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Shopping With Kinect Coming Soon?

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Shopping With Kinect Coming Soon?

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A recent article by Gizmodo showed us that the Kinect can be used for reasons other than dancing and petting imaginary pets. Apparently Mastercard (yes the credit card company) is fiddling around with the Kinect, in order to allow you to shop online using gestures. The new payment system is called QkR, and this is how it works.

First, a user is dropped into an infomercial for a product that they may want to buy. They can use their hand gestures to switch to other infomercials if they find the one they are watching not to their taste. Then, when they find a product they like, they simply wave their hand and a purchase box comes up on the TV, with the infomercial still playing in the background. You then use your hands to move the box around in virtual space, adjust things such as shipping, quantity, size, and color, and select your payment method. Then after confirming with another small gesture, your purchase is made and you can go on to buying more and more stuff.



Not addictive enough to you? Well these infomercials will broadcast QR codes that you can scan with your smart phone, which immediately takes you to a purchase page with one-click shopping. Still not awesome enough? Your smartphone can listen to the infomercial with a Shazam-style app, and take you to a product page. Still not awesome enough? The program can interpret body language. You can act as if you are eating a hamburger, for instance, and you’ll be brought to an area to buy food.

Simply put, Mastercard is going to make it a lot easier for all of us to waste all of our money soon.

By Angelo M. D’Argenio

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