I jump around in technology like nobody’s business.  One minute you’ll find me illustrating, another minute you’ll find me doing web apps, and the next you’ll find me doing games.  And then I’ll bust out some PHP or Python back-end

Last fall, I started playing around with the Kinect, and I was seriously in awe with how magic it seemed. I started reading up on NUI (natural user interaction) and went further down the rabbit hole.

Months later, I’m still deep in it.  I’m finishing up my Node.js natural motion add-on and demo content just in time for some upcoming speaking engagements.  I’m still not bored.  I’m still not bored, ready to move on – and my Leap Motion is shipping in May.  My Oculus VR headset is shipping in a matter of days.

Also after a few months, I’m still playing the augmented reality game “Ingress”.

These things all have something in common to me…and it’s pretty much the Natural User Interaction angle.  How do we interact with interactive experiences and apps in a natural way – whether with a GPS and physical location, or with your whole body as a controller.

Another important thread here…I’m out of shape.  I sit at the computer too much.  Rather than make the above endeavors work against me, I’m going to make them work for me and not do anything in my spare time that doesn’t encourage moving around a lot.

This means if I develop an interactive experience, it needs to involve moving around.  How much do you debug an app while creating it?  A LOT.  What if testing and debugging necessitated moving around wildly to do this?

So here I am wanting to learn about existing technology that gets you moving and creating my own experiments that get you moving. Not only for the fun of it, but to get myself in shape!  It is time for a non-technical hub for this, and I shall become a “Digital Fitness Trainer” in training.  That hub is Sweatin’ to the Web.  There I will do video reviews of apps, sites, and gadgets that get you moving around.  I’ll also be posting videos of my creative experiments there, like my work with Kinect-like devices.

It will be pretty non-technical there, but I’ll follow up on this blog with the actual technical side of things – how it works, maybe dig into the code if appropriate.

I’m excited!  I have a Fitbit review up now with a depth camera painting demo coming in the next week or so.  Hope you enjoy, but if not…I’ll keep blogging all the technical tidbits here as always