Last night at Microsoft’s final CES keynote, they announced that the Kinect hardware would be coming to Windows-based PCs on February 1 in 12 countries.

The Kinect for Windows bundle will sell for $249 and contain the Kinect hardware and accompanying development software. The price also includes a one-year warranty, access to ongoing software updates for both speech and human tracking and continued Kinect for Windows software enhancements.

For those who find the $249 price a bit steep, and it really is a bit steep, Microsoft will be offering the device for $149 to qualified educational users.

Microsoft does explain through their blog that the reason Kinect for Windows costs more is that Kinect for Xbox 360 is supported through the sale of Kinect games, Xbox Live subscriptions and Xbox Live software sales. This all, of course, makes perfect sense as game consoles are able to be sold at a lower price point for the same reason.

The company also stated in their blog that Kinect for Windows will be a hardware-only business model. This means that the SDK and runtime will be provided free of charge to all developers.

In a move that encourages developers to buy the new hardware, Microsoft has stated that those who wish to release their non-commercial creations must do so with the new Kinect for Windows hardware and accompanying software. Software that was released using the beta SDK on Kinect for Xbox 360 will still be allowed with Microsoft extending the beta license to June 16, 2016.

In a keynote that was pretty lackluster and showing Microsoft’s apathy for CES, the Kinect for Windows announcement was pretty exciting. While we all knew it was coming to Windows eventually, I didn’t expect to see it this soon. Kinect is a pretty amazing piece of hardware and it will be interesting to see where developers take it on a more open platform.

TechIT.co.il, which discovered the leak, points to the file.

Here’s what the app looks like:

The app lets you use Facebook without actually being on Facebook.com. You can chat and message friends, see updates from the ticker and get notifications while your browse other parts of the web.

“We’re testing out a first version of the app with a small group of people,” says Facebook. “During this trial period, we plan on rolling out changes to the app and expect outages and periods of instability as we make improvements.”

The app works with Windows 7, and updates will be installed automatically.

You can log in and out by right-clicking the Facebook icon in your Windows system tray.

Considering the proliferation of Instagram, will Facebook’s photo-sharing app make as much headway as some expect? Will people, just because a new application has Facebook’s shiny logo on it, eschew the fun they are having with Instagram to embrace another service? Time will tell, but in the interim, Instagram will simply continue enjoying the incredible success its having.

Instagram’s success story had a light shined on it with a revealing article in TwinCities.com. In it, the numbers come into focus. 5 million users with over 100 million images uploaded, and while the service’s filter and other capabilities are acknowledged, it’s the ability to share these photos that helped make Instagram such a success story:

Local Instagram users interviewed for this article said, again and again, that picture sharing is a primary reason they have become so addicted. They can “like” their pals’ pictures and add their comments to the shots anywhere and anytime via the phone app, while posting their own shots to keep the visual conversation going.

Once you include the hashtag capability, giving such an index of images a level of categorization, the appeal is easy to understand. Of course, maybe people just like taking and posting pictures of their feet, and Instagram provides them with the easiest way to do so, or at least a willing community with which to share these images.

Another aspect of Instagram’s appeal also comes from the distinct lack of size of the company that developed the application. Allow some Twitter users to expand:

You mean not relying on hyperbole and letting the product speak for itself is a successful marketing tool? Who knew? Of course, the reason for Instagram’s incredible popularity may be something a lot more simpler than we realize:

“Cause it’s 1-8-7 on an unwanted app…”

Silliness with Snoop Dog aside, Instagram’s success is impossible to ignore. So much, in fact, that a video interview with CEO Kevin Systrom, courtesy of GigaOM TV, was featured on Reuters:

doubleTwist is headed by at least one familiar entity to those of you who follow the history of the Internet, one Jon Lech Johansen, otherwise known as DVD Jon. In a heads up to Boing Boing, Johansen explained the idea behind doubleTap, which is an update of the doubleTwist application, one that introduced the NFC capabilities to the Android environment:

With doubleTap users can transfer a video or a song simply by tapping two devices together. NFC (Near Field Communication) is used to initiate the sharing and then the actual file transfer happens over WiFi or Bluetooth. We are demoing this powerful feature at our stand at [the Google] I/O…

DVD Jon also reveals the doubleTwist update features AirPlay support, allowing Android users to stream Apple TV to their devices. Since the Android devices are distinctly non-Apple, one wonders how they’ll respond to Apple services appearing on non-Apple devices. Considering their iron-clad control of the iPhone and its applications, it’s not hard to imagine cease and desist requests rearing their heads, requesting such a “harmful” activity — to the Apple brand, anyway — be stopped.

The updated doubleTwist application is available for download at the Android Market, complete with the new attributes. As for the Near Field Communications, and the technology’s ability to facilitate file-sharing, how does the archaic concept of the potentially-upcoming PROTECT IP Act address such capabilities? Considering most of these rulings come from entities who don’t understand and/or want to control the digital world, with a fearful, knee-jerk reaction that could include litigious responses.

Image courtesy of the Android Market.

Now, Salesforce has announced that it is acquiring Heroku for about $212 million. Heroku is a cloud application platform powered by Ruby. In fact, according to Salesforce, it’s the fastest growing platform of its type. 

The acquisition would make perfect sense for the company given its increased focus on social cloud-based enterprise apps. The platform powers over 106,000 social and mobile cloud apps. In fact, the company claims that developers added 2,600 new apps to the platform last week alone. 

The company points out that there are over a million developers developing on Ruby, and that the language was used to write things like Groupon, Hulu, and Twitter. 

"The next era of cloud computing is social, mobile and real-time. I call it Cloud 2," said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. "Ruby is the language of Cloud 2, and Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service for Cloud 2 that is fueling this growing community. We think this acquisition will uniquely position salesforce.com as the cornerstone for the next generation of app developers."

"We have a service that developers really love, and salesforce.com has the trust and credibility the most demanding customers expect," added Heroku CEO Byron Sebastian. "Together, we will provide the best place to run and deploy Cloud 2 apps. We believe this is the winning combination to bring cloud application platforms into the mainstream of the enterprise."

The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of January, and is subject to customary closing conditions.

That doesn’t sound bad. 

This would be he first social marketing platform to integrate with Facebook Places, according to Fan Appz. It will allow consumer brands, retailers and local businesses to reach, engage and reward any customer that checks-in via Facebook. 

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes Facebook such a potent weapon in the check-in space. You’ve got the enormous user base, the brand recognition, and the developer community creating new opportunities for businesses, giving Facebook Places a distinct advantage over competitors like Foursquare, Gowalla, and the rest.  

"Fan Appz has seen tremendous growth over the past year, as tens of thousands of businesses have used our platform to engage and build stronger relationships with customers," said CEO Jon Siegal. "With Fan Appz Offers for Facebook Places, companies can now take their Facebook marketing to the next level by rewarding fans for their interactions in the physical world."

FanAppz also makes a note that its suite of solutions is "highly measurable", which is obviously an asset when you’re talking about social media marketing.

The information that is most commonly used is displayed at the top of the screen, the layout is simplified, and they’ve added some other features.

"The old interface for creating recurring events was clumsy and took up too much space on the screen," says software engineer Nassar Stoertz. "Now you’ll see only a summary of your recurring event on the main event page; if you want to edit it, you can use a window that opens when you select the ‘Repeats’ checkbox."

"You’ll notice a new tab on the event page that should make it easier to find a good time to schedule an event," adds Stoertz. "When your friends or coworkers give you permission to see their calendars, you can click this tab to see a preview of their schedules and hover over their events to see what conflicts they might have. This should make scheduling a tad easier, especially for events with large numbers of guests."

Google Apps users can see data from other calendar services in the schedule preview thanks to Google’s Calendar Connectors API.

Google has also added a "Working Hours" setting and a "Find a Time" tab on the event scheduling page that lets you see coworkers’ schedules and choose meeting times. More on these features here.

The company also announced that starting today, if customers purchase Office 2008 for Mac, they’ll be able to upgrade to 2011 for free when it becomes available.

"We develop Office for Mac to give you the tools to create great-looking and compatible documents — with options to pick the right edition for your Mac needs," says Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit. "More than ever before, Office 2011 brings the familiar productivity tools and features of Microsoft Office to a suite of applications that work great on the Mac."

Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac and Messenger for Mac, and comes in two editions: a single install for $119 and a Family Pack for $149.

Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Mac, and also comes in two editions: a single install for $199 and a Multi-Pack for $279 with two installs for a user with two machines.

There will also be a special academic version available at authorized academic stores for $99.

All versions will be available in the following languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish, Polish and Russian.

The Hotlist launched last year, claiming to be the first geo-social aggregator. Its platform calculates the popularity of events and venues, offering analytics and ratings for social planning.

The app compiles info from sources like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, and filters public social activities of over 100 million people worldwide.

"People work and people play. However, planning even the smallest get together can be very time-consuming and frustrating," says The Hotlist CEO Gianni Martire. "Our mobile app allows people to make the most out of their social life by giving friends a place to share their social plans, eliminating the stress of phone tag, endless text messages and disappointing evenings. The Hotlist instantly gives people information that used to take hours to figure out, a one-stop app to organize your social life."

The Hotlist claims to have over 160,000 monthly active users, and the release of an iPhone app should only boost that number significantly. Then, the company will launch Android and BlackBerry apps at some point. No specific dates for these are mentioned, but they said to expect them "shortly."

Given how few details are known about this alleged product, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There have been a lot of so called "game changers" in the news industry recently, and I’m not sure how much the game has actually changed as a result of them. Julia Boorstin reports:

Sources close to the company tell me that the company is considering creating a new purely digital news play that would be designed for the app world and would be available through subscription on devices like the iPad.

This new digital news venture would incorporate text, photo and video, tailored for the iTunes app format … neither a newspaper nor a news website — it would not be based on any of News Corp’s existing papers.

There are some new and interesting products surfacing. There’s no question about that, but without widespread adoption, how much of a game changer can any one product truly be? Google? That was a game changer. Blogging platforms? Yep. Facebook? Absolutely. Twitter? Yes. It even caused changes in Facebook (and search engines with realtime search).

This new project from News Corp. will have text, photo, and video elements though. Sounds like a game changer!

Again, based on the small amount of details, it’s hard to form a real opinion on this, but is app-exclusive content the answer? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’ll be in the content itself. If the content is exclusive, and unique enough from what’s on the web, an app like this could succeed. But apart from that, I really don’t see how this would be much different than offering a print publication with exclusive-to-issue content, other than the fact that less people will have access to it, though it might be able to build on this initial, ongoing novelty that comes with a new generation of tablet devices. Remember, you can still access the web from these too.

There is a lot of excitement around the iPad and similar forthcoming products right now, especially from the news industry. However, it still remains to be seen if these tablets can truly "change the game" in terms of news. People are still overwhelmingly going to choose free content over paid.

Thoughts?