Google’s Gmail Motion Prank Turned Into Reality [VIDEO]

Remember Gmail Motion, the new feature that lets you use body gestures to compose and send emails in Gmail? It was obviously an April Fools joke, but now it’s also real, courtesy of the folks from the Institute of Creative Technologies.

The technology is jokingly dubbed SLOOW – Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving – and it uses a Microsoft Kinect camera to control Gmail. The same team used the technology, which is actually called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), to play World of Warcraft using only body motions in December 2010.

Amazingly enough, it works pretty much as Google had intended: you can type text into Gmail by using body gestures, and send an email by “licking” the stamp and slapping it onto an imaginary envelope. Check out the video below for a demonstration.

[via ict.usc.edu]

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