What started as an April Fool’s Day prank by search engine giant and Gmail provider Google has actually been realized by the University of Southern California Los Angeles. “Gmail Motion” was the name given to a fictional motion sensor activated Gmail interface “introduced” by Google on the first of April 2011.
An actual Gmail motion controller was put together by UCL’s ICT MxR labs using Microsoft Kinect. The resultant contraption, called Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving (SLOOW) could input and send emails just by body movements. The system is based upon a toolkit framework called FAAST (no we’re not making this up), which can be downloaded and used by anybody.
