I keep meaning to write about RedCritter. The innovators at this Dallas-based company are really thinking out of the box. I'm not sure if the result is awesome or awful, but it certainly has captured my attention.

RedCritter is the publisher of Tracker, a project-management tool for Agile development. It's a lightweight tool, but that's OK – Agile is a lightweight approach to development. In fact, most teams manage their Scrum and Kanban processes without recourse to a project-management tool. Using a tool seems...un-Agile, somehow.

But Tracker is well-suited to Agile methods. The folks at RedCritter built the product especially to support Agile development (though they believe Tracker is suited to project-management tasks in fields besides software development as well). And they added a twist: the software treats development like a game.

Tracker allows members of development teams to earn points and badges by fulfilling project goals. The badges – the system allows program managers to define as many as 50 of them – can be displayed on developers' profile pages, much like the badges gamers earn by acquiring skills in computer games like World of Warcraft. Points can be accumulated and traded for incentives in a company rewards store. A live feed, sort of like an in-house Twitter, lets developers track each other's progress toward incentives and gives managers a view into the development process.

The idea is that treating development like a game makes the whole project more fun. Letting developers compete for badges and points isn't just fun, it's motivating. At least, that's what RedCritter's customers have found.

RedCritter makes Tracker available on a 30-day free trial basis. So why not give it a try? It sounds like it could make development more fun. And isn't that what everyone wants?

Web recommendation: You have probably heard that Google is killing off its Code Search feature. Stepping into the void is search[code], an innovative site run by hacker Ben Boynter in Australia. According to Boynter, the site is “an attempt to put all programming documentation in one searchable place.” That's a big job for one guy, but it's pretty impressive what Boynter has done so far. You can see for yourself by clicking here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. Today's lunch was spaghetti with an excellent homemade bolognese sauce.

Microsoft's innovative Kinect game controller was introduced about a year ago. The device, an add-on to the Xbox 360 game console, lets users play games with gestures and spoken commands. The Kinect sold eight million units in its first two months on the market, and no less an authority than the Guiness Book of World Records named it the world's “fastest selling consumer electronics device” (take that, iPad) and the world's “fastest selling gaming peripheral.”

Microsoft made a .NET-based software development kit for the Kinect available in June 2011, but the license agreement allows the development of only “noncommercial” apps. A fully commercial SDK has been provided to selected companies, and Microsoft has promised that it will be generally available in “early 2012.” Also slated for early 2012 release is new Kinect hardware, intended to connect with a PC instead of a game console.

Kinect has become a major part of Microsoft's self-image, and the company would like to see the device integrated into more and more PC-based applications.

To further that vision, Microsoft has announced Kinect Accelerator, an incubator program under which 10 individuals or companies will receive funding, office space, mentorship, and other support for turning their Kinect-based applications into reality. “Every company participating in the Kinect Accelerator will receive an investment of $20,000, an Xbox development kit, the Windows Kinect SDK, office space, all the resources of BizSpark, technical training and support, and mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and Microsoft executives intensely focused on making their business a success,” Microsoft says. “At the end of the program, each company will have an opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives, media, and industry influentials.”

The downside? Applicants must be prepared to relocate to Seattle for the duration of the program. And six percent of your project equity will belong to Kinect Accelerator, as a sort of tax.

It's easy to imagine how Kinect-style UIs could improve applications in health care, education, manufacturing, and general business. Interested? Sign up here.

Web recommendation: Stanford University is offering a free online course in cryptography to interested programmers. The course, taught by Stanford Applied Cryptography Group head Dan Boneh, starts in January. It's based on a series of videos (about two hours per week), assignments, and tests. Cryptography isn't just a fascinating discipline, it's also an increasingly important one – you can do your career a lot of good by specializing in security technologies. The course info page is here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. The next book on his reading list is Dan Simmons's Drood.

Photo from XTR3D.com

I wrote a story last month, in the February issue of SD Times, about Total Immersion’s Augmented Reality software that allows end-users to experience simulations of real events or items – from trying on fashion accessories to “trying-on” a new couch in their living room – with their cell phone. The concept also extended to PC gaming, baseball cards and, of course, video games.

Qualcomm, at Mobile World Conference, demonstrated their AR SDK and some games for Android-based cell phones. The technology is not only being used for games and retail, but it is also being considered for education, particularly in the medical field.

Immersion also demonstrated their technology for mobile devices, Haptics, – which literally "touches" you back, as David Rubinstein wrote in his blog post on the subject – furthr enhancing the abilities of mobile devices, including Tablets.

XTR3D also demonstrated their technology at Mobile World Conference. The technology allows end-users to perform actions on their phone or tablet device (and eventually Web TVs and PCs, according to CEO Dor Givon) with motions, such as an open hand to answer a call and a closed hand to hang-up. These motions can also be applied to applications that require the user to “scroll” through, like a newspaper or Web app, and also to work virtually hands-free while in a car or otherwise occupied.

This XTR3D technology works with devices on the market – any device that has a front facing camera can utilize their SDK and it is meant to be cross platform, according to Givon.

The camera captures the motions of the end-user and tracks the person’s movements in front of the device, then it analyzes what the motions mean – based on gestures assigned to different device processes – and then the device performs the desired action.

This technology is interesting, mainly because of how it is displayed in their promotional videos – the possibilities are truly endless. You can turn on your phone, read a newspaper, answer the phone, change your GPS direction and do a hundred other things with the flick of your hand.

How will this change how we interact with our devices? Do you think the devices will become even more installed in our daily activities? Will more laws (such as the do not text and drive, driving with a hands free device) need to be passed to include these capabilities? Share your thoughts with us.

As you may or may not know, I am a very avid video gamer, with a few titles under my now moldering and ancient belt. I don't get to write about games as much as I used to, but yesterday I caught a bit of news I think I can actually write about here. It's a posting from the team behind SCUMMVM. First, allow me to explain SCUMMVM.

Back in the 1980s and 1990's there was a genre of game known as "adventure." The genre is long dead today, but Sierra and LucasArts made a great many adventure games along similar veins, and the legendary Tim Schafer became super-non-famous amongst geeks for his hysterical writing in such adventure games as "The Secret of Monkey Island," "Maniac Mansion" and "The Day of the Tentacle."

The trouble is that most of these high-quality games were written for long-dead platforms, like DOS and Mac OS 7. To play them today, you need the original game, plus a copy of the open-source, GPL emulator for the game engine, SCUMMVM. SCUMMVM makes old LucasArts games playable again. It also works on a lot of non-Lucas games, and that is where the trouble began.

It would seem that a European developer working with the shambling mess of a company now known (but with absolutely no relationship to the original) as Atari. Mistic Software is the developer behind the Wii versions of some classic kids games built on the adventure game principles. They were also, evidently, built on the SCUMMVM, unbeknownst to Atari. After a few months of wrangling, and some harsh letters, the FSF and the SCUMMVM team announced yesterday that the Mistic team, which had initially called shenanigans when accused of violating the GPL, paid the FSF's legal fees and came into compliance.

This is the first time I've ever heard of a video-game company being accused of violating the GPL. It's also one of the few times the GPL has come close to being tested in Europe. All around, an interesting case that ended the way most FSF cases do: with an out-of-court settlement and a quietly released blog posting about its conclusion.

Every year, GDC is the highlight of the conference season for me. It's absolutely the most fun event I have to attend. It's not just the yearly conference game, though those are always terrific (Thanks Game Lab). It's the flood of interesting talks and new ideas that keeps me latched on at the rim, looking inward jealously. As my day job requires me to write about enterprise software development, it's sometimes tough to find reasons to stay at the show for more than a day.

But there are crossovers. Software design on the broad scale is similar in both worlds, and it's only becoming moreso. Monday, I popped in for the Serious Games Summit. This event concentrates on the small but growing market for corporate training in the form of video games. Alcoa built such a game to train its forklift drivers. Other serious games have tackled firefighting, urban water distribution and, of all things, gerrymandering.

Another area where things overlap is in the test and build distribution/management worlds. The game folk have very difficult restraints on their debug and test worlds. They're bound to Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony for the actual debug consoles. Yeah, you read that right, debug consoles. They can't simply take last night's build, attach a debugger and go to town on their desktops. Every debug console has a price tag attached. A very high one.

This is why big game companies basically contract out to smaller design studios, who then send builds in to a big pool of testers on the corporate side. This is usually tied to a milestone, with which ya'll are familiar. In the enterprise world, those are just called deadlines. Or milestones. Or stories. Or requirements fulfillment.

One interesting disparity between the gaming world and the business world is the lack of open source in games. No one uses Eclipse to build games. No one works on a free engine, save for some professional cranks. I'm looking at you Dustin! There are open-source games, of course, such as the Battle for Westnoth (version 1.6 just dropped!), and a whole slew of older games that have been set loose. There-in will the open source future of games lie: old game engines given freely to the public. Kinda like the hotrodders of the 50's.

As a result, Perforce and DevTrack are quite popular here. Not that there's anything wrong with those products, but few folks here outside of the smallest of dev houses use Bugzilla.

I should revise my prior statement to say that some developers do use Eclipse. The open-source movement has been slow to take off in the video game world thanks to tightly controlled debug and development environments.

One very humorous result of all these shenanigans is that all game developers use Visual Studio, even those working on Sony Playstation games.

There are other things in the game world that just don't make sense, when you look at them from a development standpoint. Nintendo, for example, has the world's most popular gaming console right now. We've all seen the Wii. In fact, it's old news now.

That's probably because Nintendo did absolutely nothing to help third-party developers. It's internally developed games are highly exciting and well designed. But all that code is kept inside. When you develop a Wii game, you start with a blank canvas. Pure white. Not even a controller stack. There is some sample code to show how a controller is accessed and poled, but that's it. Explains why we're all still playing Wii Sports, eh?

Microsoft, on the other hand, performs as you'd expect: They take very good care of their developers. Lots of documentation, lots of support options. Sony has aped this as well, though both companies have become more restrictive of their online distributed content than they have been of their boxed titles.

So, putting on my deep-thinking cap, I'd surmise that open source will slowly creep into games, much more slowly than it has elsewhere. When it finally arrives, there might emerge an open console standard of some sort or other. But don't expect it in the next five years.