Hard to believe, but when the iPhone was first launched it was promoted heavily as um, well, a phone.

That was back in 2007, before the app store exploded and the touch screen experience became the interface aspiration of just about every device manufacturer on the planet.

In other words, even the most beautifully crafted experiences become pervasive in ways that the original designer could only guess at.

I think we're at the same point with X-box Kinect. Today, of course, it's a gaming interface. But that's just the beginning. Give it a couple of years, and motion detection will become the third input paradigm (along with keyboards and touch screens).

Here's a creative Kinect hack that gives an idea of the direction this is heading. Microsoft, by the way, makes no secret that it's happy for people to explore the potential of the Kinect interface. (That first iPhone ad follows afterwards).