After searching a lot to quickly get range and intensity data I thought of documenting the best way so that other people save their precious time!
I ended up using Mobile Robotics Programming Toolkit(MRPT). Please goto this page for installation instructions: http://www.mrpt.org/Kinect_and_MRPT
I used the option of "installation from the repositories" instead of compiling from source. Its fast and easy this way.
Once that is done,
Download the code from here: Code
Download the cmake file from here: CMakeFile
Commands:
cmake .
make
sudo ./kinect_view