The march of mod progress has steadily delivered many cool things during the Kinect's short lifespan to date. We can add another breakthrough: The ability to recognize hand-drawn buttons.
This hack, by Garratt Gallagher, won Willow Garage's recent open-source Robot Operating System contest. Here he draws four buttons with a piece of paper and a sharpie and uses them to control a basic sound board.
Again, like most of what we've seen so far, the hack taps into Kinect's native but unrealized capabilities. I could see this particular feature being useful for an edutainment game - the only problem would come in how you position Kinect to read the drawing, as sitting on your TV console facing you probably wouldn't be optimal. Still, it's an intriguing proof of concept.
Video: Kinect Hack Recognizes Buttons Drawn With Ink and Paper [Popular Science]