Microsoft announces Windows-specific Kinect for 2012 release

While hackers have been having their way with the Kinect on the PC for a long, long time, Microsoft itself has only recently embraced this sort of behavior. First it was with an official SDK and then, soon after, a follow-up letting things go commercial. We've been eagerly awaiting Office integration -- imagine lazily waving away every boring PPT that lands in your inbox -- but also struggling to figure out just how such a device would fit on our cluttered desks. Microsoft is now promising a PC-specific version to release sometime in 2012, able to focus on objects as close as 50cm from the lens -- quite an improvement given our current Kinect seems unhappy if we're standing anywhere within five feet. The hardware is also said to be "optimized" for desktop use and the USB cable shortened, but we're still in the dark about how exactly it will look. Might we suggest Keepon integration?