Ok, glass – new Google Glass concepts | Hacker News Reader

Ok, glass – new Google Glass concepts

jackwmorgan.com

89 pointsjackm63 comments

I had some spare time this weekend, so I created some simple concepts for Google Glass. What are your thoughts on the soon to be released device?

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I still don't know.. Google Glass feels like these people standing in the first row in a concert and watching the whole thing through their 2.5" smartphone screen just to share it on facebook. It's just not the experience I want to get from life.

What an interesting way to put it. I've never heard anyone describe it like that.

How would you say its any different from the smartphone addicted users of today? (I freely admit that I'm one of these addicts)

Interesting viewpoint. But the usage scenarios depicted by the author do carry real value, beyond just sharing and capturing photos like translating, GPS capabilities...

Think bigger. Since it's easy to leave the glasses on - and assuming large amounts of bandwidth - everyone uploads their video of the concert to the cloud, from which the algos piece together a high resolution 3d composite which gets streamed to folks with VR headsets in real time.

That's where I see this stuff going in the long term.

Brilliant. The hassle of standing in a crowd without the actual feel of standing in a crowd.

Um... right... because it wouldn't be easier to say... make myself a sandwich if I felt like it when watching the concert from the comfort of my home?

I'm not even sure if this was an attempt at wit or not...

The experience of being in the front row, without the cost and inconveniences of actually being in the front row.

But that's the point of Glass. You don't have to stand with your phone in front of your face to watch the concert anymore. You just have Glass record it. And you're watching the concert as you've always done it. Glass frees you.

Free you it does. But at what cost? With Glass everything I do I'll do with compromise. Divided attention. When I play with my son I'm keeping an eye on Twitter. When I'm at a concert I'm making sure I watch the stage. When I'm visiting friends I'm wondering how they'll feel with a potentially always-on camera photographing and recording their kids.

Attention. Split. Down. The middle.

>With Glass everything I do I'll do with compromise

This is a choice you make. You're making it for the sake of your argument, then presenting the argument as if everyone will make the same choice.

You shouldn't; I won't.

If the tech shrinks enough to fit in what are today normal glass frames, then it will be everywhere. Until then I feel like it's more like the camera was before it merged with the phone: a device you use when you want to capture an experience. Some people would carry their camera everywhere, but most would take it on a trip, to a concert, to a party, etc.

Buy Glass didn't force you to wear it everytime.

You can wear them only when you have something interesting to share.

So does a head- (or ear-) mounted camera stand.

Which also have the added bonus of not inviting 'fiddling'. Glass can record, but then there are the notifications and the 'interactions' and all that, that combine to put the lie to it being any different than staring at the phone.

I think the potential of glass is mind blowing... but it will take a while to get there. Some of my dreamy musings on the future:

https://plus.google.com/117405082753493075236/posts/MTrVALTp...

There's some good examples, but also some awful examples that just play into the hands of the detractors of Glass.

"ok glass, how fast are we going?"

Really? You want to ask Google rather than the driver?

How far to the top of this escalator? Can't we just stand on one for 30 seconds without having to perform some micro-action? And anyway, the app would just be showing some "failed to connect" message here (plus 3 minutes for an escalator to move 197 feet (about 65 metres for those of us in the current century), really?)

I'd halve the number of shots in this pages, but make them the really good ones, the message is pretty diluted, otherwise.

Maybe you're on a train or a boat? I don't understand your criticism.

“ok glass, how fast are we going?”

The picture is in a car, you can see a hand on a steering wheel to the right and in-screen map reads "state road 101".

But the concept is still useful in other scenarios - it isn't limited to cars just because that's where it's shown. Also, a HUD for driving would be pretty sweet, especially for the driver.

My first thought was that this looks dangerous.

Won't it distract the driver? The concept image shows a large blob straight in the middle of the "screen" that would certainly obstruct proper road view.

> The concept image shows a large blob straight in the middle of the "screen" that would certainly obstruct proper road view.

Seeing that the Glass doesn't obstruct the view, I don't see this being an issue. It's merely the center image in a mock up.

Complaining about the location would be like complaining about the location of a GPS device giving directions. slightly off to the side, but still "in front of you."

I like to think that the "we" refers to the wearer and his Glass, at this point they have become close friends and Glass whispers in his ear

we're going 75 miles per hour jack, isn'it it exhilarating

I would definitely buy that.

I wonder how it'd deal with things with double meanings:

"OK, glass, how high are we?"

"You're about a six, give or take."

"you are 43.78% as high as snoop dogg is right now, david"

From what I've read it only accepts certain commands spoken in a very specific way for example "OK Glass, Take a Picture" works but "OK Glass, Take a Photo" doesn't. source:https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/ZLV9GdmkRzS

I would buy the hell out of that. I might add a new concept to the project that whispers 'Anchorman' quotes in my ear in completely inappropriate situations.

> Really? You want to ask Google rather than the driver?

If I'm on a bus, train, or taxi, then yeah, absolutely.

I was on the Eurostar back from Paris two weeks ago when a guy pulls out his phone with an android app telling us how fast we are going. I'd say this isn't so awful. Not everybody drives a car.

Good point. When creating that particular concept, I turned to a friend and said "Ignore the car's GPS and speedometer.". There's definitely better use cases for this kind of thing, perhaps I'll add some later.

"And anyway, the app would just be showing some "failed to connect" message her"

Dozens of London Underground Stations now have WiFi, so you're wrong.

A lot of these applications could be done with a smartphone and VR. Most did not (see the failure of QR codes). I doubt that people will get dedicated hardware to perform this task.

Maybe the reason they failed was because of friction that Google Glass removes.

It's the interface that matters, both hardware and software. You only need to look at the success of the iPad to prove that.

Neat seeing some things I already wrote on there :)

Music playing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrb9Jb5VTLs

Face recognition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0

A friend already wrote the running one too: https://plus.google.com/102638891846233998637/posts/TFqoT49Q...

Awesome, glad to see there are already people bringing it to life.

I got to try out Glass a couple of weeks ago and (for me, at least) there is a huge problem: the display floats about a foot or so in front of you, up and to the right. That means you have to shift your focus from what's in front of you to see it. And not just look to the side, but actually focus closer, which means the rest of the world goes blurry. It would be very hard to walk down the street and be accessing Glass without running into things - the same problem as looking down and being engrossed in your phone.

In the video demos everything (the Glass interface and the background) are in sharp focus so you don't even think about it being an issue. But when you're actually using them it's extremely distracting to shift your field of vision back and forth. Not to mention that when someone else is wearing them it is extremely obvious when they're looking at Glass instead of you.

The technology is amazing, but for me the interface is just too distracting right now. Have the HUD appear at the same depth of field as wherever I'm currently looking and this thing would be unstoppable. But it's going to be quite an engineering challenge to determine where your eye is focused and adjust the display to match on the fly.

My google glass proposal was to use it as a brain extension for things we can't do with our brain. For example - remember some of the foods we eat and how we feel to predict our reactions to new foods and environments - energy spikes, side effects. Our brain can't always do it as we do not know the ingredients and do not remember our metabolic abilities at various outside temperatures, etc. Aurametrix can do it. Interested? Let me know.

Love the workups, I've sent them round our department (TfL).

Thanks. As a daily user of the tube, I would love to hear what your colleagues think.

Sure, feel free to drop me a mail and I'll collate and send back.

That would be great. Thanks, James.

This is one amazingly good project and the demonstrations are really well done which bring the whole project to a forefront. I will be curious to see its usage and adaption upon launch.

The whole project, though, is very much dependent upon a camera, are there other feasible usage scenarios when operating without the camera? Because there will be "vitriol" poured privacy issues over coming months.

Well, you have access to a GPS, have a display and can produce sounds that only the wearer can hear. I can imagine a lot of things that can be done with that alone.

Think Google Now.

The camera just increases the number of (at this time) potential applications.

This mockups are really selling me the whole Glass thing. So many useful features to be developed!

Too bad the API Google released a while ago is so limited.

Except for not having direct camera and sensor access, the API isn't that limited. It just requires a little bit more thought in terms of how you lay out the UI and design how your user will interact.

I've seen some pretty impressive stuff with Glass thus far, and Glass has only been shipping for about 3 weeks. Even now only a small fraction of the 2000 developers from I/O have actually gotten their devices yet.

As Glass seem to use the same SoC as PandaBoard I suspect it should be somehow possible to build a Linux kernel with fbdev, ALSA and V4L2, then run some tiny userspace with X11 and PulseAudio servers.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

Hi everyone, OP here. I'm currently at work so I can't respond right now, but I'll reply to you all as soon as I can. I never thought a quick weekend project would be this popular. I can't thank you all enough for your interest in this. In the meantime, I'm @jckmgn on Twitter. Thanks!

I spent quite a bit of money on corrective laser eye surgery (which turned out great). The surgery meant I no longer have to wear glasses, which I didn't enjoy at all. Sorry Google, put your tech into some other item of clothing and I might be interested.

One feature I'd really love would be the ability to video chat and share views with other glass users near by without Internet.

I'm aware this won't probably happen for another few years at least, but if I could go skydiving with my friend and have a viewport of what he's seeing up in the top right corner, it'd make things really pretty cool

You know, the funny thing is, most scifi movies have something glass like for military applications as opposed to civilian. I could see militaries watching this with great anticipation for friend or foe tags, navigation/waypointing even targeting systems.

Few of these use cases require actually wearing glasses to perform (namely only the ones that require taking a photo). Given that phones might in the future be shrunk down to wristwatch size,it seems a more comfortable alternative.

The translate concept got me thinking - I wouldn't be surprised at all if Google didn't buy Quest Visual/Word Lens: http://questvisual.com/us/

That's actually what inspired that particular use case. I would love to be able to travel to a foreign country and be able to understand every piece of text I looked at. I think it could also be useful for learning a language.

I'd rather not have someone recording video of everything that is going on and even worse having it uploaded to Google.

Imagine the looks if you had a digital camera out like that and were walking around with it.

I may possibly have bad memory or attention span, but sometimes I can't remember various important details from a dialog that happened just an hour ago. Or remember and recognize faces from a yesterday meeting. So I'd really like the feature to record and analyze everything that happens around me, but I'd certainly want keep it on my own (physically-owned) storage and nowhere else.

I actually set my phone to automatically record every phone call I make or answer. Calls are recorded, kept for several hours, then encrypted and moved to my home NAS for a secure long-term storage. Helped me many times.

This may sound like a privacy issue, but I try to maintain reasonably high security (http://xkcd.com/538/ is completely relevant though) and as for possible disclosure concerns, I believe having a recording changes nothing as calls are already recorded in human memory anyway.

(Well, I'm fine with storing almost anything on Google servers if this data's ultimately encrypted on my side with Google not knowing anything about the keys.)

I agree, but you probably walk around with a microphone and GPS that is remotely accessible at all times? which is not as bad but what I mean is that people might get accustomed to it (unfortunately)

Since the introduction of navigation systems a lot of people have absolutely no clue of where they are. They also don't remember the route they took because there is no need to remember.

With the proposed app you don't need to remember a face. Could it be that in the future a lot of people just don't remember you because they can always look you up?

I can understand some fun of this gadget but I don't understand why people think this is "to enhance the world around us". In my mind these gadgets are anti-social. They are there to "share" but forget that "listen to" is as equal important.

There have never been so much lonely people in this age of "social".

Disclaimer: I love what you can do with a computer/device but I don't own a nav system, smartphone or whatever.

On the contrary, nothing has done more to help me get a picture of where things are than GPS, especially when someone else is driving.

Someone is going to be famous as being the first person to die as a result of being distracted by the intrusive UI of their Google Glass. It will make the news. They will be thought of as a pathetic fashion victim. Winner of a Darwin Award.

And then the product will become as obscure as the car radio.

Like the first person to die from texting while driving? That sure didn't discourage anyone.

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