Google Glass to Hit Developers' Hands This Month
mashable.com
mashable.com
- Facial recognition with a little popup over people's heads with their name. Never forget someone's name
- Link in with Facebook or your calendar to have people's pop up indicate if its their birthday. Always be on top of the "Happy birthday!" game
- Have an alternate reality game with digital objects people can place/write on. Only Glass users can see the teddy bear in the corner, and only google glass users can see the giant graffiti wall where people sign their name.
- Identify desired objects and make them stick out, "Dammit, where are my keys again?!"
- Auto translate QR codes and overlay the translation
- Auto tweet images of your life on a schedule
- Many cameras pick up infrared, could overlay this (if the Glass camera does) to expose more of the light spectrum to Glass users
location/time awareness could do a "checklist" of sorts when you are leaving your house to make sure you pick up all of the items from the front table.
a lego app that helps you find that piece in the big bin of pieces
All the glasses could do is display a layout of a known engine, they can't see inside it to highlight a problem. So, it seems like they would be more of an overall nuisance than anything else in that scenario.
For example, imagine inspecting a plane's fuel tanks from the inside. You could bring a manual, but getting it out of your pocket may be cumbersome, checking that you took it out after the job takes time, etc (forgetting your glasses is less of a risk; you would need them soon again. That manual? The next tank might have a different 200 page one)
And even if it was a nuisance once you learned the engine, it could be a useful tool in schools or someone learning a new engine.
Even imagine a small engine machine shop that sees 10s or 100's of different kinds of engines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i...!
It uses 3d tracking and could easily be changed from an AC unit to an engine. I think the software is definitely ready.
BMW did a research project about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9KPJlA5yds
The problem with augmented reality is that you need incredibly low latency: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/latency-the-sine-qua-n...
Early systems will likely stick to simple HUD views that don't require tracking of real objects with low latency.
I have looked up how to take a laptop apart before to change a part that required me to remove screws in certain places, unhook cables and do other steps in a particular order. Half the trouble with that is figuring out where the picture corresponds to the device in your hands - even if you had to manual advance the instructions, a HUD arrow pointing to the screw would be super useful I think.
^ "Have an alternate reality game with digital objects people can place/write on. Only Glass users can see the teddy bear in the corner, and only google glass users can see the giant graffiti wall where people sign their name."
I am sorry since for some this will not be considered as being a constructive contribution to the discussion, but there is an Anime out there about exactly(!) that. It's called Dennou Coil. Very good series. [Sorry, i just had to mention it! Forgive me.]
We all like to be a bit like Batman aren't we?
No, in fact as I'm growing older I'm getting more and more to the point of taking more and more "technology vacations" where I ditch my phone and don't use a computer for a night/weekend.
It has overall improved my life in many ways. I already carry enough electronic gadgetry, at least with a phone it is in my hand or pocket. Having glasses with a battery pack on my belt? Yeah I'll wait until the tech improves.
I can't imagine a scenario where Google wouldn't allow it to link to Twitter and Facebook, especially considering that Google is opening it up to developers.
Apple has already filed patents for a "Glass" type product and were Google to disallow developers to link to Facebook and Twitter, Apple would only have to allow this sort of integration...and then Apple has a strong selling point over Google.
I'm trying to think of any successful consumer product that blocks this sort of integration and am not coming up with any. Xbox, iPhone, geez even my dad's blu-ray player and people's automobiles (Ford Sync) integrate with Facebook!
People will be disappointed because, for the foreseeable future, Google Glass will be just an awkwardly-held standard mobile display with a camera.
There's a small team at Google working on a game that uses the real world as its map, Ingress[0]. I haven't been able to get access to it yet (typical Google closed beta), but from what I've seen of the game it would fit right in with Glass.
It looks like it was designed as an excuse for people to walk around with their GPS enabled and take pictures of "interesting" places. Which is too bad because the concept is kind of cool, but without any actual playability outside of these key locations...what's to keep me playing?
The downside is that I think it takes a few weeks for portal suggestions to be processed.
chris.p.freeman@live.co.uk
Having these things always in your line of vision and no real input options sounds awful.
> I can't think of a single feature here that wouldn't be better using existing technology on cellphones.
It would be rather awkward to take out your phone and take a picture of someone.
That means this will forever be a Second device, either separate or connected to your smartphone.
Working speech recognition would be a major revolution, so would useful Augmented Reality, and so would combining them in a lightweight wearable mobile device... but none of these exist. Big jumps in technology don't happen like that, and certainly not all at once at one company.
A head-up display or heads-up display—also known as a HUD—is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints.
For example, QR codes today are something that pretty much nobody scans but will be relevant overnight if people start wearing these. Or, any app that is useful for you while you are driving, like parking assistance or finding nearby gas stations.
Also there could be some interesting applications that arise when you consider that if you are wearing Glass software can know when you are looking at a particular display, like your phone or computer.
I think the same goes for any wearable tech. I find the idea of watch phones awesome, but all of them right now (like on aliexpress or Sony's smartwatch) are pretty tacky/nerdy. But with the right execution and design a watch phone could be an awesome way to avoid taking the phone out of your pocket for checking messages or snapping a pic real fast. A phone client rather than a full phone seems like the right way to go. Plus it's way less intrusive than a pair of glasses (not as fun as augmented reality though).
Edit: something like these would be amazing:
http://www.archiarcha.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Samsung...
http://sumanl.com.np/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Electronic-w...
Even after reading about it I couldn't care less. Facebook already has a search, this is just some types of analytics for your friends, meh...
Techmeme is still flooded with articles http://www.techmeme.com/130115/p31#a130115p31
Take any task you need to do;
say change a tire. You post a request to the internet for help. Someone agrees to help you. Then they see on their screen what you are seeing through the glasses. They can talk you through doing whatever you need to do, and perhaps even point to places on the screen and it will highlight that area in your view screen.
Think how many repairs we're reasonably competent to make if only an expert would look over your shoulder and you could ask questions!
And face recognition is an obvious use, but I think people would've freaked out if the promo showed how you could look at people and ascertain their identity.
Like mobile phones then?
Also, they wouldn't be releasing a product that caused eye problems.
A sheet of anything, however transparent, centimetres away from your eye won't help you see something a hundred meters away.
You're concerned with alignment but focus matters even more. You usually don't notice the focus time because your eyes are doing it while moving (changing the alignment).
HUDs work in planes and cars because they're far away enough to be in the "far sight" range.
Worse, while once your eye moved the distracting elements are out of the way and you get an unobstructed and non-distractive view, with this you simply can't look away of the distracting elements — merely focus away — and however transparent and blurry it would appear it would still obscure the view.
Besides, the attention problem makes it an order of magnitude more likely to have an accident whereas the hands problem makes it only a factor more. When you're on a call with someone or whatever, hands or not, your mind is simply not driving.
So, should it be a cause of concern? I don't know, but it's certainly not the solution. Driving is an enjoyable yet serious matter, requiring a combination of motor and cognitive skills, therefore the solution is (whether people like it or not) that one should not do anything else but driving, or not drive at all (i.e have someone either drive meanwhile or do the task, or take the train, coach, taxi, or get a Google car). The huge majority of crashes are directly tied to an inadequate level of cognition from the driver (alcohol, testosterone excess, adrenaline addiction, sleep deprivation, psychological pressure, multitasking...) because every dent one makes in its ability to analyse raises the odds of an event ranging from nuisance to dramatic given the energies involved WRT our frail physical envelopes.
So, drive responsibly. Don't answer, dial or text wile driving, and don't put an electronic lid on your eye. Even if you think it's safe while it's probably not, it's way safer not to.
Surely in cases where this is important you can simply turn off the display? A piece of glass or plastic isn't going to interrupt anyone's vision, as we can see by everyone who wears glasses when driving.
Furthermore, I don't agree that any loss of optical clarity is "way" more dangerous than perfect vision, nor that something being displayed on the glasses need be perceptible at all.
For example, if a glasses wearing driver were to swap out their moderately rimmed glasses for fancy clear-framed glasses, their safety would be inpercievably improved. At times, it is easy to not notice dust on your glasses.
Now, there is certainly potential for far more obstruction to be had, and the case for changing focus is surely one to be considered, however the claim that it is necessarily "way safer" to not have anything present close to your eye that is not completely transparent is incorrect. As a simple counterexample, the glasses could change tint or brightness according to driving conditions, improving the vision of the driver. Drivers already do this by putting sunglasses on, these glasses could do it automatically.
- the sight problem: both eyes converge and focus simultaneously (unless you have some serious neurologic issue). Unless Google solved the problem of measuring the the lens curvature (i.e eye focal distance) and send light rays the proper way in a ridiculously tiny and cheap package (compared to currently available professional equipment measuring such values), it is sending them in a best-effort way on a fixed focale. Hence the display will look blurred for some focal distances (possibly obscuring all of part of the field of view in a significant manner), while when at the correct focal distance change of focus takes time (possibly preventing to see or notice stuff in a timely manner, or at all).
- the cognitive load problem: even simple notifications on your computer eats away your productivity, so imagine the firehose of your digital life randomly pinging you while driving.
The first one is a general concern covering many areas (safety, health, comfort...) while the second one is making a point that it does not bring anything to safety while driving.
"The biggest triumph — and to me, the biggest surprise — is that the tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re talking or driving or reading. You just forget about it completely. There’s nothing at all between your eyes and whatever, or whomever, you’re looking at.
And yet when you do focus on the screen, shifting your gaze up and to the right, that tiny half-inch display is surprisingly immersive. It’s as though you’re looking at a big laptop screen or something.
(Even though I usually need reading glasses for close-up material, this very close-up display seemed to float far enough away that I didn’t need them. Because, yeah — wearing glasses under Glass might look weird.)"
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/google-glass-and-t...
My 20/600 vision and prescription glasses tend to disagree. See also, people throughout history FUDing new technology.
But can you keep attending to the road? Fighter pilots can, but they take a lot of training, lots of them don't make it through training, and their display doesn't show 'I am contacting you on behalf of my deceased Nigerian aunt" messages.
For mere mortals, I think it may be safer to have separate gaze directions for 'looking at the road' and 'looking at my cellphone's screen', if that screen shows data unrelated to the driving task.
So I can guarantee you that injury is going to occur at some point and especially in the US a not insignificant chance of being shot.
If so then a criminal would be deincentivised to murder a witness wearing the glasses - as everything they have seen is already online.
Of course it would take a few years of people getting shot by criminals who don't understand the technology before we get to that stage...
the future is coming, better embrace it.
Imagine these scenarios:
* The gun owners address map re-oriented so that when you look at a house, you see a "gun" symbol over it
* Property value over each home (available from county assessor)
* When Facebook makes another privacy-opening-oops and people with their wall/statuses set to semi-public have a little bubble over their head with their latest status update ("I'm so drunk from yesterday!").
* When you look at people, or their children, they automatically assume you are videotaping them. And someone out there is going to write an app that checks your name against a sex-offender registry and will notify anyone if you have a similar name to said person (guess you'd have to reveal your name somehow...which you might through Google Plus and the required real name)
The idea isn't the point here, it's the ease of use and the visceralness of it. The gun maps debate is a prime example of this. Anyone could go to the government office and get those records. And if you were a thief, you would have much more use out of them as a straight excel spreadsheet which you could cross-reference with other property records...or at least just do quick name searches across a large Excel file.
But as soon as a newspaper put a bunch of red dots on the map (which made it nearly impossible for a user to find anything more than who has a gun and who lives at that red dot without clicking manually thousands of times), the New York state legislature is hot to pass a law to ban those public records.
Usability and location is much more than just "additional features".
Are they using this to steal the guns or avoid the houses with guns? Owning a dog is probably the single best way to dissuade break-ins if you are that concerned.
As someone looking for a home, in sometimes unfamiliar neighborhoods... this is a great idea! Zillow has something similar in their iphone app, but this would make it a lot more convenient.
http://www.amazon.com/Third-Eye-Round-Helmet-Mirror/dp/B0012...
I have to stop looking forward to use it, for just a small part of a second, because of different focal distance, different angle of my eyes, limits in the brain part that focus the attention, etc.
It actually helps me avoid accidents.
I don't see how Google Glasses would be much different to that mirror. I would love to use them for GPS or other related info. Focal distance in tiny screens is either a solved problem, or one being solved by smart people right now.
I don't think merely avoiding google glass wearing people will help much. To be effective you should probably avoid anyone with a phone/tablet that is not in their pocket and stay out of public spaces (maybe live in the woods).
Why not complain about Gorgon Stare instead? Since it is more likely to be used for infringing rights and you have more of a legal case (preventing unwanted photography in public was lost long ago).
>"The system is capable of capturing motion imagery of an entire city, which can then be analyzed by humans or an artificial intelligence, such as the Mind's Eye project being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. [..] It is a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
That being said, I think widespread cameras are simply something people are an inevitability that people are going to have to get used to, warts and all.
It's really the scale of the thing -- YouTube and Ustream and the like are going to have some serious privacy concerns when masses of people want to start lifestreaming.
Of course, I should disclose that I became greatly interested in (at least partially edited) lifeblogging once I saw devices like the vaporwared Zion Eyez[1] or the Memoto[2].
I attempted to start recording my drives home with my phone and publishing them on YouTube, but I'm not committed enough to keep it up until it becomes frictionless. This would be a perfect example of the potentially scary surveillance -- if a number of people start autopublishing dash cam recordings, it creates a way for people/organizations/governments to data mine someone else's data for their own surveillance purposes.
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zioneyez/eyeztm-by-zione...
[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto-l...
We're all going to have to get used to being sousveilled.
http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/hacking-for-fun-programming-a-w...
Either that or casinos would change their games.
Anyway, you can already do card counting via computer pretty easily at a casino if you think about it--I'm pretty sure they don't care enough to stop you as long as you aren't obvious and you aren't robbing them.
Captcha playing card decks, perhaps?
And read up on the history of the early card counters and their shoe computers. It's a colorful story.
This could be applied to many types of environments, but I think chaotic situations would be best suited for these types of simple quick focused information overlays that are contextual.
That said, the privacy implications are horrifying.
I guess some products need more care when writing headlines...
Google Glass is something that I highly doubt society is ready for in any way.
Not a personal attack, just a passing comment.