Glass Enterprise Edition 2
blog.google
blog.google
Real progress wont be made until there are great developer tools. Google, feeling that simulators ruined the true experience, didn't make simulators for the Glass SDK, which made development impossible. It meant you had to debug with the thing plugged in or on your face (or via Android Mirror).
Thankfully, the overheating problems have been fixed, but real progress also wont be made until you can work on it 18hrs a day (not just until the unit heats up.)
It was surprising to me how much money was spent on the Glass program yet how little was spent on the folks who would actually be coming up with the app ecosystem.
All that said, I still believe in the concept and think the Enterprise use cases are enormous. I just hope the opportunity isnt bungled again.
You can say that about pretty much every google product. Stevey's Platform Rant[0] is still as relevant as it was years ago.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/google-to-grab-one-year-late...
Given a lot of the negative points were around the reaction of others to having a camera pointed at them, I never got why they didn't make it easy to flip up the camera part as a way to physically indicate it wasn't in use. Perhaps a little less of a concern in a professional use environment, but it still helps if you have an easy way not to wind people up, eg if you nip away from the place you actively use it in but don't want to take them off completely; would be a Glass equivalent of not going to talk to a shop assistant with your headphones blaring away or whilst on the phone neither of which are particularly polite!
Perhaps this might help?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...
That actually doesn't really solve the problem. People sometimes use cameras in the most inappropriate of places. If a friend of mine has a motorbike accident and breaks an arm and someone from the side of the street goes "coooool" and pulls out his phone and starts streaming, I can storm over there and slap the phone out of his hand.
You may or may not like the idea that I might do that, but I think it's appropriate and if that person disagrees then fuck 'em, they can argue it in front of a judge in small claims court.
The problem with glass, even with a flip down camera, is that /I have to hit you in the face/ to do the same thing. There's no way to make a glasshole stop filming except to stick my mittens near their eyes, and I'd totally agree with any judge that said my going for someones face to make them stop filming is a far more aggressive action than slapping a phone out of their hand.
But therein lies the problem. If you don't have the social awareness to know that you shouldn't be filming someone, if you're using glass I can't force you to stop filming without severely escalating the situation.
It's a socially inappropriate design.
More likely you will be arguing in the criminal court on charge of assault. Videotaped, too.
Laws take a long time to be revised. By and large, our public photography laws are still based in a time when most photos would become a negative which sat in a box for 30 years and then got thrown out.
I hope that we will see better progress in the area of rights of insignificance and the quiet enjoyment of ones life before we reach that point.
If we don't, it'll be a bumpy ride until the law catches up.
Is this true? Where and how so?
There are legitimate privacy and rights concerns to the legality of filming in public spaces (especially in this era of "big data"). None of them are exclusive to children.
Also note that parent was discussing the legality of filming, which is independent of the... interesting social moires you espouse.
In fact, that's underselling it. If it's my child's leg or your life, you're going to die. That's why I don't get myself into this situation in the first place.
I’m was never about to assault anyone over filming me, but when I was using Glass, I never once filmed something without their permission, but I did see lots of people secretly trying to record “this guy with Google Glass”.
The fear was overblown and most people were hypocritical about it.
As one of the glass explorers (who still has and uses my explorer edition from time to time), this is something that I never understood. The entire prism would light up if the camera was in use (it's easy to see when the display is on). And you either have to use voice commands or would have to touch the device to take a picture, both of which are fairly obvious. It's much easier to take a discrete photo or video with a cell phone.
But I suppose this is another case omitting one or two facts to completely change the narrative.
The facts aren't missing to change the narrative, it's because the average person doesn't know and it could change, so those facts don't fix the problem.
The tape over my webcam has been a lifesaver when joining a business conference call using software with aggressive "everyone should be sharing their webcam" defaults.
A (male) coworker ended up sharing his webcam on a call with important clients -- while shirtless, in bed. I've had some close calls myself, and have seen some funny slip-ups.
Regardless, even against hacking scenarios, the tape costs nothing and blocks out some ugly "what if" scenarios from consideration. So it just seems like the reasonable thing to do.
BlueJeans perhaps? Holy moly i ended up disconnecting my camera just to get it to shut up.
Yes, and maybe even make a camera free version (some basic cell phones are available without cameras for private work environments). This would make the product much more friendly for customer facing applications too. Of course, it would take away one input method, but there are use cases where this is acceptable.
I too was one of the original explorers and we had 5 units in our lab (working on automotive manufacturing and service applications). We did not need a camera for our use cases, and it might even bring the price down slightly (although I don't believe price is a considerable factor for this type of technology in an enterprise).
I worked on warehouse/picking software at one time and Glass would be perfect for the picker to be reminded of the quantity of the item they're currently picking. Sure, you could fit more info, but Pick quantity is one of the most common picking mistakes since nearly 100% of picks only require a single unit to be picked, so the human brain tends to ignore the value that rarely ever changes since it seems like noise (and is most of the time).
Aren't they just called "glasses"?
Some people at PostMarketOS have even gotten recent Linux kernels to work on Glass[2], although the last time I tried (last year), I wasn't able to get anything to draw to the framebuffer after about 6 hours of effort.
Finally, the original GlassOS was Android based. The stock kernel and applications have been extracted and are floating around[3].
[0]: https://developers.google.com/glass/tools-downloads/system
[1]: https://forum.xda-developers.com/google-glass/development/ro...
[2]: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Google_Glass_(Explorer_Ed...
Side note: throughout the video my inner critic tried to scream, "they're definitely overstating the impact", but it was drowned in excitement generated by the music. It's one of the few times in my life when I felt the music is purposefully manipulating me. Now I wish for a switch that could cut off background music from a video and leave just the speech.
Because possibly recording someone you are facing in ordinary circumstances is more than just a little bit rude.
Even just as a display that you don't need to hold with your hands would improve things a lot in my opinion.
A typical 3pl is taking in a trailer, scanning cartons and sorting/stacking/palletising/moving cartons all over the warehouse. I used to write software that would allow people to scan those cartons and it would tell them what to do with it.
Unfortunately a device in your hand takes up a hand that can be used to move the box.
A finger laser scanner combined with a "head mounted display" like glass would be a gamechanger and could really speed things up and reduce lost or misrouted cartons.
There are other options, but they all have drawbacks. Fully-automated scanner/sorters are crazy expensive and often jam/clog or drop/destroy cartons, plus they require costly integration with 3pl software to run. Scanners can be mounted to the backs of your hands, but they are then cumbersome to use and aim, and often they need to be removed or put down anyway when doing anything complicated. Simple scanning can be done currently with finger-mounted laser scanners and audio cues, but that only gives you a few options (a few tones to signify "good scan", "bad scan", etc...), and if the worker needs to stop to pick up and look at a phone, you are losing time and breaking the flow of the worker.
A head mounted display means you can get detailed information literally while moving the box to the correct spot. And even if they cost $2000 per person, it's still significantly cheaper than a fully automated system, and the 3pl can only get a few if they want and still see benefits.
I really wanted to experiment with Glass or any number of "augmented reality" headsets when I was at that job, but sadly the company was acquired by a large corporation and almost instantly all ability to try new stuff went out the window and I quit.
Full ACK. Recently stumbled over https://www.proglove.com/ which is in fact a gread ingredient.
I whish to have such devices as an end user for reasonable money (for various inventarisation purposes). Maybe that's something we will have in ~10 yrs. The hardware still seems way to expensive.
The downside is that they don't have displays, so the amount of information the user can receive is limited without them looking at a device, which then defeats the purpose of hand mounting the scanner in most cases. And even the ones with displays are almost always mounted on the hand, so the user can't be carrying something and reading the display at the same time. A head mounted display with a hand mounted scanner solves this issue.
It's been many years, so I don't totally remember, but I think it was scan the box on the rollers, then load it into the truck, then scan the next etc. The ring scanner couldn't do the 2d barcodes though. It looks like the current models are a lot bulkier, probably to have the rotation needed for the 2d codes.
I couldn't find the model online, but I did find an article about it.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2589161/fedex-ground-u...
I was very skeptical about all of these:
- live-streaming : why $3k glasses and not a much better $50 camera on a headmount?
- manuals : an unreadable, hard to navigate postage stamp? Meh.
- information : is hard to navigate tiny info obscuring your vision really better than an ipad?
I do carbon fiber related design & fabrication, from molds to final parts. I could find a version of these immediately useful in my work in several ways, including logging work progress by camera/video/hyperlapse, logging notes with voice-text, quick lookup of material specs.
With some development, I could see display of correct sequence and orientation of layers, and really cool would be recognition of key points and dynamic display of exact placement of next layer of pre-cut material.
Good to see continued development.
The product was also ahead of its time, nowadays people would not care if a delivery driver dropped off a parcel wearing the things and did all the scanning and whatnot with a 'head mounted camera' instead of what looks like a ruggedised PDA.
They forgot the lessons learned from gMail where the word of mouth, invite only approach worked well for getting early adopters. Google Glass should have been a bit more like that, plus they could have entered different markets on a app basis, e.g. in galleries and museums the product would work well with mapping. Or sports events where the product told you who the competitors were and provided commentary.
I wish that we would identify the press as the culprit on these cock ups of marketing, they take a novel product and get the masses to imagine a use case for it that is unrealistic.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/steve-mann-my-a...
Ed: as far as I can tell Google glass 2 fixes none of these, while ms holo lens appear to be more in line with many of the points made.
Remember how mobile phones took over? Their original market was business use. Those bricks were very expensive and heavy, but they sold well to business customers on the move. Then they became a status symbol for high income consumers and from there they gradually overtook the world.
Augmented reality and Virtual Reality should follow the same path. High end science, medicine, architects, CAD, military uses should come first. After the technology matures and prices drop, consumer products can emerge. Top notch commercial VR product like Varjo VR-1 costs $6000 and it's peanuts if you need VR for professional use. It's cumbersome to use long periods of time but the image quality beats Rift or PSVR easily.
The display and voice control would be enough.
This of course, might be partially attributable to the limited processing power of it.
However, if all people need is a screen in the periphery, smart watches and similar wearable tech is probably cheaper and easier.
The much maligned camera had a more useful outcome still: it's the first (kind of) public device using Google's computational photography, paving the way for Pixel phones. Glass took better pictures than what the weak sensor and CPU were capable of on paper.
Except for the plethora of ways both the blog and the video describe how it has been very useful?
I'm a big fan of the technology so I'm happy to see that it has survived the various speedbumps.
Hated the "New iPad Air" and "New 3DS". Like, how am I supposed to communicate that to people? People don't know what is "new" and what isn't unless they've been following the releases. Plus, in 5 years we can't say "new" because there were future releases! God it makes me so angry!
Edit: At the very least put a number in there, and increment it with every major revision. Then even your grandma can tell the difference between "Widget Gen 1" and "Widget Gen 2". Unless you pull a USB... Those people aren't right in the head.
For reference, the entire phrase "Glass Enterprise Edition 2" matches 10 times in that incredibly short article.
> It provides hands-on workers and professionals with glaceable, voice-activated assistance...
https://www.google.com/glass/tech-specs/
Perhaps V3 will come with a built-in spelling and grammar checker. They could call them SPAGgles.
But if you're looking for minor errors, there are three in this blog post alone:
1. In the first sentence, there is a stray non-breaking space before "manufacturing". Along with the regular space character next to it, the effect is to put extra whitespace between the words words.
2. "We’ve also added USB-C port" should have an "a" before "USB-C".
3a. The first sentence of the last paragraph ends with "work better, smarter and faster". So they've elected not to use an Oxford comma, which would be an OK choice except for the fact that in the first sentence of the paragraph before that they do have an Oxford comma. (They have "... Sutter Health, and H.B. Fuller.") So it's not consistent.
3b. Oh, they're also inconsistent with Oxford commas within a single sentence! The last sentence of the first paragraph is this: "Workers can use Glass to access checklists, view instructions or send inspection photos or videos, and our enterprise customers have reported faster production times, improved quality, and reduced costs after using Glass." No Oxford comma before "or send inspection" but there is one before "and reduced costs".
Once being a taxi driver was a skilled job. You really needed to know your streets well.
But than came GPS. An augmented reality for drivers.
And now everybody can be an UBER driver. Anywhere. No knowledge is needed.
So now taxi drivers are easily replaceable. And the pay is shit.
And soon, we'll have augmented reality for Every profession.
And we'll see a similar shift happening: Good professions that once combined hands-on skills with knowledge, won't need that anymore.
You won't need to think. You don't need to know much. Just follow instructions well, and fast.
So now you'll be easily replaceable. And the pay will be shit.
And this will be everywhere.
[1]https://books.google.com/books?id=XzYX0T-ZqTcC&pg=PA34&lpg=P...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(dialogue)#Rhetoric,_...
Also, is there a cancellation deathpool yet?
I can't fault Google for trying to salvage something from the epic fail of v1, but that product video still has the faint whiff of cluelessness about human factors that brought us glassholes in the first place.
Case in point: I'm not sure I buy the video clip of the doctor speaking to the "Actor portraying patient" with glass on displaying medical history. I don't know if the medical benefits of having my doctor seeing 3 lines of medical history ("tremors, arthritis, hearing aid") outweigh the weirdness factor of having to speak to a guy about sensitive medical issues with a freaky-looking wifi-enabled video recording device strapped to his face.
Also noted that the only black person in the video is an actor playing the role of a patient, as opposed to a professional playing him or herself like everyone else. I'm sure Google's intentions for more diversity are positive, but this particular implementation feels a bit hasty. It couldn't have been that hard to find a black professional in order to complete the diversity checkbox.
[edit: removed sarcasm about diversity, added context]
It's like Google saw all of the criticism about the device, and decided that the best way to address it was by just beefing up the components instead of the actual flaws with Glass V1. For starters, the display is too small and too low resolution to actually provide enough useful data to affect the workflow of front-line employees. This is a marginally useful tool for managers to check a line-item or two--something they can do with their phones. For anyone actually requiring the use of their hands, Google Glasses still just gets in the way by distorting part of the visual field.
I give the entire Glass project about a year before it dies (again, permanently) when the executive in charge of it either gets the promotion he was aiming for or moves on.
Seems fairly straightforward.
For most startups, people would call that a success. Why is it something that's being criticized here? Just because it's Google (or Apple, or Microsoft, or any other big company) doesn't mean they know the right answer from the get-go. They're allowed to fail just as much as anyone else.
As with Glass V1, the only adoption outside of a very small set of Silicon Valley techies, was driven by tech executives, and it was immediately abandoned by workers once the executives stopped forcing them to use it.
Is that actually the case? Several successful deployments discussed here:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-2-is-here/
GE - GE in particular has been enthusiastic in its Glass tests, claiming a 46 percent decrease in the time it takes a warehouse picker using the product. (Using Glass in this environment is as transformative as in factories—after a successful test, DHL says it plans to roll out Glass in its 2000 warehouses across the globe, where appropriate.) Another pilot project, in GE’s Aviation Division, used EE with a wifi-enabled torque wrench: Glass tells workers whether they are using the proper amount of torque. Eighty-five percent of the workers said that the system would reduce errors. “By the end of this year, we’ll have several sites deploying this,” says Ted Robertson, an engineering manager at GE Aviation.
AGCO - AGCO now has just over a hundred Glass units (it pays between $1300 and $1500 for each one), and Gulick says that it plans to order between 500 and 1000 more in the next 18 months as it moves the product into all its functions and in other locations. The company is particularly excited about how Glass helps with training—cutting the time from 10 days to only 3.
Dignity Health - “The total time entering data has gone from 33 percent of our day to less than 10 percent,” says Davin Lundquist, the chief medical information officer for Dignity Health, who uses Augmedrix and Glass himself in clinical work. “And direct patient interaction has risen from 35 percent to 70 percent.”
More info on AGCO here, they've been using this for years, starting with the consumer version, and have continued to ramp it up: https://www.country-guide.ca/guide-business/agcos-jackson-as...
Those are all technical critiques. What am I missing? Where was it said Enterprise product failed as a fashion accessory?
I mean certainly they might be wrong and all the above critiques false, or dealt with via progress to version 2.... but no one mentioned fashion.
The groups that did get traction are the medical and logistics workers enterprise is marketed to. Hands free is a lot bigger than most people in the tech world give credit for, at least in my experience.