Microsoft is developing a Google Glass competitor | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is developing a Google Glass competitor

techcrunch.com

18 pointscyphersanctus45 comments

What these things really need is some way of being controlled directly by the brain.

I don't want to be wearing goofy glasses and telling them to guide me to the pub. I just want to conjure up a rabbit to follow.

Hehe, I suppose that wont be hard in the nearby future (25 years). The glasses could have neuro-censors that would be in constant contact with key parts of both sides of the brain.

  The glasses could have neuro-censors

That's a frightening typo!

Lol, frightening indeed. My bad.

Neuro-censors... you mean like this guy? http://vimeo.com/46304267 ;)

Thats the best video I've seen in a while. Thanks for sharing hehe.

You might like this video, too:

http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/05/plurality-an-amazing-short-f...

Or like Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Am I the only one who thinks Google Glass is a bad idea?

We already trusted our virtual life to google (emails, what we do, etc). Are we sure that we are ready to trust our real(physical) life too?

Don't get me wrong... It seems like a cool project but I wouldn't use it, maybe I am getting too old :/

It doesn't bother me much for a simple reason: Sutherland's wheel of reincarnation applies to cloud computing. Right now there isn't enough processing power or storage on a portable device to store everything you would want out of a thing like this, but give it time. And then it's hardware, it doesn't have to be ad supported -- the device can know all about you, but it's your device.

So that's one possible future. And the tech they're developing is pretty agnostic to whether the information it collects is stored in the cloud or just on the device, so let's try not to be too pessimistic about something cool just yet.

True, then again the temptation for them to start feeding you personalized real time ads, were your whole life is their ad canvas, might be too great to resist. Lets wait and see.

Google's software is almost completely reliant on the Internet to function (except for occasional offline caching), and the exceptions are nearly all legacy apps.

I trust Google right now to anonymize the data they get from me, and to hide it from their own employees.

What I wouldn't trust in this future is the Government to have easy access to this data, to see everything I've been watching and doing, and passing new laws to access this data even without warrants.

To me that's orders of magnitude scarier than a company using the anonymized data to send me more relevant ads on web pages, on which I'll probably still be able to use Adblock.

That's part of the problem, in times of war the US Government would ask that data for "national security" sake and once they got it there is not turn back.

Absolutely. The problem is that the project is driven by Sergey Brin, who trusts his company completely.

Privacy would have to built into the project on many layers. Without a push to do so from above, they won't.

> Microsoft Patent Shows It’s Working On A Google Glass Type Device Of Its Own

It only shows that Microsoft calls dibs on this newfangled idea of wearable display. I don't see any invention described there. Rather just an idea.

Is Microsoft really developing or simply trying to get some patent to fight with google?

It looks like this was submitted (May 2011) before Google announced Project Glass (Apr 2012)

And people have been thinking about augmented reality for decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Damocles_(virtual_...

we don't even know what Glass is going to be, how can it have competitors? so far all we know is that it's a network connected display inside a pair of glasses. but that's been available for purchase for a couple of years now (http://www.reconinstruments.com/products/snow-heads-up-displ...).

people have been working and experimenting on wearable computing and HUDs for decades (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/one-on-one-steve-ma...), I'm really curious to see what Google can come up with, being probably the first major company trying to make a general consumer product, and Glass may well end up being an awesome revolutionary product but so far I fear that it's being hyped so much that it may end up being the next Segway.

Can a product have a competitor if it hasn't actually launched yet?

Not only that, but the market has not been established either. The product has not real solid use case except getting Facebook/G+ notifications on the go.

And head mounted camera, and hands free walking/biking directions and augmented reality.

Head mounted camera is only of use to a niche of users. Walking/biking directions can still be seen on a mounted mobile on bike and mobile in hand/voice directions on headphones. Augmented reality is not a specific use. There are not many things that augmented reality can be used on in real world by casual user right now. And there won't be any until someone (like google) creates it.

Maybe I'm way off, but I think this is kind of what Google intended in some sort of way with their Google X lab. They're exploring innovative and new ideas but I think it's with the intent of spurring on this competitive spirt with the other tech giants. One company exploring these ideas is innovative but may not make much progress; having a bunch of companies compete to come up with the best version of these ideas may make the progress on these technologies increase rapidly.

Google would prefer if MS Monocle ran Android. They aren't a charity.

Microsoft's current strategy with everything seems to be:

"me too! me too!!!"

As was pointed out elsewhere, this was applied for a year before Google Glass was shown at all.

However, patents versus material commitment are very different. The latter requires some effort.

So MS is copying Google on this, despite that they put in this patent application over a year ago, and despite that these types of devices have been discussed for decades and only now practical? This is very obviously not a "me too" effort, but even if it was... who cares? Competition is a good thing.

I'm curious if you're arguing that Microsoft shouldn't hedge their risk to Google Glass taking off by building a competitive product?

There are certainly a bunch of areas where Microsoft are also innovating (see Microsoft Research).

Microsoft Research: innovating to keep ideas away from other technology companies through patent hoarding.

I'm not convinced anyone should be developing this product.

This is incredibly unfair. None of us (I work for MSRA) are doing research just to collect patents, we would totally like to change the world, like any researcher (e.g. in Google or Microsoft).

Not a rebuttal. A relevant rebuttal would be to cite management and legal behavior with regard to the patents your work generates.

But you must know that we can't talk about that whether or not I have a decent rebuttal. But perhaps I could say that our incentives are clearly weighted toward innovation for the sake of new and better products.

I hope this isn't really your view of MSR; if it is, you might consider whether your opinions of Microsoft are coloring your perception. How is all of the academic work done on Haskell, for example, motivated by an impulse to exclude others from the technology? Or consider the MSR contributions to the papers on http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html, many of which are theoretical in nature. Do you view Xerox PARC or Bell Labs's research in the same way?

Disclosure: I'm doing some contract work with the F# team in MSR Cambridge.

No. Microsoft has a lot of undisclosed research projects. They're just really bad at marketing at them. Media is going gaga for Google's driverless cars and wearable computing.

Not sure if they plan on 'competing' with statements like this: The device described by Microsoft is a little less ambitious

I believe Google Lense would have a more bright future, than Google Glass. Google Lense may be a wireless lens screen which communicates with the smart device in your hand or pocket to show you app windows in multiple screens.

And the lenses would be installed into any glasses or how do you envision it?

I love the spin. This is a non story.

This is how invention and innovation works; multiple parties come up with the same idea. Not to mention that the idea of augmented reality glasses has probably been a childhood dream for many.

Seems related to the big Xbox roadmap leak from earlier this year. 'Fortaleza' was the codename I think if anyone wants to do some digging.

I was really hoping they would call it Microsoft Monocle.

Knowing Microsoft they'll come with a keyboard

of course they are </sarcasm>

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