The Microsoft Accelerator Blog

Announcing the Launch of Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

2012-10-01T17:30:00Z

Today marks a pretty huge milestone in Microsoft relationship with startups, so we’re not going to be shy about this. Today, we launched the second in a series of Microsoft Accelerators with our partner TechStars that work with startups from around the world on important solutions and apps for the consumer and enterprise markets.

This is the beginning of the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure.

The response to the program has been astounding; we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs from 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, travel, entertainment, banking, real estate and more.

This accelerator movement proves two things: one –Microsoft is serious about helping startups grow to scale, and not just by giving them free software, which is a hallmark of the Microsoft BizSpark program (where we give free software to startups that are less than five years old, and bringing in revenue of less than US$1 million each year).

Two, it means that there is community associated with a startup’s engagement with Microsoft. Not only are they being introduced to a network that includes TechStars greats and the legacy of the companies that have worked with them in the past. But you are introduced to a startup community that includes 50,000 other entrepreneurs and developers just like you.

Here are the startups that are going to be in the new class:

Advertory – Berlin, Germany. Advertory helps local businesses increase revenue and build customer loyalty.
Appetas – Seattle, WA. Appetas' mission is to make restaurants look as beautiful online as they do on the plate!
BagsUp – Sydney, Australia. Find great places from people you trust.
Embarke – San Diego, CA. Embarke allows developers and companies the ability to integrate with any human communication channel (Facebook, Email, Text Message, Twitter) without having to learn the specifics, write code, or spend time on any of them.
Fanzo – Seattle, WA. Fanzo puts sports fans in the spotlight. Find other fans, show off your fanswagger and get rewarded for your passion.
MetricsHub – Bellevue, WA. A service providing cloud monitoring with incident detection and prebuilt workflows for remedying common problems.
Mobilligy– Bellevue, WA. Mobilligy revolutionizes how people pay their bills by bringing convenient, secure, and instant bill payment support to mobile devices.
Realty Mogul –Los Angeles, CA. Realty Mogul is a crowdfunding platform for real estate where accredited investors pool capital and invest in properties that are acquired, managed and eventually resold by professional private real estate companies and their management teams.
Socedo – Bellevue, WA. A simple and effective web application for lead generation and relationship management on Twitter.
Staq – San Francisco, CA. Back-end as a service for APIs.

If you want more information on this class, or more information on Microsoft BizSpark, in general, you can follow these startups along in their accelerator journey by following our blog and following us on twitter: @bizspark and @windowsazure and by tracking the Accelerator hashtag at #msaccel.

Over the next few months, we’ll be doing interviews with the startups and posting their Twitter handles.

Looking for a Volunteer Associate for Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

2012-09-11T01:59:00Z

Job Description:

Overall, as an onsite Azure Accelerator Associate, you will be given a special opportunity for hands-on involvement in Seattle's startup entrepreneur community. You will gain unprecedented experience and training with the lifecycle of building a cutting-edge technology business, and watch the evolution of the next amazing crop of technology startups, as they grow & progress from early-stage to venture-backed stars. Learning alongside entrepreneurs, investors & mentors, your professional network will explode in unimaginable directions. You will enjoy opportunities to sit in on mentor meetings, get to know the best entrepreneurs and investors in the Northwest -- and roll up your sleeves with direct involvement in a high-energy technology incubator environment. You will also have access to all Azure Accelerator social events involving the company founders and local community. The program hosts 10 early-stage teams chosen for a unique three-month incubation program running from October 1, 2012 to January 17, 2013 in South Lake Union, Seattle, WA. See www.azureaccelerator.com for more information.

Role and Responsibilities:

Tasks and responsibilities will evolve dynamically around the teams. Examples may include assisting with the day-to-day operations of the Azure Accelerator program, engaging with and assisting the companies in each area of planning and logistical needs, helping the teams in identifying needs and preparing for upcoming events, organizing meetings and running logistics for special guest mentor visits, taking meeting notes, setting up office space for events, and jumping in to assist the teams wherever necessary. Your involvement may relate to topical areas such as marketing, business development, research, and developing and managing social media content. Associates will be directed by the Accelerator's Program Manager and Managing Director. This opportunity, only available to a few qualified candidates, will expose you to numerous introductions and experiences among working founders and professionals immersed in technology, software development, entrepreneurial ventures.

Qualifications and Requirements:

Current / recent undergraduate student in design, engineering, business, or relevant field or current / recent graduate student in relevant field (MBA/JD/CS) preferred • Ability to be highly organized and detail-oriented in a fast-paced, dynamic environment essential.
Demonstrated interest in software, technology, startups, entrepreneurship, venture capital, and related topics preferred.
Ability to work onsite in Microsoft's South Lake Union offices. You should be willing to commit to the equivalent of a full time position for a three month time period and available days, evenings, or basically whenever needed. Schedule is flexible but a strong commitment is expected.
Readiness to jump in and become involved with team tasks quickly and effectively necessary.
Great attitude, tons of energy and brimming enthusiasm--along with an insatiable appetite for learning and meeting new people--absolutely essential.

If this sounds like you, APPLY HERE. Send us a few paragraphs about yourself along with your resume. We look forward to welcoming you as our newest team member!

Looking for a Hackstar for Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

2012-09-11T01:43:00Z

Job Description:

Overall, as an onsite Azure Accelerator hackstar, you will help build the next amazing crop of technology startups, as they grow & progress from early-stage to venture-backed stars. Coding alongside entrepreneurs, investors & mentors, your network will explode in unimaginable directions. You will enjoy opportunities to sit in on mentor meetings, get to know the best entrepreneurs and investors in the Northwest – and roll up your sleeves and contribute to their growth. You will also have access to Azure Accelerator social events with the founders and local community. The program hosts 10 early-stage teams chosen for a unique three-month incubation program running from October 1, 2012 - January 17, 2013 in South Lake Union, Seattle, WA. See www.azureaccelerator.com for more information.

For this Position:

If you are a software developer – ideally with technical/coding experience taking advantage of Microsoft's Azure technologies – the Azure Accelerator program is inviting applications for positions as support coders for the resident teams. This program, sponsored by Microsoft and powered by Techstars, is devoted to entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators building upon a wide range of business ideas leveraging Microsoft’s Azure.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Your primary focus will center on supporting any entrepreneurial team needing auxiliary development/coding. Examples of functional areas you may become involved with include: Azure-enabled application programming on Windows; cloud interface, potentially via web and/or mobile UI; and, gaming and/or commercial adaptations.

Qualifications and Requirements:

Demonstrated software development experience and proficiency required.
Education in fields such as design, engineering, business, and computer science preferred.
Prefer demonstrated interest in technology, startups, entrepreneurship, venture capital, and related topics.
You should be willing to commit to the equivalent of a full-time position onsite in South Lake Union for a three-month period; and, available days, and some evenings as necessary. Schedule may be flexible – but a strong commitment is expected. A small stipend is included.
Applicants should be able to jump in and complete any appropriate task quickly and effectively.

Great attitudes, tons of energy and brimming enthusiasm are expected –along with an insatiable appetite for learning and meeting new people. If this sounds like you, APPLY HERE. Send us a few paragraphs about yourself along with your resume

Microsoft Accelerator Hosts Hacker News Meetup as They Celebrate Their First Birthday

2012-08-13T21:55:00Z

Last week the Microsoft Accelerator played host to Hacker News Meetup as they celebrated their first birthday! About 150 people gathered to network, devour giant cookie cakes, and hear a great talk by Brian Hall, General Manager of
Internet Explorer, Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger businesses. Hall gave a very interesting overview about what it’s like to work on some of Microsoft’s less loved applications. He also provided tantalizing glimpses into
the new Internet Explorer and Outlook (Hotmail) interfaces – stay tuned!

Hacker News members mingle before hearing Brian Hall speak.

If you are interested in Hacker News Meetup, which meets on the first Tuesday of each month at various locations, check out: http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup.

For more information about the Microsoft Accelerator, click here: http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/accelerator/azure/. The Azure class begins October 1, 2012.

A few Hacker News members cheer on the champs-of-the-moment during a sudden death, winner-takes-all Rock, Paper, Scissors battle. The
winner received 2 sphero robots!

Brian Hall describes a few of the challenges of marketing IE and Hotmail – and he gave the group a quick look at what’s in the works.

For those of you who attended the event and are interested in learning more about HackStars, click here. In a nutshell, HackStars is a program whereby entrepreneurial-minded developers and engineers are paid to work with teams going through the TechStars program. HackStars is a great way for talented developers who aren't currently founders to work with innovative and disruptive teams and it provides top-notch developing support to TechStars participants.

Getting Into the Microsoft Accelerator - Why Not Us?

2012-08-07T22:50:00Z

Letting hundreds of companies know that they didn’t make the cut is never fun. It’s tough telling entrepreneurs “no”, especially when they are so passionate and creative. Many of you may want specific feedback on why your application was not selected and while we try to give feedback when asked, it’s not practical for us to get into a prolonged discussion with each company. That said, we would like to provide some broad insight as to why to why certain applicants weren’t selected as finalists.

Your Team:

You didn’t commit to the program. This program is a full-time mentor-intensive program designed to be done in person. We didn’t take teams where:

1) Key founders or developers were not able to attend the program full-time in Seattle.

2) Team members did not plan to quit their other jobs or needed to do side-work. Most founders in accelerator programs work 80 hours a week or more on their startup. They need total focus to move quickly. In addition, raising funding takes time and generally investors want to see founders fully invested personally and financially before funding them.

3) Team members were on the fence about whether this program was for them.

We plan to commit 100% to helping you succeed. We only took teams that we felt were 100% committed and enthusiastic.

We emailed and/or called you and you didn’t respond. 100% follow-up is an important trait for an entrepreneur. For us, it’s a simple litmus test.

The application was sparse or incomplete. This one is pretty self explanatory. We can’t evaluate you if you don’t provide us enough information.

We didn’t think the team had the right ingredients. There’s no exact formula for what we’re looking for, but if something jumps out at us as an obvious issue in the team then we’ll likely pass.

Lack of demonstrated talent or execution ability. This one is tricky, but we do look for signs of talent and ability to execute. If your company is purely idea stage, and you have not supplied any compelling history of execution, we’re likely to pass. We realize that this is more of a timing issue but we want to make sure that the teams we admit are able to make the most of the program.

We emailed you, spoke to you, or met you and it just didn’t feel “right” to us. This is obviously totally subjective, but we tend to trust our gut after our interactions with you.

We selected a different team working on the same idea. Some of the same ideas were submitted by multiple teams and although we may have felt more than one team was positioned for success, we didn’t feel it was fair to choose more than one competitor for the program. We want all the teams in the program to support each other, not compete against each other.

Your idea:

We didn’t clearly see how your team would utilize the cloud. One of the strengths of this program is the access to technical specialists working with Microsoft Azure. We selected teams we felt would especially benefit from that access.

We aren’t the right group of people to help your company. Sometimes we receive applications for ideas that we honestly don’t think we can help all that much based on our domain experience and the experience of our mentors.

Your team looks interesting, but we are not interested in your general idea/market. We’ve all had our own good and bad experiences and this affects the types of ideas and markets we’re interested in exploring.

Lastly:

Other stuff was even more interesting. Even if we like your team and your idea, it’s possible that we just like other stuff more.

It’s important to realize that non-selection is not really rejection. It’s just non-selection. We can only take 10 teams and that means we will miss out on some great ones. If you look at this list of reasons you’ll realize that there is no crystal ball. Much of this is purely subjective and there are many factors at play. Further, many of our decisions are based upon limited information in a highly compressed time-frame. If you’ve applied and receive notification of non-selection, we sincerely hope that you will go on to do great things - doing so will not surprise us one bit. Know that many founders don’t make it into a program the first time.

We hope you will keep in touch with your progress and we wish you the best!

Guest Post from Robert Kapela, a Lead Mentor at the Kinect Accelerator

2012-06-14T19:37:00Z

During the last two months I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring some of the teams in the Microsoft Kinect Accelerator program. It has been an exciting period and the teams are now racing to refine their business models and presentations in time for Demo Day on June 28^th in Seattle.

What has impressed me the most about the program is the tremendous amount of ground breaking innovation. The technology is being pushed to its limits by teams like; Styku, which is using the Kinect to scan your body in order to solve the elusive size and fit problem and UBI Interactive, offing a more interactive future by turning any surface into a touch display (like the floating screens in the movie Minority Reports) and Manctl, which is providing a solution to scan a room and convert it to a 3D rendering!

As amazing as the technology is, equally important has been the support of Microsoft in providing advice and introductions to high level contacts at corporations that would be virtually impossible to achieve otherwise. I think the combination of individual and corporate mentoring structured around accelerator programs will become more wide spread and I applaud Microsoft for its early efforts!

Robert Kapela, a Lead Mentor at the Kinect Accelerator

Kinect Accelerator, Phase 1: MentorStars help the companies and themselves

2012-05-16T16:50:00Z

We are one-third of the way through the Kinect Accelerator. Through the first month of working with a great group of mentors, many companies have adjusted their business and technical strategies to line up with the best opportunities. Kinect development is challenging, so although it’s okay to fail fast and learn from it, it’s even better to get pretty close on the first try.

Consistent with the TechStars’ mentor-driven approach, the network of mentors supporting the Kinect Accelerator is an essential component of the program. The 11 Kinect Accelerator teams have been meeting daily with mentors. Some of the external advisors include Adam Doppelt from Co-Founder UrbanSpoon, David Cohen, CEO of TechStars (of course), Paul Goodrich from Madrona Venture Group, Andy Sack, Executive Director of TechStars Seattle, Kwindla Hultman Kramer, CEO of Oblong Industries (the guys who designed those cool “Minority Report” scenarios) and the ever-present and engaged serial entrepreneur, Robert Kapela. One mentor mentioned seeing this kind of innovation was like getting an adrenaline shot in the brain (that’s a good thing).

From the Microsoft side, I have been truly impressed by how my peers have engaged. Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President of Strategic and Emerging Business Development at Microsoft reflected on his own startup experiences and gave a compelling presentation that I’ll summarize as:

Know your customer, deeply.
Know yourself, as an entrepreneur, your strengths and especially your weaknesses.
Know your team, and get your team ready for some tough but rewarding work.

Many others across Microsoft have been visible on a weekly, even daily basis. From leading game developers such as Jeff Matsushita and Rick Martinez, both Executive Producers at Microsoft Studios, Craig Eisler, General Manager for Kinect for Windows, Dennis Schmuland, Chief Healthcare Strategy Officer, many from the Kinect for Windows team such as Emma Grant, Steve Seow for Azure, as well as Sam Rosenbalm, Director for BizSpark and Microsoft Accelerator programs. The Microsoft teams have been very engaged and responsive, helping connect Accelerator companies to customer prospects, transferring industry knowledge, providing best practices on Kinect development, responding to development tool issues and more.

Honestly, this first Microsoft Accelerator has been a bit of an experiment. But the quality of the program has been consistent with the core TechStars programs. The mentor-intensive approach has driven the teams to mature quickly, refine their product vision, comprehend technical barriers and opportunities and allowed these 11 companies to do more, faster. Microsoft teams, even outside of the Kinect arena have been engaged. For example, we needed more PCs for the Accelerator teams for dev and test, the ask went out through multiple channels and loaner equipment started flowing in: monitors, workstations, and keyboards.

Mentors, as they get engaged, learn as much from the companies as the companies are learning from them.

Apply Now: Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure Startups

2012-04-17T16:14:00Z

By Sam Rosenbalm

April 17, 2012

Entrepreneurs and startup founders understand the opportunity that cloud services can bring to their business. At Microsoft, we see an important role for our Windows Azure Cloud services to play as companies look to gain market traction and grow their businesses.

Through our BizSpark program, we work with thousands of startups around the world and we get questions about how to gain early stage funding, access to technical help and assistance to get products to market. We have been working to create more opportunities for young companies and the new Microsoft Accelerator series powered by TechStars addresses many of these needs.

We recently announced the finalists in the Microsoft Accelerator for Kinect, powered by TechStars. Combining Microsoft’s technology and support with their powerful mentor driven methodology, it has been a huge success. We received applications from more than 500 companies from around the world vying for the eleven open spots in the program.

Given the enthusiasm from the startup community and the desire from entrepreneurs looking for a rich supportive environment to get their ideas off the ground, Microsoft has is extending this opportunity by creating the Microsoft Accelerator series. Today, we are pleased to announce the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, leveraging Microsoft's open and flexible cloud platform.

Startups are already building exciting products and services on Windows Azure, take Soluto for instance, it helps you get the most out of your PC , or Skweal , an impressive "one man startup" that connects mobile, cloud, and web to improve customer relations, it is easy to see that there is a huge opportunity on the platform.

The Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure for will host ten companies for a three month deep emersion program focused on building businesses that take advantage of the cloud. Through this program, Microsoft and TechStars will help entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators to bring to life a wide range of business ideas that leverage the limitless possibilities enabled by Windows Azure.

The program will run from late August through November in the heart of Seattle, Washington, an emerging hotbed for tech innovation. Startups accepted into the program will receive an investment of $20,000 (USD) managed by TechStars, mentorship from top entrepreneurs, investors, and Microsoft executives, all the resources of Microsoft BizSpark and $60,000 in Windows Azure credit through the Microsoft BizSpark Plus Program. Combined with office space, tech training and support, and a Demo Day presentation to angel investors, VCs, media, and industry elites at the culmination of the program, it is an offer hard to resist.

We are accepting applications for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure through July 13, 2012. Check out the website to learn more and apply.

Guest post from GestSure Technologies

2012-04-14T00:46:00Z

GestSure Technologies is happy to announce that we’ve been chosen as one of 11 companies to be invited to Seattle as part of Microsoft’s Kinect Accelerator, powered by TechStars.

Having just arrived on the West Coast, we’re already thrilled to be working with Dave Malcolm and his team. The most exciting part so far is, hands down, meeting and building relationships with the other winners. Everyone is abuzz with excitement over how the Kinect and depth-sensing cameras in general are going to change the way we interact with the world. This is a really talented crew from all over the world and we can already see some great relationships and collaborations emerging.

Now, we’re used to getting a lot of attention from within the surgical and radiological communities, but with all the media impressions that the Kinect Accelerator has been getting, we’ve been receiving even more inquiries than ever before. That includes a lot of people who, not spending their days in operating rooms and interventional radiology suites, didn’t even realize this problem existed.

The GestSure team will be working out of Seattle for the next few months but, as usual, we’ll be busy developing and working with hospitals across the U.S. and Canada. If you happen to be in Seattle and are interested in how gestural interfaces are going to change the way surgeons work, drop us a line–we’re always up for talking about the future of ORs over coffee or a run.

Welcome to Move-In day at the Kinect Accelerator

2012-04-02T16:00:00Z

Remember move-in day back in college? You wait in ten different lines, get all kinds of cards, passes, sign papers, see your room listed in some location you have never been before, and then you dash into your dorm room to get the bed by the window. That's what it's like here today at the Kinect Accelerator. Since we are running the program at a Microsoft building in Seattle, every founder needs a building card-key. Once in hand, all the founders will be official card carrying members of the inaugural 2012 Kinect Accelerator class. That means “Road Trip” to Microsoft's main campus in Redmond using the handy Microsoft “Connector” shuttle (which we are temporarily renaming the “Kinector” for this ride). Shh, we are also making a surprise stop at the “Employee Only” part of the Microsoft Company Store. Membership in this exclusive club has its benefits!

In addition, teams are finding their spots (pictures coming later), which mostly consist of 4 desktops in a cube with low walls facing each other. All of the teams will be learning together in the same space (and since the hours are long, you can read that as living together), and just like dorm rooms back in those college days, everybody is jockeying for the best space. Waiting for them are Xbox software development kits, Kinect for Windows sensors, and BizSpark membership to equip the teams with any and all Microsoft software they'll need as they embark on this period of technical training and business guidance. Oh, and a little goody bag filled with fun SWAG to boot.

On the main http://KinectAccelerator.com site you can see a quick snapshot of each of the companies. The details are light on each company right now because we are just getting started. During the first two weeks, the companies will meet dozens of mentors and begin to foster relationships with a few that mesh with their teams. The interaction between the teams and these mentors will refine the focus of the companies, their business concepts and development skills. Due to this process, the product and focus of these companies coming in, and what comes out after 90 days may be very different. So we won't be saying much about the companies right now, but stay tuned.

One exciting aspect is that we have companies here from all around the world: France, Canada, Argentina, Germany, Boston, LA, New York, Seattle and Hadley, Massachusetts. It's going to be quite a cultural mix, which will certainly enhance the creativity of the teams. Companies from over 63 countries applied to the Kinect Accelerator, demonstrating that NUI innovation has no boundaries.

We have two big screen TVs with Xboxes and Kinect, and every Kinect title produced to date. This will surely lead to some late night ”training” this week. One of the best ways to get in the groove of creating compelling Kinect apps, whether they are games or not, is to fire up an Xbox and start playing the games. Even pragmatic healthcare and retail solutions have a game feel to them when you are dealing with a gesture-based UI. This is more fun than any dorm I remember.

Welcome to the 11 Kinect Accelerator teams. Let's get moved in and get busy!

Getting Into the Kinect Accelerator - Why Not Us?

2012-03-05T22:26:00Z

Letting hundreds of companies know that they didn’t make the cut is never fun. It’s tough telling entrepreneurs “no”, especially so many interesting ones all at once. For all practical purposes, these companies may perceive that they have been “rejected” by the Kinect Acelerator.

Many of you may want specific feedback on why your application was not selected, and we try to give some feedback when asked. However, it’s not practical for us to get into a prolonged discussion with each company.

Because of this, we wanted to shed some light on the common reasons that we didn’t select certain applications as finalists.

Your idea:

We didn’t clearly see how your team would integrate the Kinect. One of the strengths of this program is all of the access to technical specialists working on the Kinect. We selected teams we felt would especially benefit from that access.

We aren’t the right group of people to help your company. Sometimes we receive applications for ideas that we honestly don’t think we can help with all that much based on our domain experience and the experience of our mentors.

The team looks interesting, but we are not interested in your general idea/market. We’ve all had our own good and bad experiences, and this affects the types of ideas and markets we’re interested in exploring.

Your Team:

You didn’t commit to the program. This program is a full-time mentor intensive program designed to be done in person. We didn’t take teams where:

1) Key founders or developers were not able to attend the program full-time in Seattle.

3) Team members were on the fence about whether this program was for them.

We plan to commit 100% to helping you succeed. We only took teams that we felt were 100% committed and enthusiastic as well.

We emailed and/or called you and you didn’t respond. 100% follow-up is an important trait for an entrepreneur. For us, it’s a simple litmus test.

The application was sparse or incomplete. This one is pretty self explanatory. We can’t evaluate you if you don’t provide us enough information.

We didn’t think the team had the right ingredients. There’s no exact formula for what we’re looking for, but if something jumps out at us as an obvious issue in the team, then we’ll likely pass.

Lack of demonstrated talent or execution ability. This one is tricky, but we do look for signs of talent and ability to execute. If your company is purely idea stage, and you have not supplied any compelling history of execution, we’re likely to pass. We realize that this could simply be bad timing and that your team just hasn’t gotten up and running yet.

We emailed you, spoke to you, or met you and it just didn’t feel “right” to us. This is obviously totally subjective, but we tend to trust our gut after our interactions with you.

We selected a different team working on the same idea. Some of the same ideas were submitted by multiple teams and although we may have felt more than one team was positioned for success, we didn’t feel it was fair to choose more than one competitor for the program. We want all the teams in the program to support each other, not compete against each other.

Lastly:

Other stuff was even more interesting. Even if we like your team and your idea, it’s possible that we just like other stuff more.

It’s important to realize that non-selection is not really rejection. It’s just non-selection. We can only take 10 teams, and that means we will miss out on some great ones. If you look at this list of reasons, you should start to realize that there is no crystal ball. Much of this is purely subjective. Further, many of our decisions are based upon limited information in a highly compressed time-frame. If you’ve applied and receive notification of non-selection, we sincerely hope that you will go on to do great things. It will not surprise us one bit. Know that many founders don’t make it into a program the first time.

We hope you will keep in touch with your progress, and we wish you the best!

New Kinect Applications Demonstrated at Microsoft’s Tech Forum

2012-03-05T19:26:00Z

Startups and big companies around the world are building some pretty amazing applications on the Kinect – especially with the launch of Kinect for Windows.

Recently, Microsoft’s chief strategy officer, Craig Mundie, held Tech Forum, a gathering for tech journalists who want to see up-and-coming Microsoft technologies and how they are being used.

Dylan Tweney, Editor of VentureBeat wrote an in-depth article “You will soon be using a Kinect, even if you don’t have an Xbox” with multiple examples of great applications of the Kinect we thought you would want to see:

Kinect sensors weren’t the day’s primary theme, but it was fascinating to see how many contexts in which the flat, three-eyed black bar kept popping up.

Kinect sensors are built into the gestural controls in the futuristic demonstration home on Microsoft’s campus. In the living room and entertainment room, large-screen TVs use Xbox-like gestural and voice-command interfaces to let you select music and videos as well as control your home environment.

Whole Foods, together with development house Chaotic Minds, showed off a robotic shopping cart that uses a Kinect sensor (mounted above the cart’s handlebars) to sense where you are so it can roll along the aisles following you. The Kinect could also be used to identify items you place in the cart, although for the demo we saw, the system used RFID instead.

Nissan is planning a Kinect-powered interactive app to show off its new 2013 Pathfinder at the upcoming New York Auto Show, and maybe in dealer showrooms after that. Development company Identity Mind is building the app, which lets you view the Pathfinder from different angles by moving your body; a Kinect sensor identifies where your body is and adjusts the view accordingly.

You can see many more applications, plus great pictures and videos on VentureBeat.

The Kinect Accelerator is hitting the road – Final Schedule Released

2012-01-26T22:05:00Z

We have been overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of ideas – hundreds of applicants ready to take their project and turn it into a successful business with the help of the Kinect Accelerator .

The recent announcement that the Kinect for Windows hardware and accompanying software will be released February 1 ^st , 2012 has spiked even more interest from startups. As a result, we are extending the final Kinect Accelerator deadline to February 8 ^th , 2012 to give you a chance to purchase the new Kinect for Windows sensor and download the version 1 SDK.

For those of you who have met the early deadline of January 25th, please update your applications with any progress by February 8 ^th , and for those of you who have not yet applied, get on it!

Come meet us and win a new Kinect for Windows sensor

We are also excited to announce that we are traveling around the U.S. to meet with applicants and potential applicants to talk about the Kinect Accelerator and show off the new Kinect for Windows.

We’ll be visiting:

San Francisco – February 1 ^st

New York – February 2 ^nd

Boston – February 3 ^rd

Seattle – February 6 ^th

Attendees at these events can ask questions about the Kinect Accelerator and meet with the Managing Director, Dave Malcolm. Applicants should submit their application now so we can review them before we meet you. You can also ask questions about Kinect for Windows, and we will raffle off two new Kinect for Windows devices at each event!

In just a few weeks we will decide on which teams will make the finals for the Kinect Accelerator.

Just ten teams will participate in this prestigious program in Seattle from April 2nd to June 28th, 2012.

You can see the full Kinect Accelerator schedule at KinectAccelerator.com .

Every company selected to participate in the Kinect Accelerator will receive:

A $20,000 investment
An Xbox development kit
A Kinect for Windows sensor plus the accompanying SDK
Office space in Seattle
Technical training and support from BizSpark
World-class mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, investors and Microsoft executives
The Opportunity to present at Investor Demo Day in front of angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft Executives and the media

We’ve been impressed by the diversity of applications, in industries including healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, advertising, and entertainment. We hope to meet you during our tour and see what you’ve developed!