BTW it's not just the hardware on the Kinect that's so great...the computer vision component is simply incredible and Andrew Blake's team at MS Research Cambrid

BTW it's not just the hardware on the Kinect that's so great...the computer vision component is simply incredible and Andrew Blake's team at MS Research Cambridge deserves the kudos on that. They're solving a very tough problem and doing it really well. Anecdotally, as I was interviewing for various academic positions this year, everyone had a few Kinect projects they were working on. This thing has really sparked an enormous resurgence of interest in stereo/3d-related vision research!