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Cloud Google Input Devices

Google Gmail Motion Beta 104

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-got-a-gesture-for-you dept.
PB8 noted that has been following all the kinect projects that have been floating around the net, and decided to use detection along with a rich visual vocabulary including common gestures and American Sign Language to accelerate your gmail time. This is going to require a bit of a change in my email composition since normally I use those to vent frustration.

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Google Gmail Motion Beta More

Google Gmail Motion Beta

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  • A day you don't even have to read the headline ... sweet.
    • Can we not place all the April fool jokes into one slashdot post with the appropriate links. Otherwise we end up like last year with 10 stories spamming the front and anything interesting being pushed out of sight.
      • It's April the first, nothing interesting happens today. You don't publish serious news because it gets lost in the swamp. Wait til the third if you want interesting stuff.
      • That's why April 1st is also known as "we all switch to arstechnica day". Not all of us think All Fools' Day is an excuse to spend the entire day clowning and goofing off. So until tomorrow, slashdot...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Anrego ( 830717 ) *

          Isn't reading slashdot in general "clowning and goofing off". Unless you can justify "staying up to date on the world of technology" as part of your job, which I think most of could kinda do, but would just get told to get back to work!.

          I do agree with the sentiment though. I wish they'd at least intersparse some real stuff (it may even add to the humour of the fake stuff).

        • Switch to Ars? And get rid of over nine thousand RSS entries messages per second? Awesome!

          Also, the “modded” release of this post (gesus wants to make use of kinect time-wasting on moron detection) is AWESOME.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      The drop-down editing still doesn't allow me to do worse editing than the norm though.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by swilly ( 24960 )

      On normal days, people don't read the articles, but do read the headline and about half of us skim the summaries.

      On April Fools, we don't even go through that much effort.

      Reader productivity on slashdot has never been higher!

  • I *so* hate April Fools' day on the internet.

    Really the "fake news story" thing stopped being funny about 1992...except for The Onion, they still do a good job at it.

    • Re:Oh joy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Friday April 01, 2011 @08:36AM (#35687906)
      So, would The Onion's April Fool's joke be to publish an actual, true news story?

      • So, would The Onion's April Fool's joke be to publish an actual, true news story?

        No, publishing reality-consistent news is a Conservapedia April Fools joke...

        Oddly, I'm not joking [conservapedia.com]...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hammer ( 14284 )

      April fools day jokes are fun if they are "slightly" more subtle

    • Ahh, lighten up. Its one day that the whole world decides to be a little more silly. People are being creative, corny, and just having a good laugh. If anything its a nice stress release!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by smelch ( 1988698 )
        People are not being creative, just corny and blatant. Neither of which are a good laugh. Do something to fool people or don't do it at all. April fools on the internet is like watching a 3 year old try to reconstruct a joke they heard. Annoying and not funny as they clumsily fail to get even one component of what makes a joke right. I suspect you have brain damage.
        • Oh I dunno, I found the Google Motion stuff mildly amusing - especially their representation of how to create pie charts by having three people position their arms in sync to create the slices. That and the "easy" flowcharts that require you to bust a move on the desk.
        • Just because its not humorous to you, doesn't mean everyone doesn't find it funny.
        • We actually pulled a pretty successful April Fool's stunt today. Some of us convinced a fellow worker in the shop to forge shackles and chains from scrap and we installed them at all the desks in the office. A few people were even good enough sports to wear them for photos.

        • People are not being creative, just corny and blatant. Neither of which are a good laugh.

          Have you read what passes for funny around here? We're still on BSOD and flying chair jokes. The only real difference with today (which has been an annual tradition for at least the 10 years I've been lurking around here) is that the lame jokes are above the comments section.

          In other words: Shut up. If it bothers you so much, go set your calendar to remind you on March 31st 2012 that you want to spend the day outside.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by smelch ( 1988698 )
            Excuse me for wanting a little mystery and romance and nuance to my April Fool's jokes instead of a dump truck worth of poop slathered all over the internet. I'm in favor of stronger, foolier (as in making a fool of people, not making a fool of yourself) jokes today. We need a modern day war of the worlds.

            It's people like you who ruined pictures of cats doing funny things.

            • Excuse me for wanting a little mystery and romance and nuance to my April Fool's jokes instead of a dump truck worth of poop slathered all over the internet.

              Sorry, I didn't realize this was your first year on the internet.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by swilly ( 24960 )

          I have identified a few categories of properly done internet April Fools jokes.

          1. Subtle jokes that could be plausible or which you wish were true. Thinkgeek has few good ones. Angry Nerds is also nice.
          2. Corny and blatant jokes that have had a large amount of effort put into them. Google is good with this. Youtube and Hulu this year falls into this category. (Or so I've heard. I can't check Youtube at work.)
          3. Unexpected silliness. I was working with Dokuwiki when their website changed yesterday.

  • Great innovation (Score:5, Funny)

    by T.E.D. ( 34228 ) on Friday April 01, 2011 @08:35AM (#35687894)
    I've been giving Outlook gesture commands for years, but it has never responded. Perhaps with this new competition, and their ownership of kinect, Microsoft will finally support gesture commands.

    • I realize that this is a prank, but I think it shouldn't be. The only aspect of it that's actually ridiculous is expecting people to pay that much money for the interface or creating an interface that few people can use. The idea behind it would be great for people that just need to read their email, but not actually type anything.

  • Does this new technology supports writing Spanish emails?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Only if you learn spanish gestures...

      • God help us all if they implement an Italian version of this.

        • I'll forgo the obligatory joke about handcuffing an Italian to keep them quiet and just mention that there is a great deal of actual research being done in gestural input by using sign language gestures.
    • You have to wear a sombrero and old skanky sneakers. Then it automatically changes to Spanish.

  • Obviously you say April Fools however the best jokes are based on some fact and the fact is I know of at least 2 senior and talented devs that worked on MS Kinect project and around release time jumped ship to Google.

    eg My old friend Ryan Geiss is one who co-wrote the skeletal tracking for Kinect is now at google.
    http://www.geisswerks.com/about_natal.html [geisswerks.com]

  • That is NOT American Sign Language... it's a joking mockery of sign language...

    • Would it look like sign language to someone who didn't know sign language? It only needs to be vaguely passable to be plausable before the viewer catches on that its a joke. Kind of like the old BBC program that had pasta growing on trees being harvested, it only had to look somewhat realistic (which some people actually believed I think).

      • Would it look like sign language to someone who didn't know sign language? It only needs to be vaguely passable to be plausable before the viewer catches on that its a joke. Kind of like the old BBC program that had pasta growing on trees being harvested, it only had to look somewhat realistic (which some people actually believed I think).

        The Spaghetti tree hoax [wikipedia.org]. Yes. But TFA doesn't claim that it is ASL, that's almost my point. TFS is adding to the joke.

    • That is NOT American Sign Language

      RTFA. They know it's not ASL.

      it's a joking mockery of sign language

      It appears that this experiment is in an ad-hoc sign language designed to be understood by those outside sign-speaking subcultures [wikipedia.org], not unlike the home sign [wikipedia.org] used by deaf children of hearing adults. The article implies that they plan to add translation from ASL in a future release, including a quote from someone in accessibility who is "eagerly awaiting the next version with ASL".

      • That is NOT American Sign Language

        RTFA. They know it's not ASL.

        RTFS, that's the one I was complaining about. But you are right, TFA got it right.

  • it's April Fools day

    not April Mad Libs day

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs [wikipedia.org]

  • A bit mean isn't it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Maximum Prophet ( 716608 ) on Friday April 01, 2011 @08:46AM (#35687994)
    A device that could translate ASL into text could be very useful to people who know ASL, and a great training tool for those who don't.
    This is like having a headline, "Exoskeleton lets paraplegics walk all day, just $5000", then when people click on it, saying "April Fools!"

    On the other hand, if this inspires someone to create just such a product, then more power to them.

  • Charades beaten (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:01AM (#35688078)

    They've also inadvertently solved charades!

  • Fun! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lifyre ( 960576 ) on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:03AM (#35688104)

    Oh this would be fun! I could flip off my email and have it automatically respond to the spam email I get! Either that or have it solicit more penis enlargement ads...

  • I can't believe the blatant racism Google is showing here. Clearly, this technology should have been implemented to recognize standard Nicaraguan Sign Language [wikipedia.org] instead.

    Be assured, I will be writing a stern letter to my Congresscritter.

  • ...that's enough with the April's Fools Jokes. Can we actually get a real story on the front page at some point today? Also, am I alone in thinking that these sorts of "jokes" are completely pointless at this point? I mean, everyone expects it and can spot them from a mile away. Isn't the point of an April Fool's joke to, you know, fool people?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rikkards ( 98006 )

      Unfortunately not. It was supposed to be a way of early Christians to ridicule Pagans as it corresponded with the Spring Equinox. Anything after that is just an evolution.

    • Can we actually get a real story on the front page at some point today?

      I think my favorite part of April Fool's Day is watching people on Slashdot bitch about April Fool's Day. In answer to your question, no, you will not get a real story on the front page today. ;)

  • I just imagine someone indulging in their vast p0rn collection while composing an email.

    Dear *wack* *wack*

    I would like to *get off* work early today. My friend is *cuming* to visit.

  • B- (Score:1)

    by teeloo ( 766817 )
    C'mon, that's just stupid. You couldn't come up with something better than this for April Fools?

  • Unsubtle, unfunny and utterly unlikely to fool anyone sentient enough to have learned to read.

    Really, what is the point? If these are the best you can manage, then just don't bother.

  • This Gmail Motion idea could be utilised in various places in the Internet - not only Google sites E.g. on porno sites (.xxx) there is the possibility to use a sort of regular sliding motion (using the left hand in a closed position around the well, you-know-what!, to give feed-back to the site as to its (the site's) effectiveness. Don't let Uncle Steve Balmer catch you at it though. He might think that you have a thing about Google and might start yelling Developers! Developers! Developers! (again)

  • I caught a couple of people out with this today.

    Then I thought about it.

    Actually this would be useful especially with something like the xbox kinect system or a webcam.

    E.g. Doing something like cooking and "virtually" turning pages using motion capture via the webcam.

    I enjoy cooking and trying to use my notebook to read through a recipie while my hands are covered in dough is no fun.

    It's a matter of time before someone does this for real.

  • Lady talking with her hands (Score:3)

    by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:26AM (#35688302) Journal
    In the video, you a see a lady who gestures a lot with her hands while talking. I kind of expected a subtitling of what her hands said while you heard her talking.

  • Great one, this. But I still yearn for good old pink slashdot [goatse.ch]

  • Connect your toilet to your wireless router

    http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html [google.com]

  • Oh look! Who'da thunk it...

  • Deaf / mute people need speech recognition software, too! Where's Dragon Naturally Signing?

    As an aside - is it rude to sign with your hands full?

  • faster! faster! faster!
  • Breaking News! Google Gestures will tomorrow be called Google Fitness! The new public health care system that while you read your stuff you can still eating your mcdonalds or donuts and will lose weight! Say goodbye to your Gym that you forgot where it is and go read your e-mails right now! Lose weight! You will start to love spam too! Google... Making people health!

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