Glass will be google's newton pad.
a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten.
With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.
a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten.
With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.
In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later.
It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad space, and if facebook ever decides to make their own ad network (such as Google's ad sense) competition will be fierce. Google glass is a really good way to increase their competitive advantage, and cement their position in the advertising arena.
Additionally, of the companies that would be interested in making a product like google glass (facebook, microsoft, IBM etc) Google probably has the best mix of engineers to do it. I've always said that Google is an AI company first. Well a huge part of AI is machine vision, and a large part of successfully monetizing google glass is machine vision. Additionally, with street view, and other aggressive initiatives Google is in one of the best positions to actually understand what and where the world you are looking at. Finally, while google has proven in the past they are weak as a hardware company (nexus 1) they have demonstrated they are capable of bringing a consumer product to the mass market... though perhaps maybe not enough to make it anything less then a wild card.
Finally the last point is one of consumer adoption. The newton pad was not successful in part because the hardware was premature. But I would speculate it was also in part because consumers weren't at the point of understanding the value. The hardware in Google glass is unknown at this point, and potentially could under-deliver... and that will cause it to be a newton.. but for the reasons i said above I think Google is capable of delivering a quality product. However consumer readiness will not be an issue. 1 billion people are already on Facebook. Social interaction through technology is accepted today more then ever before. Using smartphones in public is not only accepted, its normal. Years ago using a PDA might have made you look like a yuppie, but today no one would notice.
The marketplace is going to reject Glass.
Q.E.D.
2. you think all that for the same reason I also think all that: Wishful thinking... but deep inside i can see the truth. we are the hippies-yuppies who will buy it :)
put yourself on the shoes of people hearing about the newton back then: handwriting recognition!! how wouldn't want that instead of a 3x4 phone keyboard? Turned out 99.9% prefered T9. it's all the same. we are thinking as if the implementation and day-to-day use would be perfect on such a new concept on the first try. well, odds are it wont. but in one year can get back to it and see if my money goes to one of your charities or if your money will buy me something shinny (that's one bet i'd like to lose...)
Also - implementation and day-to-day use don't have to be perfect for it to be a game-changer/overnight success/cultural icon. As evidenced by... Well, pretty much every piece of successful consumer electronics ever made that has gone through multiple generations/revisions.
and yes. they work like that. the discussion is if it will happen in 1 year as he says or in 10-15 years as history says.
see what i did there? i put my words as valid as "history". hah. clever.
Why? Some are really good: http://givewell.org/international/top-charities/
PC. Twitter. I won't be surprised if cellphone was too.
Google Glass is a prototype. Product will evolve.
I bet decades ago, people would not have thought that PCs would fit inside a manila folder.
Electronics in your pocket: cool
Electronics in your hand: cool
Electronics hanging out of your ears: cool
Electronics on your head, face, or built into your clothing: irredeemably uncool.
I can't explain why in words, all I can tell you is that the world sees these things differently. If you don't understand why computer-enabled glasses are unavoidably dorky then I can't explain it to you, but I'm pretty sure it's the case.
edit: That's not to say they won't sell well, to certain people. I envisage engineers on building sites walking around with 'em, or travelling salesmen, or police officers, or... I dunno, there's gotta be lots of good use cases for these sorts of things. But the very utility of 'em makes 'em desperately uncool, like Bluetooth earpieces.
I might be getting old, but I remember a time where electronics ANYWHERE in your person were incredibly uncool.
They were called "wereables" from a reason.
Isn't "pens in the front pocket" a defining characteristic of a 1950s-era nerd?
Now using bluetooth earpieces is commonplace
Sure, among two classes of people: travelling salesmen and complete toolbags.
I am sure people will get used to using very tiny gadgets on their clothing or ears if they assist them in meaningful ways.
Oh sure, I'm just arguing that it'll never be cool.
Yeah... next time you're walking through a crowded place, look at people's ears more closely.
If it doesn't work well enough, then it will be the new Newton—and even then, here we are 20 years later, and tablets are cool.
Cool people already puts on sunglasses yeahhh!
Wear glasses with non-corrective lenses.
I went from never wearing glasses for ten years to wearing glasses every day. (I was previously using contact lenses.) Hardly anyone batted an eye.
that's simple, you ask apple to make it.
apple made walkmans cool again. After the 80s. with marketing alone.
edit: Adding a hard drive, making it easier to use than the competition, itunes store, app store. None of that had anything to do with it?
But nobody bought Nomad, and everyone bought an iPod. Why? Because Apple told people to buy an iPod, and people tend to do what they're told.
Even if you credit marketing with bringing this to people's attention, it's a mistake to think that marketing closes the deal. That credit goes to the experience, which was as imaginative, compelling, and well-designed as the object itself. As the (very) old ad agency joke goes "Nothing destroys a bad product faster than good advertising." Clearly that's not happening here.
I will never understand people ignore the product itself while insisting success is "just" marketing (as though this were an invariably witless task). Usually this is followed by "to people who are idiots." Perhaps you just don't appreciate things that are carefully considered and well made. There are people like this, and there always have been. And they suck. Or as Shakespeare put it "you blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things."
"Because Apple told people to buy an iPod, and people tend to do what they're told".
hard drive was a step back. for the same price (and 5 months before ipod launched) you could get a creative flash memory mp3 player with 2/3 of the size. again, same price, you give away 1/3 of the storage for NO gravity or dropping of issues. far superior if you ask me... yet, bad marketing on creative. (btw, ipod evolved some 5yr later and what? 1/2 of the space and flash memory, so yeah, even apple consumers agree it was better without it.)
Oh god. Why did I even say that? Someone kill me now.
Still photos work b/c they capture a whole moment, with just enough detail to inspire the imagination and to ground the imaginings in reality.
My personal favorites are the slightly grainy and oversaturated images taken by the camera in the blackberry I had about 5 years ago. Still photos bring out the best parts of the human experience, while raw video makes everyone as boring as the worst video blogger.
- adBlocker to remove ads from your view
- first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture.
- architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed.
- ...
You're suffering from a serious lack of realism if you discard them based on the camera quality. The iPhone drove R&D for cameras we have now, same will happen for these gizmos.
Edit: The only real opposition I see is another wave of reports on the impact of having a non-stop wireless RF device next to your skull.
police officer gives you a hard time? not when you have these babies on.
-any- interaction with a portable or remote electronics could be done through glass
contextual info lookup, like price matching, comparison shopping, maps, directions, all of it
entertainment, eventually vr type emersion.
I hate ads, but not quite enough to go round blocking portions of my vision just to avoid seeing 'em. I envisage myself getting run over by an advertising-covered bus.
first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture
Sounds fun, but niche. Laser Tag isn't a big industry.
architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed
That's more the sort of application I'd envisage.
Or how about this? Imagine a store you'd walk into, get issued a pair of glasses, then you could walk around, look at things, and have information about 'em magically appear? How cool would that be? Answer: awesomely cool... the first time. In year one, that store would be the coolest thing on the planet. But the fiftieth time you go in there.... meh.
They're doing this in Korea already, I believe.
I will be intrigued to see what pops out when this really becomes a priority. You may not be able to stick a single small camera in a glasses frame and get anywhere, but what about having 4 or 8 relatively cheap cameras and some image processing? With the cameras tuned to the needs of the image processing. Perhaps not even 4 or 8 identical cameras. Can we play games with optical interferometry [1] to extract surprising amounts of visual data from surprisingly small cameras? There's a crapload of optical tricks we've learned that we've not really needed to apply yet, and ahem IT IS OBVIOUS TO ONE SKILLED IN THE ART THAT THESE TECHNIQUES MAY BE USEFUL ON AUGMENTED REALITY GLASSES. (ahem)
(Sorry, 2019, 2012 is just too cool for you.)
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_optical_interferom...
One day my kids are going to look at our old photos and ask "why did photo quality go to crap from 2002-2007? Did you lose the technology?"
On the other hand, if they can lick the distraction problem or even make the tool something that improves focus (say by reminding you unobtrusively of what you need to get done that day) it could be very cool in subsequent iterations. I don't think the product manager is thinking about minomizing distraction though.
One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa.
I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.