Ever since I did the Nintendo Wii experiment a while back, I’ve been interested in exploring other new ways speakers can interact with their presentations. Ideally, the presenter would not need to hold any hardware and natural gestures would be used to navigate the presentation.
 
I recently learned that Microsoft Research was experimenting with 3D cameras, and I thought it was worth seeing if a 3D camera could be used to control a presentation. Check out this video for the results of my side project.

<iframe src="http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/player/embed/14af4271-8bea-4d5a-be9a-04c9c05ca8a1" allowtransparency="true" width="430" height="326" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe><br/><table width="430"><tr><td align="left"><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/14af4271-8bea-4d5a-be9a-04c9c05ca8a1?vp_evt=eref&vp_video=pptPlex+controlled+with+a+3D+camera">pptPlex controlled with a 3D camera</a></td><td align="right"><a href="mms://msvcatalog-2.wmod.llnwd.net/a2249/e1/ft/share7/61a4/0/pptPlex controlled with a 3d Camera.wmv">Watch as WMV</a></td></tr></table>

3D cameras are still in the prototype stage and are hard to come by, and until they become mainstream this was just an experiment.  However, it’s interesting to think about what the future may bring.