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Comment by frisco | Hacker News Reader

I have Glass. I wore it for about a week when I first got it and then stopped; while cool, it's not very useful. It struck me that it's more of a status symbol right now than a legitimately useful device.

I've changed my mind about this a little bit recently: now I use it as a classier GoPro. There are a lot of times where it isn't appropriate to have a GoPro strapped to your head, but there's still good story potential. In most of those cases, the cool factor of Glass lets you get away with recording it.

My friends and I stitch the footage we collect from the adventures in our lives into a video every now and then, and Glass has added a lot to the storytelling capability.

Maybe wanting to record stuff makes me a narcissistic millennial, but it doesn't harm anyone and the videos we get out of it are awesome. I don't know if that use-case justifies Glass, but it definitely has some value for me, even if it's only used rarely.

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You describe exactly the use case for which my product Epiphany Eyewear is specialized.

Epiphany records wide-angle HD video (like a GoPro), has a full hour of battery life, and looks & feels like designer eyewear which hold your prescription. Please check it out, I put practically every waking hour of my life into manufacturing this:

http://epiphanyeyewear.com

We are now shipping consumer units, with approximate a 5-week backlog on orders placed right now.

What prompted that design for the frames? While I imagine you were severely restrained in needing to fit equipment in there, they look awfully like the 3d glasses you get at the cinema to me :)

Very impressive product, regardless

That photo on the site isn't doing Epiphany justice.

Here is a better pic:

http://bestoftheweb.quora.com/Epiphany-Eyewear-smart-glasses...

This is Epiphany at New York Fashion Week being modeled on the runway by BCBGMAXAZRIA.

And thanks!

Cool, I will check it out. Congratulations on shipping!

While it seems like most of HN believes Glass's aesthetics to be garish and unwieldy, they are futuristic and I think that's a positive thing. Some day we might do better, but given the technology available today they are actually very compact. Glass has always felt thin and light to me. (Photos can be misleading on this: how many people here have actually held Glass?) I also like that it's explicit: though most people can't tell when it is and isn't recording (and, realistically, people usually assume that it isn't) I like that it's at least upfront that it might be. If someone asked me to stop I'd take it off. So, there's a balance: I wouldn't use it as a "hidden camera" and the aperture on your landing page (if I'm reading the photo right?) looks pretty camouflaged.

Thanks!

Epiphany's camera is visible in the production version. The site photo is a little outdated, here are newer pics where you can see the better aperture of the production model:

http://bestoftheweb.quora.com/Epiphany-Eyewear-smart-glasses...

http://instagram.com/p/gEi4OyP-40/

About Glass, while I agree that it's impressively miniaturized for today's technology, I don't think any display component available right now is up to the incredibly high standard of style that is required to be on a person's face. It's an uphill battle, and until some future date when a "holy grail" display component arises that can display images on a regular eyewear lens without any bulk, displays will not be stylish enough for people to feel comfortable wearing them.

I'd love to find a way to just be able to checkout a glass for N days.

Say - like for a week or two.

Further - it would be interesting to see glass used in this manner at various locations; say have glass as a navigation/resource location tool in a library, etc...

EDIT: I would love to see a public-service office REQUIRED to wear glass 100% of the time for a period; say a police department - where their every interaction is captured.

To me; this is the most effective immediate social value that these things could provide.

Police already have dash-cams, but when something suspicious happens they either don't release the footage or they claim that it malfunctioned. Similarly, the London trains had cameras on them on 7/7/2005 but the authorities stated that all the cameras malfunctioned.

That problem is easily dealt with, though: if recordings should have been available under normal circumstances but weren't provided, create a presumption to find against the authority/officials who should have been on camera unless there is compelling evidence that the lack of recordings was due to a genuine problem.

Officer accused of police brutality and has no recording without a good reason? Go to jail. Suspect accused of resisting arrest and officer has no recording without a good reason? Automatic acquittal.

These kinds of devices can be quite robust, and it's unlikely that only a single recording device would be present at the kind of incident where this sort of issue might arise. The odds of all of them failing at the same time are negligible under most circumstances. And the idea that it's not possible to detect those failures and recall the affected personnel to replace their equipment is similarly implausible under normal conditions.

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