At CES Microsoft has announced Kinect for Windows will be arriving on February 1st with a retail price of $249. The reason why Kinect for Xbox is about $99-$149 is because it is subsidized by Kinect games, Xbox Live subscriptions, etc. Kinect for Windows will be available on February 1st, 2012 across 12 countries (U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, and the U.K.). The price includes a one-year warranty.

The research arm of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is working on a new project that will help doctors navigate around the medical imagery generated from routine CT scans. “As medical imaging has advanced, so many images are produced that there is a kind of information overload. The workload has grown a lot,” stated Assistant Professor of Radiology at the University of Chicago Medical Center Kenji Suzuki.

Guinness World Records has confirmed that the Microsoft Kinect controller is the fastest-selling consumer electronics device. The controller sold an average of 133,333 devices per day. Microsoft hit 8 million sales in the first 60 days of sale between November 4, 2010-January 3, 2011. The sales figures of the Kinect controller surpass the iPhone and iPad. The record will be included in the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition: http://gamers.guinnessworldrecords.com.

“Emotion Capture” – Directing Milo from John Dower on Vimeo.

John Dower worked on an Xbox 360 Kinect project called “Milo & Kate.” Milo & Kate was developed by Lionhead Studios and creative director Peter Molyneux. Dower worked on creating a 3D character and directed motion capture and animation. Milo is a voice-and-motion game from Lionhead Studios that was never released. Milo uses the same technology as James Cameron’s Avatar movie. [Microsoft-News]

Echo Lake – Young Silence from Dan Nixon on Vimeo.

Dom Jones and Dan Nixon used a Microsoft Kinect to make a music video for their band Echo Lake. The name of the song is “Young Silence.” I’ve seen the Kinect hacked to work in so many different ways, but this is the first music video I have seen created with the motion-sensing controller. Check out the video above. [Engadget]

Microsoft Corporation recently announced their second quarter earnings. They posted a $6.63 billion profit on revenues of $19.95 billion. This is very comparable to their earnings from last year. The company sold about 300 million licenses of Windows 7 and they saw a strong increase in their entertainment division.

According to a slide that was released a little bit before the Microsoft earnings announcement, there was some impressive growth in the Entertainment and Devices division. This division generated about $3.7 billion this quarter, compared to $2.4 billion last year. About 8 million Kinect controllers were sold in the first two months of launch. Xbox Live memberships increased 30% and Xbox 360 console sales increased 21%. “We are enthusiastic about the consumer response to our holiday lineup of products, including the launch of Kinect. The 8 million units of Kinect sensors sold in just 60 days far exceeded our expectations. The pace of business spending, combined with strong consumer demand, led to another quarter of operating margin expansion and solid earnings per share growth,” stated Microsoft CFO Peter Klein.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has hired Johnny Chung Lee. Lee was is famous for hacking the Wii and for being a developer in Kinect. Now Lee will be the “Rapid Evaluator” at Google. Lee said that he spent about three years working on human tracking algorithms for the Kinect. Lee had worked at Microsoft’s Applied Sciences group. He has a PhD in Human-Computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon.