Hello,

Starting this week, and every week moving forward, we will bring you news and updates from Leap Motion, plus the best conversations the forums have to offer and answers to popular questions. We’ll also shine a spotlight on upcoming developer events around the world. Stay tuned, and let us know what you think!

Featured News

While you’ve been hard at work creating new apps with the Leap Motion SDK, we’ve been creating a place for everyone with a Leap Motion Controller to discover them: Airspace™. Apps like yours deserve a place like this. Each time a user launches their Leap Motion Controller, this is where they’ll go first. They’ll explore, buy, and download new apps right from their device. It’s a great opportunity for you to showcase and distribute your work directly to the people who can’t wait to experience it.

Because we want our customers to have the best experience with our technology and your apps, we developed a simple review process. You’ll find everything you need to know about Airspace and our review guidelines in the Leap Motion Developer Portal.  We’ve also published full details for the app store, including revenue and distribution terms, and features of the store. Learn more.

SDK 0.7.4 is here

Have you downloaded the new SDK? Version 0.7.4 includes a temporary gesture API with an open source demo, plus updates to the re-calibration utility, Javascript Sample, and Objective C API. Make sure to get the update – and we’d love to hear your feedback.

Big announcement tomorrow

At 8 am EST tomorrow (Feb. 27), we’ll be announcing our shipping date. Keep an eye on the website for details!

Forum Highlights

Beat Bash – a music-based game in the vein of Fruit Ninja and Guitar Hero – won Most Technically Challenging Hack at DevFest 2013. Using the Leap Motion Controller, players can hit blocks generated from musical beats.

Redditors rejoice! LeapGamer.com has created a Greasemonkey script that allows you to surf Reddit using the Leap Motion Controller. Actions include browsing, scrolling, selecting stories, scrolling, opening and closing tabs, and upvote/downvote.

Here’s some great news, hot off the wire – Clear for Mac will soon provide support for the Leap Motion Controller. Realmac, the creators of the popular to-do app, made the announcement earlier today and posted an awesome demo video.

If you had a childhood, you understand the appeal of graFighters – an online fighting game for hand-drawn doodles. Last week, co-creator Dave Chenell showed off the results of his latest project: using the Leap Motion Controller to control one of his puppet ragdoll characters. You can see the video here.

Developer Events

There are no scheduled developer events for next week, but if you’re at SXSW in Austin, TX from March 9–11, come check out the Leap Motion Experience and our featured session. There’s also a special developer meetup at our SXSW space.

Developer Meetup @ SXSW

515 Cesar Chavez (Ironworks BBQ parking lot)
Monday, March 11 from 4 – 6 pm CT
A special get-together for the Leap Motion developer community. If you’re able to attend, please send us a tweet @leapmotiondev with the hashtag #sxsw. Hope to see you there!

The Leap Motion Experience

515 Cesar Chavez (Ironworks BBQ parking lot)
March 9–11 between 10 am – 4 pm CT
We will have a fun, immersive space where members of the public will be invited to try some exciting new apps.

Featured Session: Leap Motion & the Disappearing Interface

Austin Convention Center, Exhibit Hall 5
Saturday, March 9 at 12:30 – 1:30 CT
Leap Motion co-founder and CTO David Holz and co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald will speak with The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Lessin about the future of user interfaces. Learn more.

Are you giving a Leap Motion Controller demo? Looking to meet and collaborate with other developers? Post your event notices in the Events & Meetups forum.

Tips and Tricks

I want to blog about the Leap Motion Controller. How can I avoid violating the SDK agreement?
No problem – as long as you don’t provide the SDK files, you should be fine. When blogging about the Leap Motion Controller, please mention that the final consumer product will be a different experience from your developer unit, to avoid confusion. We’re still working on bringing a fully refined device to market, so product reviews might be rather premature. One more thing – we love it when developers write about their experiences developing with the Leap Motion Controller, so be sure to send us a link!

When will there be support for Linux in the SDK?
We’re working on it, and expect to see it soon. Before creating Linux support, we first had to finish the new testing infrastructure needed to improve our rapid development process across this and future operating systems.

Can the Leap Motion Controller be attached to someone’s chest, or would background detection interfere?
Leap Motion hardware and software are optimized to ignore the background and focus on the hands and tools within its field of view. Under the current software build, the Leap Motion Controller should work fine as long as:

• the sensor isn’t saturated with unexpected infrared light (e.g. direct sunlight)
• there is no clothing or reflective material in view
• your hands are not pointed directly toward or away from the device

Future software builds will be able to better compensate for these factors, so stay tuned and update your Leap Motion software regularly.

How should I clean my device?
Standard eyeglass cleaning kits will work fine for keeping your Leap Motion Controller clean and dust-free.