Google Glass is still around and just got its first update in nearly three years
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Our pilot study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26992465
But yeah, wouldn't hurt for the guy/gal to add some easy contact details.
Sheesh, academics eh.
Whats wrong with that. Thats all you need.
Mixed reality in surgical environments https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053273
One of the fun things we found was that less experienced doctors were more likely to be happy to use Glass. Why? We're pretty sure this was actual confounded by age - these less experienced doctors were generally younger!
A very good friend of mine has an uncorrectable problem that basically gives him double vision all the time. I got Glass for him as a gift, and it changed his life. Emails, text messages, directions, all over a single eye so it was clear. Thanks for pushing a much needed update so he can start using them again.
You can also do some practice with 3d pictures to build up better control. I made a thing for that that uses red/cyan 3d glasses. http://web.uvic.ca/~jhedin/Other%20Work/tranaglyphs/
I'm loving (and developing in) VR, and interested in actual AR. Glass was a deadend as soon as I actually put one on.
I found it to be pretty much as if you were holding up a smartwatch beside one eye, that you could turn your eye and look at in focus.
There is no overlay of the real world. You are either looking at watch beside your eye or the real world.
The blurry screen was always kind of off to the side and annoying when wearing it.
Just as if holding a wristwatch up to the side of your head would be.
If that sounds bad to you, yes that's why it failed.
Glass could (can?) do the Word Lens "translate what I'm looking at" thing better than a phone can—not in visual fidelity, but in fluency of use. It can also just let you read a book on the bus without holding your arm in front of your face. Neither of those are strictly AR, but nor are they things you could accomplish with a pager.
It was clever, but it was basically the worst possible experience at everything it did for most people.
I don't doubt the utility of it for niche tasks or users but as a general consumer product it was never going to take off
That sounds better than the alternative, actually—I can only imagine how distracting it would be if there was text that was clear and crisp floating in my field of vision even when I was trying to look at something else.
I can see it being perfect for some people like mechanics who need their hands free, but could also use a screen for documentation.
I mean it was pretty clear before trying them that they would be more annoying to wear than their worth, but if the voice recognition was good I could see at least some people using them.
To me, Android Wear was a much better fit for what I wanted from GG. Eg, notifications, navigations, music controls, email/text without having to pull out (and unlock) my phone. (and I hadn't worn a watch for 15-20 years before getting my first Android Wear device).
The whole thing would probably be awesome in its own with just display, GPS and compass.
Many people feared for their privacy and the people using the Glass were considered douches because of this issue.
Yes, you get all the fancy AR stuff with camera, but I think you could still build a nice HUD without the cam.
The difference with a phone is generally people pull it out, do something, then put it away. You'd get a similar reaction from onlookers if you kept your phone front and center your entire day.
A tiny floating screen in the corner of your eye is most useful when:
1. You can't readily access the screens that are in your pocket or desk.
2. You need to look at a screen and the world around you at the same time. The screen may possibly overlay on the world around you.
Considering how important some seemingly minor assembly problems have been this is probably a lot more valuable than you might think as it reduces people guessing vs. going to the effort to look something up.
That could do.... a lot. Good and bad.
A worker in a store/warehouse/wherever could effectively do inventory while doing other work...slowly, but constantly, and without disruption.
Ad companies could pay you to run software that will track all the brands that you see. If you think anonymizing data isn't enough now, imagine when there are even more potentially identifying variables.
That's just off the top of my head.
Probably some of both.
I actually liked the idea of tailored ads, originally. I wasn't rushing to give them my details, but I figured I was bombarded by ads anyway (this was back when google was the new crazy people thinking they could topple AltaVista, X10 pop-under ads were everywhere, and populating your /etc/hosts with false entries was your only adblocker) so it'd be nice to have those ads have a chance to be interesting.
But they didn't do what I wanted, or they barely did it. Instead they warred with the content I was trying to read, and they could go all out.
It's even a painful circle:
- a site has good content, but needs to pay costs, so they put up ads
- the ad companies get some results, but want more, so they make pushier, flashier, more animated ads
- Perhaps people find the content not worth this visual abuse, so they move on. Meaning the site is making less from the ads, so they put in more ads out of necessity.
Rinse, lather, repeat. (Though I really have no idea if that third step happens. It may just be the first two)
Perhaps if/when we have a real micropayments solution this can break, but currently any content that is paid for by ads tends to have only one-way incentives - be it the ads on TV, the radio DJs that have to rave about crap products, or whatever, we the audience can't _effectively_ vote with our dollars AGAINST the ads, so they have practically no limit to how pushy they get. (The ads in movie theaters aren't there to cover "free" content, but I've heard the margins in running a theatre are very thin, and you're still sort of a captive audience)
That's the important part you're missing.
> in my hand
Gloves, dirty and thick.
PS: Even rings have cost many people their fingers.
Not needing a hand to look at the output is an advantage of the eyepiece.
So, yeah, the glasses do make a difference over a smartphone in this use case.
https://developers.google.com/glass/distribute/glass-at-work
The company that made it still has its website up, but there doesn't appear to be a way to order. So they may be out of stock. But you could always try to contact them, I suppose.
In a similar vein, I guess you could always get an USB battery pack and a thin USB cable that's long enough to reach to your pocket. I don't think it's ideal, but it might be better than nothing.
Seems very odd for a seemingly minor iterative update to pop up out of nowhere after such a long time otherwise.
* The update, not Google Glass itself
But my assumption is that someone at Google still uses their Explorer Edition, and fixed some pet peeves of their own to support newer Android phones better, maybe they added the keyboard input because they needed it, etc. And then just decided to go ahead and get it released to everyone because the work was already done anyways.
I suspect this is a backport of work that was done to support the new Glass for Work program.
(I used to work at Google, on teams other than Glass, although I know former members.)
But I am dubious this has to do with Glass for Work, because Enterprise Edition has been out a long time, and surely has had updates long before now. It's unlikely that Enterprise Edition is still built on the archaic platform Explorer Edition is built on (Android 4.x on an OMAP processor that was already old when Glass was first released). And there is little to no reason I can fathom for Google to expend Glass for Work resources on backporting fixes to a device that's been abandoned for over three years.
Three years later, version XE23 adds support for Bluetooth keyboards, and makes it more official (so you don't need an awkward procedure involving sideloading parts of cell-phone Android).
So I interpret this a sort of three-years-later apology. For which, thank you, it's overdue but is a nice gesture. Source code would also be nice, as would a public post-mortem of what the whole mess looked like from Google's end.
There was also the whole thing about people thinking you're an ass for wearing one. And they are very rare in New Hampshire where I am so they stick out like a sore thumb.
Thank you for the advice.
Trust me, I have. Many times and many ways. It helps (a lot) but it is still too high. What does fix it is raising the arms it up so they aren't directly on my ears. But there is no way to keep it in that position.
Can't wear them further down your nose (re-bending the ear hooks if necessary)?
I realize you've probably tried it (sorry!), so feel free to ignore my suggestions, but it's triggered one of those "there must be a solution!" quirks I have.
The product was very very very MVP and alpha-like, but came at a finished-product price tag. I have to imagine that this strategy reaulted in a very small and non-representative test cohort of wealthy tech geeks in the Bay Area. Many of them no doubt purchased Glass as an in-crowd signal, with little serious intention of dogfooding the product or developing for it.
Hardware at that pricetag can't just be soft-launched like software. When you charge $1,500 for a device in basically v0.1, you're setting people up for disappointment.
If you release a v0.1 bleeding edge device, your per-unit costs are huge, and you also target it at people who really need or want it's specific functionality, and thus aren't price sensitive.
For any class of such technology the price comes down only when the tech is tested and mass produced. If anything, they should have sold it at $3000 or $5000 to get more feedback from its use as a small alpha/beta in practical niche domains where it's really needed, not as a consumer device used as a fashion item instead of testing its practical application.
Maybe they can be modified to record continually, but up front they are much more limited than Glass.
But they were never a "life recorder", just like I assume Spectacles aren't. Still Spectacles are not getting creep-accusations and hate, as far as I can see.
There are life recorders though. They've also not gotten the hate Glass got.
Google controls the entire table here. But they want you to blame all of the different OEMs rather than looking at the real culprit in the middle of all of them.
The only ones that would be affected would perhaps be Sony, this new Nokia that's rising, and various white box manufacturers.
Google really do not have as much control as one would think.
Also, bear in mind, OEMs have no reason to object to Google controlling updates. They'd still be able to customize the experience with apps and themes. And they'd save boatloads of money as Google handled all the update testing and distribution.
Of course... Google doesn't want to pay for that, and that's why they leave it on OEMs.
Where I do think it's an issue is when every person's viewpoint is piped back to the Borg mothership.
If social interaction has begun to feel rigid and sterile already, this sort of thing represents a deep freeze beyond anything we've ever experienced.
Everything points to confession and contrition now. Emotions become bottled and pressurized. Stiff behavior modification leaves no release valves.
Go ahead and experiment with this, if you don't believe me. I'll check out, without hesitation. I'll take my business elsewhere, anywhere.
Forgetfulness is a blessing!