I used Google Glass | Hacker News Reader

I used Google Glass

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199 pointserroca157 comments

I'm not sure why I haven't seen this addressed yet, but doesn't the widespread use of something like Glass portend the dramatic fall of the prevalence of street crime? Widespread use of CCTV cameras are one thing, but millions of eye-level recording devices (presumably automatically beamed to the cloud at some point), would seem to me to be a major deterrent to all sorts of street crime.

I can see this effecting not just things like person on person crime (muggings, rape, battery, etc.) but also burglaries, arson, or any other crime that requires a getaway. Police or citizens could issues statements like "We had a break-in at 9:30 at 555 Main Street. If you were in a 5 block radius of that address, click here to upload your video feed from 9:00 to 10:00."

Obviously this also has terrifying privacy concerns as well, but the extent to which this could completely transform society seems to be undersold here, doesn't it?

To a point this is already happening with cell phone cameras and social media. Lots of people were identified in the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot [1] due to pocket cameras and cellphone pictures/video.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_riot...

Dashboard cams in Russia are ostensibly popular because they help document incidents of roadside violence/malfeasance

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/russian-dash-cams/

Aren't these a requirement for any Russian auto insurance?

No.

I think the concept of mass surveillance of one other has been a concern of wearable/ubiquitous computing for a while now. Google "sousveillance" for more writing on this.

It's awful. For ages, we've worried about The Government mounting cameras everywhere until the only private space was one's own home, and away from windows at that. 1984 famously envisioned a world where this surveillance extended to the domicile, but even then it was stationary and had blind spots.

Seems that in the near future, there will be little need for any of this, and there will be no coercion; rather, most of us will vie for the most powerful, feature-loaded head-mounted camera.

That's not to say that such an invention can or will only be used for evil. But there's no denying that this is huge progress for anybody dreaming of global surveillance or something like it.

I disagree that the technology is currently dangerous as very few people would opt to allow the government to view their video feed. It is as you say - something right out of 1984 - and most people would recognize that and not give permission.

Unless the video is uploaded without the user's knowledge, I think we do not have to worry about government usage of these cameras.

They wouldn't need to give permission to the government. "Get Glass today with 1TB free cloud storage. Access your precious memories from your phone, tablet or television!" Once it's in Google's cloud it's just a subpoena away.

Opt to allow?! What planet are you from?

Reminds me of this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk by moxie. We thought we would get facism, instead we got social democracy.

We will be able to deal with this, though, using appropriate laws. Europe will certainly go down that route, the US will probably follow. For example, using the camera to take pictures or videos that are stored or shared (vs. just processed by some augmented reality algorithms) could enable a small lamp on the frame of the glasses. Just like a video recorder, but without the ability to (easily!) turn it off.

> using the camera to take pictures or videos that are stored or shared could enable a small lamp on the frame of the glasses

> you can see a light in the prism when the device is recording

This appears to already be true of Glass, although recognition of what that light means won't be widespread until the devices are.

> We will be able to deal with this, though, using appropriate laws.

Ah, yes, in the same way that we've dealt with music piracy through law.

More seriously, people are going to have to get over the feeling that recording an event with human memory is obviously acceptable while recording an event with higher-fidelity devices is obviously not. Especially given that recordings can be faked, there is no dividing line between these. If you don't want people to remember something, don't let them know in the first place. Trying to regulate people's memory, whether internal or external, seems like a terrible idea.

> Especially given that recordings can be faked, there is no dividing line between these.

How many of the people you know have ever created a video that seems completely true but is actually doctored? I'm a software developer, reasonably comfortable with technology, but I wouldn't know how, and I'm not even sure if I know anyone I could ask to do it. Certainly not without a fair amount of expense. Contrast that with verbal accounts of "internal memory": even a three year old is perfectly capable of lying, about pretty much anything.

So, if you tell or show someone something privately, you at least have the fallback of denying it if they go and share it against your wishes. If they record it, then in almost all cases people will take it as fact and there's nothing you can do. Not only that, but then they can actually show other people rather than just telling them. For many things, that's a much bigger deal.

Most of the evil that was thought to come from universal recording was because of the centralized nature of the recording. Widespread public feeds do not have the same inhibiting effect on desirable behavior, but might well have that inhibiting effect on undesirable behavior (where global society increasingly defines what "undesirable" means). Universal sousveillance is the best of both worlds! David Brin called this one early.

Being a dissident becomes harder with every passing day.

Getting your ideas out is getting much easier.

Just like you really don't have any control over anything related to your smartphone today you won't have control over your glasses...

The only difference is that google will be the central hub, not your government. And rest assured that the government will have access to it as well. So...

It's like Facebook.

And how wonderful that will be.

If you want a "professional's" speculation on this, read David Brin's "Earth". It's several years old, now, but this type of technology is one of the topics it took in fairly head on fashion, if also somewhat incidental to the main plot.

Or his non-science-fiction speculations on such matters in The Transparent Society. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)

Actually, I think privacy concerns could be alleviated by something like this. It's just so much information, getting anything useful is like taking a sip from a fire hose.

Imagine your hypothetical break in is in downtown Manhattan. Do you really expect law enforcement to sift through video data of the hundreds of thousands of people who fit that profile? How would they know if someone's feed was missing? Basically, there's so much noise, the signal effectively gets lost.

Granted, big data applications could be brought to bear on the problem, but then it's the same cat and mouse game criminals and police have been playing forever.

A lot of security falls into that "firehose" analogy. Your door lock is relatively trivial to brute-force. What is preventing thieves from entering your house is that you live surrounded by other targets.

Problem with the Glass approach is that we now require police to sit through videos, but eventually it will be easier to mine all the data with algorithms, especially if we get better at facial recognition, etc...

Personally, i don't mind a glass-pervasive society. I worry about the fact that all the data goes around a single company's infrastructure and the fact that, for this specific company, hardware is a commodity and data is what they are after.

I don't envision this being a problem at all. First, its easy enough to have a checkbox that says "I saw it, here's the feed you want." (In all likelihood, if anybody committed a crime in downtown Manhattan where hundreds of people were around, the cops wouldn't have any need to ask the public for data anyway.)

If nobody saw it (or doesn't know what they were looking at, as would usually be the case if they saw a getaway car), I still don't think there will be a firehose of data. The feed will already be geotagged and time stamped, making it easy to sift through by hand. Plus, much of this can be automated, even with the relatively rudimentary recognition software we have now.

What I really want is for police officers on duty to be required to have it on and recording all their interactions with citizens.

A very good use for this technology. Officers on duty are not entitled to privacy in my opinion. Everything should be recorded and archived to deter corrupt behavior.

Ask Darien Long, the "badass mall cop." He works in an area in downtown Atlanta infested with drug dealers and he constantly encounters people who want to threaten him. He has said repeatedly that his two most important weapons are his taser and his chest mounted GoPro camera, even though he carries an assortment of weapons that would make Batman jealous.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/darien-long-mall-co...

SF already has a dedicated police dispatcher watching twitter for news of crime.

Sousveillance[1] seems to really answer 'Who watches the watchmen?' with 'We all do'. Ultimately I think not only crime will go down, but also more egregious cases of corruption. This is more harmful to governments in the long run who like a rather tight control over information, as the internet constantly demonstrates. I'm slowly learning to be okay with this aspect of AR.

It's the /services/ that Glass secretly enable for its users that I find far more worrying than mere scrapbooking of your life. Just start thinking as sleazy as possible here, for a moment. If Glass can log conversations, it can also relay conversations to other parties to comment upon.

I just can't stop imagining things like MTurk-like services staffed with popped-collar sociopaths fresh off the set of Jersey Shore, all working with your transcripts to be your 'virtual wingman' as you work your 'game' on unsuspecting people. Ridiculous, but just sleazy enough I could see it.

I imagine if we all really just wanted to depress ourselves today, we could keep coming up with more and more ideas of how to exploit AR for social advantage/manipulation.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

A slightly more futuristic take on AR's sleazy side:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/08/02/sight_a_s...

Watch the 3rd episode in the first season of "Black Mirror" to see some of the downsides of 24/7 video recording.

And to a certain degree the 2nd episode of the second season. Whilst it's not entirely central to the plot, it is touched upon with the pervasive recording via mobile phone.

Avid sailor here, and I like to race, typical race is ~6 hours, but longer races too, 24-48 hours. We are continually evaluating, speed over ground, radios, depth, AIS for marine traffic, tide flow (current), GPS, charts, race course, etc. We have many devices that give us a picture of what is going on. I love the idea of Google Glass as a heads up display [1] for everyday people!

Sure, we use a computer to compile most of this data, but imagine just peering into Google Glass, and having this compiled without moving around!

I'm not too concerned about fashion or image while out on the water. My main focus is winning, or coming close to it! I'm wearing a life jacket, and rain gear most of the time ;) I guess my point is, there is lots going on in life, not just walking around, getting coffee, and reading twitter and facebook. Wear Glass when you need it and it is applicable.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display

A friend of mine has some ski goggles with a HUD from Recon Instruments. They do make sense for some applications. In your case, I hope they're waterproof (but I don't think they are...)

This would be a very good use of it. I do some noob-level windsports and I thought it could be very useful for instruction as well. There a lots of activities (windsurfing, kiteboarding, skiing) that could benefit from the instructor having doing a hangout while you're performing an activity.

As a sailor, you might be interested in Velocitek's products (http://www.velocitek.com/). I used to work for them, although now I have no connection beyond a friendly interest in seeing them do well. Solid products.

FYI there are HUDs that are made for snowboarders and skiers that you might be able to adapt for sailing if you don't want to wait for glass!

Like this: http://www.reconinstruments.com/

Cool, thanks!

Second this; while they don't have a camera or the Glass software, they are goggle mounted (choice of goggles) and have barometer, thermometer, plus are Android devices all on their own. Also, they don't cost as much, plus, you know, you can get them now.

I was thinking that this will revolutionize cycling. Instead of looking down at your mounted cycling computer, you could simply have this built into your glasses (cyclists are almost always sporting sunglasses as it is). Speed, heart rate, cadence, wattage...all of this can be put in front of you, without the need to ever look down, which could increase safety.

I want one of these in a dive mask.

I'm in the Explorer program, but practical issues like fashion/etiquette have had me reconsidering if I'd really be willing to spend money to put a computer on my face.

This review has gone a long way towards assuaging those concerns, but I wonder what they can do about anti-theft. Being pickpocketed on public transit is a very real concern in most cities with >500k people. Imagine how much easier it'd be to snatch a device you're not even holding and (hopefully) blends into your life so seamlessly you forget you have it on. It's been well-publicized that these things start at $1500.

How long is the fashion thing a problem, though? Either other companies (Microsoft and Apple, mainly) will come out with their own glasses, and you'll have safety in numbers, or future iterations will make them look more and more like regular glasses. It's not like the segway, which could never have evolved to blend in.

Smart phones are ubiquitous, but people still get them snatched on BART, and they're actually holding them.

Yeah, I don't have an answer for that one.

How about:

"Ok Glass: Record the thief and transmit to police!"

I think they look pretty sharp. I especially like the blue color, although it definitely stands out a lot--it's just nice to see a product that isn't glossy black or bright white.

The best thing, I think, would be for Google to offer insurance at some reasonable rate, so you can get a replacement if someone steals your device. I'd pay $50/year to protect my $1500 device.

Or have a remote kill switch on the thing. Make them useless if they've been stolen.

It makes a lot of sense to tie the device to a specific Google account, and not allow a transfer until that account owner deactivates it.

But that's something they'd want to start advertising fairly soon. No point in having a doomsday device if you don't tell the world about it.

Pickpockets depend on the fact that you won't realize what they've done until they're long gone. What you're talking about is more like the old 1980's-era-New York-type chain / purse grab, and that doesn't seem to happen as often any more because it's so blatant.

It happens all the time, actually. Michael Bloomberg has attributed the rise in New York's crime rate recently to a rise in the snatch-and-grab thefts of Apple products. [1]

[1]: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/crime-is-up-and...

It depends. They also rely on the element of surprise. Everyone I know who's been mugged or seen one happen on public transit has had something grabbed right as the doors are closing, so the thief slips away before you have time to squeeze through the crowd to run after.

When someone does that, everyone on the subway car sees it. When someone gets pick-pocketed, nobody sees it. So there's a major sampling bias.

That said, I've also seen some NYT articles saying the true "pick pocket artists" are a dying breed, because younger criminals don't want to spend the time learning it and the potential take from a wallet has gone down as folks carry less cash.

When the objects being stolen have GPS, wireless, and cameras, with even a modicum of well-designed anti-theft infrastructure it should really become criminally stupid to steal them.

It's kind of sad that you can steal a smart phone and get away with it.

Anything with an off-switch can be offed. Anything else can have the batter run down.

If it's a safety device on another piece of hardware, like a GPS tracker for a bike, they can always destroy the tracker separately from the item.

Yeah, but people aren't stealing a smart phone to power off and display on their mantle, or trade inert as a representational currency, and you can hardly smash the GPS out of it. People are stealing smart phones to use, or to sell to other people to use.

Local hardware access is ultimately unbeatable, but it should at least be hard.

It looks like Apple and the NYPD have been collaborating here:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4018190/nypd-apple-squad-f...

The problem with a phone is that you can put it in airplane mode and then factory reset it. Also, it's pocketable, so it's easy to hide, even if someone found the general location of the phone.

That depends (somewhat) on the usefulness of a stolen Glass device. They require a network to be useful, contain a GPS chip and so are easy to track down, and can likely be remotely disabled by Google.

If it's done correctly, such devices could be the stupidest thing you could try to steal.

For instance, it could buffer constantly (if it doesn't already, I'm not too sure) the last 5 or 10 seconds of video. If it detects the device has been snatched this buffer is instantly dumped to the paired smartphone (and from there possibly to the cloud).

So unless the thief is very skillful, there's likely a good mugshot of him or her out there.

Everyone keeps saying that it will be weird for people to wear such glasses. I don't think that wearing them is what's weird, I think talking to them is the weird stuff.

I mean phones have been around for ages and some people still don't feel confortable talking in them in public spaces.

Siri is another example, have you ever meet someone talking to Siri on the bus ? on the metro ? on the street ? Not me.

Do you imagine people yelling in the train "Ok glass, show me the weather" ?

I really think the wearable glasses format is doomed. Its just clunky and lacks style.

I was just watching a video of Sony's newest smartwatch and how it integrated with Android. I could see myself wearing that. Glass? Probably not. I'm not even someone who is into fashion. I just want crap on my face and, my god, it looks super dorky.

Google should really make a camera-less version of the Glass.

Portable eye-level display is insanely useful. But if it's burdened with something that is viewed by many as a source of privacy concerns, it would just hinder the adoption. It will make the Glass banned from corporate environments, planes and basically every place that has "no cameras" signs. Like supermarkets.

Every single person I have talked to who has used glass for more than a few days has found the instant camera to be the most compelling feature of Glass. The author of this article did as well! In that context, I can't see how it makes sense to offer a camera-less version, at least not at launch.

> Every single person I have talked to who has used glass for more than a few days

Are you on the project Glass team or something? :)

Have these persons commented on the actual display quality? The resolution, the color depth and so on. There's suspiciously ZERO in-use shots of the display as seen by the wearer. Makes you wonder why.

You can't really photograph it, it's so close to the eye.

You and I can't probably photograph it, but the Glass marketing people should be perfectly capable of doing that, don't you think?

I mean, c'mon, it's an interaction product. With no images of the actual interaction. How odd is that.

What? Have you missed the new Glass homepage? It's filled with GUI images and a video too.

I'd imagine getting an accurate visualization of how glass actually looks (without simulation) would be a bit more involved than just sticking a camera in place of the wearer's head. It certainly seems like the type of thing you simply have to put on to get a sense of how it feels.

No, but I work at Google, and I'm interested, so I've had lots of chances to play with it and talk with people who are on the team or are in the dogfood.

ETA response to the second question: I'm very happy with the display. That's probably as much as I should say, and I don't know the actual details anyway.

It will make the Glass banned from corporate environments, planes and basically every place that has "no cameras" signs. Like supermarkets.

What about mobile phones then?

It is quite obvious when someone is trying to record you with a mobile phone or normal camera as well as it just being plain inconvenient.

Something like Google Glass's eye-level form factor is made to be as convenient, discrete and available as possible.

There's always the low tech solution: place a circle of electrical tape over the lens. Disconnecting the microphone and GPSr would be more involved, but without them the functionality is greatly reduced so maybe that's moot.

FWIW, opaque tape over the lens is the method the NSA recommends for securing the cameras on iOS devices and laptops:

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/os/applemac/Apple_iOS_5_Guide.p...

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/factsheets/macosx_hardening_tip...

If someone is being photographed, is there any way for that person to know that Google Glass is recording video? I would feel really uncomfortable if a colleague had Google Glass on at a meeting or at lunch or in my office, unless I knew I wasn't being recorded. The privacy concerns on this are enormous in my view.

Yes, FTA: As soon as we got inside however, the employees at Starbucks asked us to stop filming. Sure, no problem. But I kept the Glass’ video recorder going, all the way through my order and getting my coffee. Yes, you can see a light in the prism when the device is recording, but I got the impression that most people had no idea what they were looking at. The cashier seemed to be on the verge of asking me what I was wearing on my face, but the question never came. He certainly never asked me to stop filming.

Well that's just awful.

Absolutely. I'd also be concerned about the security--what if an attacker gains access to the camera/microphone without your knowledge? Scary stuff...

From a legal context, is someone's right to privacy thrown out the window every time they go outside? If so, then the legal issues with people videotaping other people would be almost zero, which IMO is kind of odd to think about.

>From a legal context, is someone's right to privacy thrown out the window every time they go outside?

Yes. You may be photographed or filmed not only when you are in public, but when you are in view of a photographer who is on public ground. The exception is when you are in a place where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, or your home.

Source: http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf

I probably wouldn't use Glass in my everyday life, but I totally see it working for tourism. Getting directions is a pretty obvious use case. But learning about what you're seeing is the biggest win. See a building you like? Ask Glass what its history is. At a museum? Get more information about the art you're seeing. Learning while experiencing sounds awesome.

Yeah, Glass + Goggles seems an awesome combination.

But even awesomer would be Glass + Word Lens: http://questvisual.com/us/

(Assuming it works well, I haven't tried it)

Does anyone know if the visual component can be setup on the left side? I'm blind in my right eye and the product would be almost useless for me otherwise.

The most important part of this entire project in my opinion is the ability of the Glass to function as a head up display. Imagine that you can now wear it while driving, and there's an app that will show you everything about the route and your cars' statistics right in front of your eyes. Heck, if it could project the phone's screen on its own display then applications that have already been written get a new life - Think Torque or CarHUD.

Imagine that you can now wear it while driving, and there's an app that will show you everything about the route and your cars' statistics right in front of your eyes

Unless you're in one of Google's Self Driving Cars this sounds like a recipe for disaster. If these things take off I'm pretty sure wearing them while driving will be pretty quickly outlawed.

Why? Seriously wondering here. I don't see it any different than having wireless phone, navigation, radio, and the countless other things we already have in the cars. Main difference is this would be right in front of us meaning we don't have to take our eyes off the road to change the radio station, check the nav or answer that call.

And it's voice activated.

The display in Glass is incredibly unobtrusive. Glancing at a direction arrow (for maps) is no more distracting than glancing at the speedometer--it's less distance for the eye to cover, and the displayed images are ruthlessly simplified so that absorbing them is almost subconscious.

I think the danger comes from people who get text messages while they're driving and want to look at a shared photo. That should be disabled while driving, which glass can make a pretty good guess at.

Doesn't seem like it'd be much different from glancing at the dash, console, GPS, etc.

Some cars, like the Chevrolet Corvette, have had HUDs built into the dash/windscreen for over 10 years now. They're /really/ cool.

Speedo/tach/fuel get overlayed on the bottom of the windshield while you're driving.

BMW, Audi, Merc have them too and while they are indeed very cool, it's an option that costs several thousand and that also requires a special windshield glass (making replacing it more costly).

Have you noticed that we haven't seen even the slightest attempt at a camera shot of the collimated display? It can certainly be done.

Why Google Glass will fail: When normal people who didn't sign agreements discover just how positively awful the "screen" is.

I've tried my best at home with ghetto optics/techniques to get something near a collimated setup. Other than a trip to the optician with very specific values I don't see myself being able to collimate my cellphone's display. Without wanting to spend a couple of thousands AND needing to cut a hole in the dash panel of my car, I think the Glass is my cheapest (terms of money, time and effort) bet.

The thing I didn't get is how you operate glass? I understand you can use your voice, but surly there must be an alternative way: Google voice, as great as it is, is not really reliable enough to use it as its only driver. I also don't think Google will design a device that forces you to talk to it in public.

I think I read somewhere that there was some kind of touchpad on the side? But how do you enter text (like search queries) into the device? Or is this supposed to be operated from a connected smartphone?

Somehow related, I fear that this will take years until it reaches me here in Europe. Google Voice still only knows who's president of the united states if you ask it in english.

Its in the article. Theres a minitouchpad on the right side, you enter search queries through voice, and Glass connects to your smartphone through Bluetooth to use its 3G/4G/Wifi connection.

At least for English users, Google voice commands are pretty damn amazing these days - it's pretty rare that Google Now on my Nexus 4 misses, aside from heavy background noise and folks who decide to start talking in the car when you're trying to ask it to navigate somewhere.

For simple, prompted, two or three work commands, it would work even more reliably.

I also just find it plain weird talking to inanimate objects. I can't bring myself to use Google Now in public because I have this irrational fear of people thinking I'm a weirdo.

I would love to be able to create apps for a device like glass. There could be many vertical applications for it. The ads don't provide any information regarding apps as they are focused in taking photos and videos, doing hangouts and interfacing Google.

Why do people care so much about how they will look with it? I couldn't care less about that.

Because most people care very much about social relationships, and like it or not, other people just naturally tend to be put off by things that look strange or unattractive. You might decide you genuinely don't care what anyone thinks of you, but realistically speaking that's a somewhat unusual stance.

I get that, but the way people talked about it, I though it was something really horrible. And it turns out it is just a little different. I have used some way more strange stuff in this life of mine.

Welcome to the human race.

That's one of the more important factors you have to consider when creating a device that you want to market to the general public. Tons of people, don't wear bluetooth headsets because of how bad they look. Sure there are some headsets that look decent, but the headsets already have a certain label associated with them. Wearing them is not cool. Google has to really do this right from the start or else Glass will just be another gadget that only geeks wear.

Consumer product by the end of this year?! Is there a startup focusing on this?!

They probably want to introduce them in the same time with the opening of their retail stores, and also for the holiday season.

I know these guys are in NYC but I think there's more of a game focus: http://laughingsquid.com/meta-augmented-reality-glasses-allo...

Is it just me or is anyone else bothered by the uneven design where one side has the display and the other side does not.

My mind wants the sides to be the same, they should put a fake one on the other side.

I don't care about the aesthetics but I do wonder about the weight distribution. It looks fairly balanced front to back but all of the gear is on the right side.

Josh says you can't feel it.

that would be a really stupid idea honestly. No offence.

why would that be a stupid idea?

Not really. Having all that gear on just one side looks kinda cyborg-y. Symmetric is more natural.

Also, think of the possibilities for crazy 3D stuff if you have displays on both eyes.

I actually think they should have it mounted on just one side without the rest of the frame. If they can get it stable enough to hang off the side of your head without the ugly looking metal frame extending across the top, I would definitely wear it.

I think having a fake display would be taking it too far. However, having a frame that puts an extra battery and/or the 3G chip & antenna over on the other side would make it nicely less visually lop-sided and have functional benefits.

I think the asymmetric design is very interesting and kind of cool looking. But I agree that it also draws your attention to it. With something like an earring or patch of color on your clothing, that's normal enough not to be jarring, but with this...I think it totally emphasizes how new and strange it is.

> Google’s X Lab initiative, the lab also responsible for... neural networks.

Wait, what? In what sense can google's X Lab be said to be responsible for neural networks?

I think they meant to say "Google's neural network": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_X_Lab#Google_Brain_proje...

It's understandable but unfortunate that Google has not been saying much about accommodating prescription lenses. Some of us wear glasses already and cannot wear contacts. Later releases may support custom lenses, it seems.

The accelerometer in it could be useful from a public health standpoint. Unlikne a phone in a pocket, the head is relatively stable. Glass could detect if someone collapses and then call for an ambulance.

Very nice read, great stuff from the verge as always

Is that really the whole device, or is the processing done elsewhere, like a phone or something? (I admit I only skim read the article)

> losing data or experiencing slow data on a phone put the headset into a near-unusable state

This makes me think that the voice processing is done server-side. I wouldn't be at all surprised by this; that's how Siri does it, and I would be amazed if they managed to fit good enough voice recognition into even a phone, let alone this tiny thing.

Google voice recognition can be done offline on phones now.

That's incredible. I will have to check this out.

Is there some way to activate this option? Sometimes it seems my voice input is bottlenecked by the connection when I'm driving in a low-coverage area.

The headset doesn't appear to be as big as a phone: so I'm wondering whether the headset talks to a phone that then talks to Google, or whether the headset really does the lot.

The device gets data through Wi-Fi on its own, or it can tether via Bluetooth to an Android device or iPhone and use its 3G or 4G data while out and about.

"...this might not be that great at a dinner party, or on a date, or watching a movie."

Well, that's rather obvious.

Have we seen pictures of Glass sans human head before? I don't recall. I definitely agree that it looks like 2013 by way of the 1960's.

This is starting to look at least as interesting as a piece of hardware as it is as a product. Pity I don't have a few thousand dollars lying around . . .

There are quite a few pictures here: http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/

Ah, there they are. Thank you.

" Think of it this way — if you get a text message or have an incoming call when you’re walking down a busy street, there are something like two or three things you have to do before you can deal with that situation. Most of them involve you completely taking your attention off of your task at hand: walking down the street. With Glass, that information just appears to you, in your line of sight, ready for you to take action on. And taking that action is little more than touching the side of Glass or tilting your head up — nothing that would take you away from your main task of not running into people. "

This scares me. I mean, notifications are already known to cause a great amount of problems, it is changing our brains, making our attentions spans shorter and more frail, I already hate even the fact I am carrying a mobile phone, it disrupts me, take away my attention from what I should be doing... SMS to me is even worse, it is very intrusive, distracting, and now that I got used in talking to girlfriends with SMS I noticed that I am getting "addicted" to devices, instead of people.

To me, Google Glass, and similar technology, is awesome, neat, interesting, but dangerous, very dangerous, it might have very serious consequences on how we work as biological beings.

I'm inclined to disagree. When I'm in class or working and I receive a notification I almost always check it. In most cases I wouldn't say that this is because I'm "addicted," but rather because I have a class of notifications that need to be handled quickly (job and fellowship applications, questions from my boss or the PI in my lab, etc). Most of the time I end up pulling my phone out and seeing that it's just a dumb text message or an email from a mailing list. With Glass I would be able to immediately see if any given notification was something that needed my attention.

From my experience, anything that comes as email or text is rarely urgent as we might think it is. If something is really serious, it's either you are working as 911 operator :) or people will call or come in person. You might disagree, of course, but wait 'till you enter the workforce and see how'd you deal with an endless stream of "OMG! Super urgent!" emails.

If you are able to, try disabling notifications on your phone.

I predict there will be regulation of hudphone use, especially where the operation of vehicles is concerned. A notification pop-up sapping a person's concentration at the wrong moment could be dangerous.

That's exactly why they decided to not it in front of your eyes, but just above.

That's not a problem when you got a self driving car.

Not to mention another instance of technology that will interfere with people's abilities to drive. Remember the epidemic of people texting while driving. Now imagine a device that allows you to do that, as well as surf the web, read the reviews of the movie/restaurant you're going to, check sports scores and stock prices, etc. all at the tip of your tongue, and not made illegal to do so while driving, yet.

I think some sort of concept of "attention-condition" levels could and should be applied. These would be like "def-con" levels, but labeling the readiness of one to switch attention, instead of readiness to engage in military action. Saying something along the lines of, "Ok, Glass, set at-con 2 for the next hour," could do things like switch notifications to only a whitelist of people and message types. "At-con 5" would let everything through. "At-con 1" would only show you something from an even more restricted whitelist, or if a nuclear war started. ;-)

Now add in commands like, "Ok, Glass, set at-con 2 whenever I'm driving," or "whenever I'm in this building." And a person's distraction levels can be overall reduced by this device rather than expanded.

Just a random idea: A mode where notifications are batched up until the user is standing relatively still.

Smartphone notifications certainly aren't 'known' to cause any long-term changes in the brain. The number of actual rigorous studies of the subject is tiny and results have been rather inconclusive so far. (It is known that individuals who stringently follow social media while also doing something else can be distracted by it. Fortunately that's not the only application of the technology.)

As for personal issues with notifications: You can just turn them off. I only get notifications for email that my filtering system can't handle, which means the sort of stuff that I would have had to carry a pager for before the advent of the smartphone. I get maybe a half-dozen unrelated notifications a month for spam that my filter didn't catch, and that number is going down. No Facebook or Twitter. No text messages or chats. Just the important email and actual honest-to-god phone calls.

> might have very serious consequences on how we work as biological beings.

its a little late for that.

but personally I liked getting a smart phone because it meant I didn't need to be around the computer and could still handle emergencies or react to opportunity. or just keep connected with people in different continents while walking through my city.

I think these devices are the gateway to getting away from the Television and a Typewriter interface. Its a way to get back to being present but still getting the advantages of being connected.

After watching that video, I will now go around with the UNATCO theme in my head all day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBPK_oXeJgA

I love the picture of the first prototype. Crazy to see how far it's come.

I wonder how long it will be before there are Google Glass porn sites.

(No doubt someone already has proposed it as an "If I had Glass proposal.)

What distracted me the most was not the glasses, but the weird gazing into the distance look that he did when "reading" the glasses. Kind of disturbing.

Exactly, I felt weird looking at the picture. It looks like someone totally stiffening up for a pose, so unnatural.

What happens if someone standing next to you tries to give commands to your Glass?

Is there a way for Glass to determine whose voice is the owner's?

A really interesting product, and pleasant looking laid out on a table, but just horrible as a fashion piece.

"I kept the Glass video recorder going" yeah, these need a manual physical sliding camera lense cover

Is there any reason to worry about brain cancer with this?

I believe this is one of the main reasons why the device itself doesn't have a data connection. Think of it as wearing one of those bluetooth earpieces that you pair with your phone.

Probably not since it doesn't have a 3G radio, but not sure how safe or healthy the bone audio conduction is. I hope Google knows what they're doing there.

If it had a 3G radio, the cancer risk would be exactly the same.

That's far from proven. There have been a variety of inconclusive cell phone studies, but definitely none about having a 3G radio glued to the side of your head and active for most of the day.

I'm not much on telling the future, but I see a huge avalanche of Google Glass stories on the horizon.

I got into stereoscopic photography lately, you know, with two cameras. I'll probably be willing to try Google Glass, but I sure would like a version that captured stereoscopic images. We have two eyeballs, we should capture two image streams.

I hope Google can put OIS for anti-shake and a good camera in there. You're probably going to need as good image stabilizer as possible, as you'll be moving and shaking (when walking) your head a lot more than with a phone that you can still keep more or less still.

I don't think optical stabilization would really do much for full-on head bobbing. It's more for finer-grained movements, like hands shaking. And I don't think our heads actually shake much.

That said, you could do digital stabilization on head bobbing and probably get a pretty good result by jacking up the size of the stabilization window, although you'd lose frame size.

Humans probably compensate for some movements, but they are nowhere near as good at it as birds.

For examples, see http://www.cogsci.nl/blog/bird-brains-and-fish-eyes/177-stab...

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