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In one of the more useful uses of the motion control system, reseachers have begun using Kinect as a surgical assistant.

First, German researchers turned the system into a "interactive augmented reality X-ray machine" and now Microsoft Research is in the early stages of using the Kinect sensor as a surgical assistant.

Notes BGR: On May 8th, "a surgeon at Guy's and St. Thomas' hospital in London used a custom Kinect installation to browse through medical images and real-time X-rays while repairing an aneurism in a patient's aorta."

Overall, the new system will allow surgeons to call up images and perform other tasks without needing to actually touch a screen or item, avoiding contamination and saving time.

"Up until now, I'd been calling out across the room to one of our technical assistants, asking them to manipulate the image, rotate one way, rotate the other, pan up, pan down, zoom in, zoom out," adds Tom Carrell, a consultant vascular surgeon at Guy's and St Thomas'. "I thought this was going to be a lot more awkward to start off with, but I was very pleased with the way it went today."

Chicago police website taken offline.

Protests have hit Chicago against the NATO summit. U.S. President Barack Obama will meet leaders of other NATO countries and some non-members. Predictably, the event has sparked protests from groups who oppose NATO actions in the world.

Police have responded to the protests, and are being accused of heavy handed tactics. In retaliation, a group claiming to be Anonymous knocked the Police website offline.

"We are actively engaged in actions against the Chicago Police Department, and encourage anyone to take up the cause and use the AntiS3curityOPS Anonymous banner. For those able, chicagopolice.org should be fired upon as much as possible. We are in your harbor Chicago, and you will not forget us," the group said.

The city of Chicago's website was also inaccessible for a long time.

Microblogging site blocked for several hours.

The ministry of information technology referred to "blasphemous and inflammatory content" on Twitter, while later on saying it had no plans to block the service. It was, however, inaccessible for most Internet users in Pakistan for around eight hours on Sunday.

The issue appeared to be linked to a drawing contest called "Draw Muhammad Day", in which thousands of Internet users sketch up a cartoon of Muhammad to demonstrate that their freedom of speech and expression cannot be limited by religious orders.

The PTA chairman Mohammed Yaseen told the Associated Press originally that Twitter will be blocked after it refused to remove tweets related to the competition. US-based Human Rights Watch called the ban "ill-advised, counterproductive and futile."

The same competition prompted Pakistan to block over 1,000 websites in 2010. The country has also blocked websites it considers "anti-state", and is quick to block pornographic content.

Court orders CEOs to "talk."

Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sun will meet in federal court on Monday for for court-supervised mediation efforts. Both have been directed to make an attempt at mediation in a case that has caught the interest of the entire industry.

Forcing companies to take a stab at mediation is becoming something of a trend in federal courts, with northern California leading the way. A federal judge in Delaware also ordered Apple and HTC Corp to make a real attempt at mediation.

Both Apple and Samsung accuse each other of patent infringement, and both also deny the allegations. Apple took the first shots at Samsung, claiming that its Galaxy brand of smartphones and tablet PCs slavishly clone the design and functionality of the iPhone and iPad devices.

Over the weekend, a Samsung executive said the company wanted to resolve the issues with Apple as soon as possible.

"There is still a big gap in the patent war with Apple but we still have several negotiation options including cross-licensing," Samsung mobile division chief JK Shin, said.

There have been rumors for months that Nintendo will update their Wii U controllers before showing off the final version of the console at this year's E3 event.

This weekend, a QA tester at Traveller's Tales Games posted a picture of the updated controller on Twitter before quickly removing it.

In the updated controller, Nintendo has added actual analog sticks, upgrading from the "nubs" showed off last year and seen on the 3DS handheld.

Secondly, the Start and Select buttons have been moved to the right side of the controller from the center, making them more accessible.

Finally, Nintendo has added the Wii U branding and two small squares, both of which have unknown qualities.

Pics via GamesRadar:

GTA IV mod brings cute Star Wars droid to Liberty City.

A new mod for Grand Theft Auto IV for PC brings R2-D2 to Liberty City, probably violating all kinds of licensing rights in the process. But hey, video game mods are all about fun, and this video posted to YouTube showing R2-D2 inflict his wrath upon the innocent people of Liberty City makes Niko Bellic look tame.

The recently released Raspberry Pi is set to get its very own camera module.

For $35 you get a 3.3-inch wide board with a 700 MHz ARM11, 256MB RAM, HDMI-out, SD card slot, a USB port, ethernet, audio jack and Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU. The first 20,000 units shipped in April, while countless thousands of others wait for theirs to arrive.

The team has begun working on accessories for the mini-PC, and has posted the first pictures taken from the prototype camera module. The camera itself connects to some of the pins on the system board.

In prototype form, the creators of the Pi used a 14MP sensor but the final commercial version will certainly use something smaller to save on costs.

Reads the release:

I was sent this image this morning from Gert (not pictured), Naush (right eye and half-moustache) and JamesH (stripy shirt and chin). It's not a terribly exciting photo ? until you realise that it's the first picture ever taken from the prototype camera add-on board we're developing for release later in the year, which will plug into those CSI pins we expose in the middle of the Raspberry Pi.

Six years after its purchase, Nokia is selling its New York headquarters at a large loss.

In 2006, the company purchased the office building in Harrison, NY and reconstructed it, spending just above $30 million in the process.

This week, the company has sold the building to biotech company Histogenetics for $12 million. Michael Rao, president of New York Commercial Realty Group, who represents the buyer, was very happy with the deal: "It's a great deal for 12 million bucks. The building is gorgeous. It's so spectacular."

Nokia was forced to put the building on the market as part of a global downsizing to save on costs as the company struggles to remain relevant.

The company posted a large $1.7 billion loss in the recent quarter after losing $1.2 billion in the first quarter as its Windows Phone devices just started heading to market.

Google has announced new additions to Gmail this week that will help it better integrate with the Google+ social network.

Full list of the tweaks (via Cnet):

Quick access to contact details
When you search for an e-mail address [in Gmail], the search results will now show you contact details in addition to that person's [Google] profile photo [if he or she has one] and the e-mails sent from and to them. From here, you can start a chat, call their phone and more. Plus, if your contacts have a Google+ profile, this information will stay up to date automatically. You can get to these same results in a variety of ways including from the people widget, contacts, and the chat list search menu.

Improved circle integration and circle search
In addition to adding contact details to search results, we've made some improvements to the [Google+] circles integration announced in December. When you select a circle, you'll now see profile photos of people in that circle at the top right of the page. Plus, when you click on these images you'll be taken directly to search results with contact details.

Apple has announced their plans to spend $900 million to open new retail locations across the world.

In 2012, the company will open 40 new retail shops. The new locations are headed to Germany, Spain, Australia, France, Canada, the UK and the U.S.

In the U.S., the first location will be in the City Creek Center mall in Salt Lake City. Allegedly, the mall offered Apple up to "five years of occupancy, rent-free" as incentive to open up ship there. The second location will be in Bakersfield, California.

9to5 has this to say of the international locations: "Apple has taken up the remainder of a 15-year lease (10 years remaining) for a new store in the Drake Circus Shopping Centre in Plymouth, U.K. Apple also has plans for a new retail location at Market Mall in Calgary, Alberta. It is smaller than the new U.K. store?and many others?at just 5,448 square-feet. However, Apple plans to move to a new space within the mall that will offer a curved 77-foot wide storefront and 7, 287 square-feet within a year of moving in. The store is expected to open sometime this year."

Digitimes has reported this week that Amazon is preparing a 10-inch Kindle Fire tablet for release in the Q3 this year.

On the other end, the site has also been reporting that Apple is looking to create a smaller iPad, one that will compete with the current generation Kindle Fire in the 7-inch market.

Amazon has never released an official count on how many Kindle Fire units have been sold, but the number is expected to be over 6 million. Research firms have pegged the Kindle Fire at having 54 percent market share of all Android tablets, even though it only has a 10 percent share of the overall tablet market, well behind the market leading iPad.

Making the 10-inch rumored Fire most notable is the rumored price. Because Amazon does not care to make the money on the hardware itself and instead makes it all back on the apps, music, movie end, the tablet will likely sell for $300, well below the base price of the iPad at $500.

GameStop is officially in the mobile business.

Dubbed GameStop Mobile, the new service is a mobile virtual network operator based on AT&T's spectrum and network.

For $55 a month, GameStop sells its own SIM cards and service that run on AT&T's network with unlimited voice and tiered data. For $20 you can get even more limited data and voice calls as part of a "pay-as-you-go" service.

The company has seen its share of struggles in the past years, as profits and revenues disappear. With e-tailers offering better prices and with gamers finally turning wise to GameStop's rip off for used game trade-ins, the company has had its issues remaining profitable.

For the time being, the move could lead to the retailer selling unlocked smartphones, as well, through a trade-in program similar to what it does with console hardware and used games.

In one of the stranger cross promotions we've seen this year, the Chili's restaurant chain is offering free Android phones.

To promote their new app, the company is offering a free Android smartphone (it is unclear which one) if you buy $25 worth of food through the Chili's website.

The device will come with a two-year contract, so it isn't necessarily completely "free" but it could be an okay deal for someone looking for a new phone.

Read the full promotion description here: Chili's Free Android Smartphone

Two months ago, Sony promised to update their dual-screen Tablet P to Android 4.0 and the company has finally delivered.

The Tablet P will get the upgrade on May 24th.

Although Sony made the press release in Japanese, it is expected to be a global rollout.

Running on Android 3.2, the device has dual 5.5-inch displays with 1024x480 resolution each, a 1GHz Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, dual cameras 0.3/5MP and just 4GB internal storage. The tablet does have 4G HSPA+ capability, as well.

If you do not care for Sony's version of 4.0, you can root the device using these instructions: Sony Tablet P already rooted

Facebook has purchased the social gifting app "Karma."

The move comes on the heels of the social networking behemoth purchasing Instagram and Lightbox, looking to expand their social footprint on mobiles.

Karma does not do all too much except let users connect to the network via the app and send others gifts.

Reads the press release:

We founded Karma with the goal of adding the sentiment and meaning back into gift giving. That's what Karma is all about. That's what the Karma team set out to achieve.

Over the last year, we've built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up. We've been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook's social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care. The phenomenal response and feedback we've heard from customers has more than exceeded our expectations. And we're just getting started - today we take social gifting to the next level.

We're thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook. The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook's platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say... only good things will follow.