The Microsoft Kinect is one of the hottest gaming peripherals we've seen in years, and that's because it can do a lot more than control games.

Within weeks after the Kinect hit stores, scientists, programmers and researchers hacked away at the device. It turns out that the Kinect, which consists of cameras and an infrared-light sensor to track and follow your body movement, has applications for medical purposes, language learning and even partying outdoors. Those applications are enabled by a relatively open programming interface which lets people quickly hack together their own custom software to interface with the Kinect hardware.

None of these hacks are officially supported by Microsoft, but they demonstrate the amazing potential of turning the human body into an interface controller. Who'da thunk a gaming gadget would be so powerful?

What follows are some examples of the coolest Kinect hacks we've seen, pulled from the Kinect Hacks blog.