The Californian branch of Internet company Yandex has developed a prototype of a software application that allows users to read news from social networks on their TVs and respond to them using gestures, the company announced Wednesday.
Tatyana Komarova, a Yandex spokeswoman, said the experiment was a joint effort by Yandex Labs and Carnegie Mellon University, located in the Silicon Valley, Vedomosti reported.
Yandex Lab employees and university faculty and students aimed to develop a new type of personalized and interactive communication system to be used with conventional television.
Komarova said Yandex might use the new application in its products without going into specific plans.
The application is based on the Mac OS X platform, while Microsoft Kinect is used for gesture recognition.
It displays news from several social networks on the screen, and users can operate their accounts by gesturing.
In the screensaver mode, the application can show pictures and videos, play music or display messages and news from other users.
According to Yandex, Carnegie Mellon University students have collected and recorded 1,500 different gestures, which were used for tuning up the automated learning system.
Yandex Lab was responsible for developing conceptual solutions, including the application's main interface as well as command gestures, Yandex said.
Komarova said that the application is only an experimental product that exists only as a prototype and is not available to consumers.
In January, Yandex Labs released the Wonder mobile search application for social networks.
However, Facebook blocked Wonder from being used with its system, citing the company's regulations concerning the protection of users' personal information.
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