At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Steve Ballmer announced Microsoft would ship the Kinect for Windows on February 1st. The company has delivered on its promise and on Wednesday, version 1.0 of the Kinect for Windows SDK and runtime were made available for download. The software giant’s distribution partners across the globe have also begun to ship Kinect for Windows hardware. The device will retail for $249, with a special discounted academic price of $149 for “Qualified Educational Users” that will come later this year.

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Windows developers around the world had cause for excitement Thursday afternoon as Microsoft finally released a beta version of its Kinect for Windows software development kit. As the name might imply, this new SDK will allow developers to build Windows software that makes use of Microsoft’s popular motion-based controller as a peripheral. The SDK obviously opens the door for Kinect-controlled Windows PC games, but we’re sure Windows developers will find plenty of creative ways to make use of the great technology. Developers can download the SDK beta immediately via the read link below.

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The brood over at PreCentral have managed to acquire a leaked copy of HP’s webOS 3.0 beta 1 software development kit (SDK). Why is this a good thing? Because contained within said SDK rests a TouchPad, webOS 3.0 emulator, of course. While emulators only provide 50% of the TouchPad story — the other half being hardware — it is useful to get a high-level overview of what user interface will look like. If you want to whet your appetite for this summers TouchPad release, hit the jump. There’s an eighteen minute video overview awaiting your scrutiny. Be sure to click through the read link as well for a host of screen grabs.

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Adobe on Monday unveiled the latest version of its Creative Suite software, version 5.5, which includes a new SDK for building smartphone and tablet applications that can interact with its famous Photoshop desktop software. To showcase some of the possibilities brought about by its new SDK, Adobe also introduced three new apps for Apple’s iPad. Adobe Eazel is a finger painting app with enhanced controls and nifty multitouch support, and creations can be stored locally or beamed over Wi-Fi to Photoshop CS5. Adobe Nav allows users to move menus and other controls off of their PC displays and over to the iPad. The app also allows users to view Photoshop documents on their tablet displays. Finally, Adobe Color Lava turns the iPad into a modern color mixing palette that pushes color creations directly to Photoshop CS5. Eazel, Nav and Color Lava will become available some time next month for between $1.99 and $4.99 pending Apple’s approval, of course. In the meantime, hit the break for a video of Adobe’s new apps in action.

During its webOS CONNECT event in London on Wednesday, HP announced that webOS 3.0 beta is now available for developers taking part in its Early Access program. The SDK includes full support for HP’s new Enyo apps framework, which offers hardware acceleration, browser-based development, better performance, support for HTML 5 standards, and more. PreCentral says the Early Access program should be relatively easy to get into, provided that you’re actually a webOS developer. The webOS 3.0 operating system powers the HP TouchPad, which we had a chance to see up close back in February. HP also announced plans to launch a revamped developer portal located at devleoper.palm.com, although it didn’t specify exactly that would happen.

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Research In Motion on Wednesday announced a new version of its on-device software store for BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry App World. Version 2.1 brings several changes to RIM’s app store — the most notable of which is the introduction of an in-app payment mechanism. BlackBerry app developers will now be able to offer digital and virtual goods to users from within their apps, and payments will be taken and processed by RIM’s new payment service. A related SDK has been released to developers, allowing them to build the new in-app purchase functionality into their existing apps.

Back in July, Google introduced its App Inventor; a dead-simple, drag and drop application creator for the Android operating system. In a press release today, the company announced that due to an “overwhelming” amount of interest it is launching the application as a beta service, available to all those who have a Google account. “We are so impressed with the great things people have done with App Inventor, we want to allow more people the opportunity to do great things,” writes Google. The App Inventor, which is web-based, is now live for all those interested. Hit the jump for a quick video and let us know if you make your very first Android app.

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Over the past 24-hours, electronic archeologists — of sorts — have been sifting through the Android 2.3 SDK looking for little nuggets of information that could indicate future features destined to drop on Google’s mobile OS. It hasn’t taken the software sleuths very long, as they have found several interesting artifacts under the SDK’s hood: video chat icons and API calls for a PlayStation-like controller.

The presence video chat icons are pretty self explanatory. We don’t have to stretch our imaginations very far to envision Google incorporating Google Talk video-chat — a service that is up and running on the desktop — into Android. At yesterday’s D:Dive Into Mobile talk, Google’s Andy Rubin showed-off a prototype Motorola tablet. When Mr. Rubin powered the tablet on, he noted that we were looking at a version of Google Talk that had video chat icons before quickly clearing it off the screen. Google’s next developer phone, the Nexus S, includes a front-facing video camera, making a video-chat feature both expected and likely in the very near future.

The second bit of information comes in the form of API calls. Android now includes calls for R1, R2, L1, L2, select, and start keys, similar to those found on a PlayStation controller. The fabled PlayStation Phone is anything but a secret and hopefully — if the device ever comes to market — it will be rocking out with Android 2.3.

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When it rains it pours in Android-land! Earlier this morning, Google published an Android 2.3 video for developers. While the video focuses mainly on development, the developer website includes new APIs available in the new code, including: SIP-based VoIP support, NFC (Near Field Communication) support, support for gyroscope, rotation vector, linear acceleration, gravity, and barometer, and multiple camera support. Other improvements include UI refinements, faster keyboard input, better power management, and an improved task manager. Hit the jump to see the video and for a link to the official developer post!

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If you have been waiting to see what a 3rd party developer has in store for RIM’s upcoming Playbook tablet launch, this is the first significant video demo we have found — and it looks great. From Universal Mind, they write on their blog about the development experience:

It was entirely built using Adobe Flash Builder and the BlackBerry SDK. The workflow allowed us to deploy a working tablet application in days with full touch and gesture interactions that you would expect in a tablet device.

The framework SDK is integrated into Flash Builder which made for a very familiar dev environment. Compiling the application and deploying it to the PlayBook Simulator is quick and easy with multiple ways to see your application in a working environment. Without a actual device in hand we relied on the Simulator to test all the interactions, so it was a key piece of the workflow.

Kinetic scrolling with rubber-banding effect is built into the SDK, they note, which makes it easy on developers to concentrate on adding greater functionality and features, as opposed to focusing on little transitional/design elements like they have to in the past with RIM’s previous OS development. All in all, it looks good. A little iPad-ish, but we’d take that any day over regular BlackBerry apps. Question for RIM… are 3rd party QNX apps called super, super apps? Video is after the breakage!

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If you’re anxious to see just what the new, QNX-based operating system on the BlackBerry Playbook is going to look like, listen up. The company has just released the Playbook OS simulator — along with the Adobe Air SDK — for both Mac OS X and Windows on its developer site. The simulator does not reveal any juicy secrets hiding in the PlayBook’s OS, and, for the most part, is pretty basic. Still, if you’re jazzed about the PB, and want to do a little spelunking around RIM’s new OS, hit the read link and have yourself a download. Enjoy!

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If you’re an iPhone 3GS owner, and feel shafted by your phone’s inability to take HDR photos, there still may be hope. 9to5Mac is reporting that resources in the latest iteration of the Apple’s iPhone SDK may indicate that support could be coming to the aging 3GS. The blog writes:

The iPhone 3GS is the only iPhone that is physically (hardware capabilities) able to capture HDR shots so we figure that non-Retina icon is for the 3GS not the original or 3G model. How do we know the other icon is not for the Retina Display? Apple has a very simple labeling process which places an “@2x” on image titles for the Retina Display and places nothing of that sort next to “iphone” on non-retina iPhones.

So there you have it. If you’re looking for HDR capabilities on your iPhone 3GS, and don’t feel like going the jailbreak route, your dreams may be just a software update away.

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Finally! Palm has announced that they will begin to roll out the webOS 2.0 SDK — in a limited capacity — to developers starting today. The company isn’t talking about what webOS 2.0 will bring to consumers, but they are touting some of the major overhauls and additions that developers can look forward to. Some of those improvements include:

• Exhibition for Touchstone– Exhibition will allow developers to code their applications to perform custom actions when your webOS device is plugged into the Touchstone charger. If you have a Touchstone on your bedside table, and want your custom alarm program to be activated when the device hits the charger, this is now possible.
• HTML5 Improvements — The HTML5 abilities of webOS will be improved with geolocation support and offline caching among other niceties.
• Deep JavsScript access– Developers will be given access to lower level JavaScript functions. This will allow program creators to control a plethora of low-level I/O data.
• Just Type feature — Palm has decided to give “universal search” a new tagline, Just Type. Just Type will have an API open to developers that will allow them to harness the functionality using their applications own data. The Just Type feature will also have something called “Quick Actions.” Our understanding of this feature is typing something like: “send tweet I love webOS” will result in said Twitter message being pushed out without the application ever being opened.
• Stacks feature — Stacks is going to allow actions taken within the same workflow to be grouped together into cards. If you are in an email and click on a link, the browser card and email card will be “stacked” together. You can custom order cards into stacks if you wish but by default webOS 2.0 will be doing this for you.

This all sounds really, really promising. We just hope this snazzy sounding OS is paired with some new hardware… and fast. Hit the read link to read the good news yourself.

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Do Android developers outnumber iPhone developers? If you believe this survey of 401 mobile developers than yes, yes they do. Vision Mobile, a “market analysis and strategy firm delivering market know-how to the mobile industry,” have a poll that indicates that more mobile application developers have experience with Google’s Android platform than with any other mobile platform, including Apple’s iOS. Developers polled cited: large market penetration, speed of development, potential to make money, and low cost dev tools as reasons for initially choosing Android. Developers indicated that they have the most experience in Android, followed by iOS, Java ME, Symbian, then “mobile web.” We should note, the poll asked developers which mobile platform(s) they had experience coding in, so it was possible to answer with multiple platforms. Hit the read link to see some additional charts from Vision Mobile.

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Whether you’re a genuine iPhone developer or someone who just paid $10 to have someone add your iPhone’s UDID to their developer account, you should be pleased to note that Apple has just released iPhone OS 4.0 beta 4. No changelog has been release, but just like the last time, we’ll be back if we spot any substantial changes.

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