body can also be utilized. The short explanation is Minority Report.

This kind of technology is expected to play a bigger role in the future of computing and beyond. And Microsoft is betting big on motion-sensing and gesture-recognition being the next big thing. Having already bought 3DV last year, this latest acquisition represents Microsoft building a huge arsenal of 3D capabilities.

Microsoft is, it should be noted, no stranger to the technology either. This deal comes just days before Kinect launches for the Xbox 360. Kinect, as demonstrated by both Oprah and Ellen over the past couple of weeks, is a system which allows gamers to play using their whole bodies rather than a traditional controller. It’s essentially the Wii times ten.

Kinect is flying off shelves around the world during its pre-order phase despite its $150 price tag and competition from Sony and its rival Move system. I wouldn’t mind betting that it’s this level of interest that has persuaded the higher-ups at Microsoft to throw their weight behind the technology. But I remain unconvinced it’ll successfully move beyond videogames. Even if it does I suspect Windows 8 would be a little too early.

Although both companies have confirmed the acquisition, neither has disclosed financial details. We also don’t know whether Microsoft has bought Canesta to use the technology specifically or to acquire the 44 patents the company currently holds. My guess would be a combination of the two.

by Dave Parrack

original post: http://vista.blorge.com/2010/10/30/microsoft-acquires-canesta-maker-of-3d-motion-sensing-gesture-recognition-chips/