NYC

When Logitech and Microsoft released a bunch of HD webcams last year, Skype refused to certify them for use with its HD video calling service. (That's not to say these webcams won't work with Skype HD -- it's that Skype won't guarantee that they'll work well.) And why this resounding slap in the face? Because Skype will only certify HD webcams that come with onboard video processing and therefore run even on tardy old machines. And that is precisely why Creative has followed the lead of other manufacturers likeFaceVsion and Freetalk in including a built-in H.264 encoder with its latest offering, maintaining judder-free video and a chill-axed CPU. The webcam also has more flexible autofocus and a "quad mic" system, which together should allow users to sit as far as 10 feet away and still be seen and heard clearly. The only problem? A $150 price tag that's significantly more than the competition and only slightly easier to face than your cousin's ac...

No matter how hard Skype and others try to convince us otherwise, we still do most of our web communications via text or, if entirely unavoidable, by voice. Maybe we're luddites or maybe video calling has yet to prove its value. Hoping to reverse such archaic views, researchers at the MIT Media Lab have harnessed a Kinect's powers of depth and human perception to provide some newfangled videoconferencing functionality. First up, you can blur out everything on screen but the speaker to keep focus where it needs to be. Then, if you want to get fancier, you can freeze a frame of yourself in the still-moving video feed for when you need to do something off-camera, and to finish things off, you can even drop some 3D-aware augmented reality on your viewers. It's all a little unrefined at the moment, but the ideas are there and well worth seeing. Jump past the break to do just that. Kinected Conference (MIT Media Lab)