Kinect voice and gesture ads present a terrifying future
Microsoft has officially revealed Nuads, a new advertising platform for the 360 dashboard which allows advertisers to add Kinect functionality to their ads. Here's how Microsoft's Mark Kroese presented it, related in horrifying detail by Edge:
His demonstration contained five suggestions for how advertisers can make use of the technology: social advocacy, in which an advert can be shared by the user simply saying "Xbox tweet"; request for information, where saying "Xbox more" will result in further details or discount codes being emailed to the user; near me, which will send a text message with directions to a nearest retailer when prompted with "Xbox near"; calendar reminders in response to "Xbox schedule"; and gesture-controlled voting. Kroese notes, however, that "the possibilities for advertisers are almost endless."
Alright! Cool tech, guys! But hey, we just want to be super clear about this: The first time the 360 listens to us order dinner and surreptitiously decides we want to tweet about the new "fresher, bolder flavor of Papa John's classic pizza sauce," we're going to smash the Kinect into little pieces and feed it to a goat. Just a heads up, you know, between friends.
