Google Glass evangelist: It's not worth the headache | Hacker News Reader

Google Glass evangelist: It's not worth the headache

news.cnet.com

69 pointssinghit74 comments

Definitely not my experience, I have no such eyestrain or headaches and this is actually my first time hearing of someone having had this experience. I've heard of people having such problems with video games too but I feel like it's equally rare. I've been active in Glass development (http://openshades.com and http://wearscript.com).

I think CNET is just looking for attention out of a non-issue, I've done interviews with them about Glass before (I won't bother linking, they don't deserve any more attention) and I felt then (and see in this article too) a desire to just dig up any morsel of controversy without a real appetite for balanced reporting. Specifically while being interviewed they dug for red meat that could confirm people's negative suspicions and in my case I had nothing negative to say and they still tried to spin it that way. I had to fight to get them to quote me accurately and they still refused to change blatant misquotes that served their narrative, I can't really emphasize how frustrating it is to have someone twist your words around to try to get a few more people to click on their post.

Tips for anyone doing tech press interviews: choose your outlet wisely (it wastes a lot of time fixing a poorly written article), refuse to do interviews that aren't recorded (either video, audio, or over email) as they will "hear" what they want, and insist on seeing a draft before they publish as a condition to the interview.

It's not all that far fetched to think that it would give headaches to some people. I know people who get headaches from using their smart phone, or computers in general. Why not Google Glass.

The plausibility of an argument isn't a good measure to use because that's exactly the problem I have with this reporting, they come up with a plausible narrative 'a priori' that fits people's pre-conceptions and then justify it with random tidbits they can drudge up. Since people can naturally agree with such statements it makes correcting them substantially harder.

I know literally hundreds of people who use Glass daily and have never heard this once. Now it's on the front page of hacker news as a "thing". I don't doubt Chris is telling the truth about his experience. I'm just generally bothered by tech bloggers (in this case CNET) wanting to feed people intellectual junk food that they are looking for without any real concern for the damage it does to the industry they are reporting on. Reporting on legitimate problems with technology is beneficial because it opens a dialogue that ultimately makes it better, making "mountains out of mole hills" just distracts everyone and creates a fog of confusion.

So you are saying we should not trust Chris, instead we should trust you.

I would surely trust more if the private forum for Glass owners was not private at all, so that we could rely on hundreds of different experiences.

As for being in HN frontpage, good to see people are interested also on real life experience and disavantages of new tech.

That's not what I'm saying at all (quite the opposite, I specifically said I don't doubt his experience). I also am glad that people voice their experiences good/bad with tech, that's what I'm basing my opinion on. My issue is not with anything Chris did, it's that any negative statement is amplified because it grabs attention and positive statements are generally 'boring' as news.

I do agree with your comment about the forum and I've lobbied for that to be opened up myself on numerous occasions. I think it's largely for legacy reasons at this point since people assumed their posts would be private it's tricky to make them more public than they had expected, but there are highly active communities on G+ that are public.

If you don't want the disadvantages of a display and what you care about is the video recording use-case, feel free to check out my product Epiphany Eyewear.

http://www.epiphanyeyewear.com?design

I know self-promotion is frowned upon and I'm sorry for that, but manufacturing & programming this product is all I do 15 hours a day x 7 days a week, so at this point it's my whole life and I feel like this is a relevant opportunity to mention it for people who are looking for an alternative / complementary product to Glass. Cheers!

Pre-order? Do you have a product yet or just a landing page?

Thank you for your interest. They absolutely exist, in fact fashion brand BCBGMAXAZRIA modeled Epiphany on the runway at New York Fashion Week https://yougen.tv/video/beddc3d4-784f-40ab-8066-652ac8e3f694... , and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis rocked Epiphany at a concert in Seattle!

We're shipping now but we're cranking through a long backlog. An order placed now will take 4 or more weeks for us to fulfill. I'm actively working on optimizing our assembly line but this is still an ongoing process.

Neat!

While not a fan of the concept I'm happy to see you're actually shipping product. Thanks for your reply.

Have you considered marketing these to the police departments? Porn industry is another good choice! :)

Haha nice :) Well they're welcome to buy the glasses at our website! Currently our marketing is focused on direct-to-consumer, for recording (1) exciting action footage which people love to watch and (2) personal nostalgic moments such as Christmastime with family

I would actually gladly pay for the opposite - a wearable display without the camera.

Exactly. It baffles me how Google could not see the problems that come with putting a camera in there. I guess its post-privacy corporate culture.

That would destroy the effects life video-logging will have on social interaction.

I look forward to what happens to cultures when it is impossible to be an asshole without ending up on Youtube -- especially violent crime will be impossible, when a large portion (10%+) of the population have logging of what they see.

(It would also need fast uploads, preferably triggered by e.g. pulse increase if not exercising, so criminals can't just destroy the logging mechanism.)

Disclaimer: I don't know if I will like or approve of the effects, just that it is an interesting thought experiment. There are lots of benefits/disadvantages. For positive ones, think Russian car cameras and meteorites; catching one-in-a-billion events. For negative ones, consider when someone is very stressed out because of a loved one's death.

Edit: Thanks eterm, but effects on culture are certainly way too complex to predict.

May I recommend "The entire history of you" one of a short series of films shown on TV. (All 6 so far have been very good.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089050/

"In the future,thanks to the Grain, a chip which can be implanted on a hard drive in the brain,every single action that a person makes is recorded and may be played back."

> self-promotion is frowned upon

No it's not. We're creators here, and proud of what we do. What's frowned on is if you talk about nothing but your product. It's clear from your comment history that you don't do that.

You worked hard to make something cool - say it loud, say it proud!

Thanks! I appreciate the encouragement B-)

It's a shame you have to press to activate the camera. If you could press to save to disk, the last, say 5 minutes of what you saw these would be amazing.

They look good, and you would be assured of never missing an awesome video opportunity.

I have a market research question for you:

The reason we don't currently have this is that smart glasses (being small) can't fit a big battery. Our recording time is about twice that of Glass (ours is 1 hour) but that's still not enough for the all-day recording you envision.

So, my question is, would you be willing to wear a thin wire (slightly thicker than a headphone cable) going from your glasses to your pocket to keep your glasses charged, if it enables this use case?

Unfortunately not. That would take these glasses from the realm of a timeless fashionable item augmented with technology inside, to the same problem Glass and bluetooth headsets have.

The non-symettry and wire would turn these into FBI-Goon-ware.

Edit: FYI 5 people have agreed via up-arrows in the past hour.

Thanks for the feedback and the vote count!

I'm not panacea, but I wonder if a design similar to headsets that drape over/hang from your neck could be used as a (limited) battery pack to Glass and avoid a cable running down to your pocket.

http://i.imgur.com/FPfH9HN.jpg

Cyborgs can't come soon enough. If I'm running out of Juice, just eat a protein bar.

A similar product, that I’ve read about but never used, is the Looxcie 2: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00400O8PO, http://www.looxcie.com/looxcie-2/. It’s not a pair of glasses, though – it’s a small camcorder that hooks over your ear.

How are these different to the cheap "spy glasses" you can get on ebay? Not meant offensively btw, just actually curious!

eg. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-HIGH-DEFINITION-SPY-CAMERA-DVR...

Epiphany's many advantages include:

Epiphany has better video quality, most notably our camera optics are almost incomparably better. The stuff you linked to is all narrow-angle, which makes that video seem like looking through a toilet-paper tube. Whereas Epiphany's field of view is 160 degrees, almost as wide as a GoPro, so it can see everything you see including your hands: https://yougen.tv/video/9b406d41-8e68-43fc-904f-f12ce688f610...

Epiphany has much better frame design & build quality. Our material is TR-90, the highest-end optical plastic for luxury eyewear. We have spring hinges which hold snugly on your face for action cam uses. We also have an adjustable nosepiece to fit everyone's face comfortably.

Epiphany comes with awesome software called YouGen.TV that makes trimming, uploading, and sharing your videos online very straightforward (as few as 2 drag-drops + 1 click, from start to finish).

Epiphany has style - we were featured on the runway at New York Fashion Week http://bestoftheweb.quora.com/Epiphany-Eyewear-smart-glasses...

Epiphany has full support for prescription lenses with the industry-standard bevel.

Epiphany has the very high level of quality control that western consumers expect. Whereas if you've ever tried buying Chinese goods at a very low price there's a good chance that it failed QA and is "B grade" (dead pixels, blurry focus, off-kilter / askew hinges, scratches on the frame, etc).

Epiphany has better audio quality. Our microphone has an excellent signal-to-noise ratio, and we even feature a windscreen foam which filters out wind noise (windscreens are a high-end technique used in music recording studios).

I got nausea from watching that video. It's a prime example of how little those types of devices make sense unless there's a great way of image stabilizing it.

They look like amazing glasses! I find the disconnect between 8 hours of video storage, but only 1 to 2 hours of battery life, disappointing.

I might be more inclined to purchase this as a toy and see what kind of cool stuff I can use it for, if I didn't have to worry about stopping what I was doing to recharge it.

I look forward to seeing the advancements your company makes over the next couple of years.

Thank you!

Typically I don't record anywhere near an hour at a time anyways. My videos are usually between 30 seconds and 3 minutes long. This is for two reasons:

(1) I'm recording content to share online, where people have short attention spans and

(2) it's really painful to edit an hour-long video because that means spending at least an hour watching it

So in a typical day of use I only use up 15~20 minutes of recording time, to capture little highlights of the best moments

I've been using one at our office now for a day. My experience so far: - It doesn't work well with contact lenses, I find it hard to focus on the screen as it's so close to my eyes - You look like an idiot any time you try and do anything. To activate the device you have to tap the side or look upwards to the moon. To take a photo you have to wink. What instead happens is it doesn't recognise your gesture first time resulting in an awkward squinting exercise. - People universally have agreed it makes the wearer look stupid (perhaps attaching it to prescription glasses would be less obvious) - It's actually quite tiring talking to yourself after a while - This thing is heavy. Hurts your right ear after a while - It gets warm, resulting in side-head sweat - If you are looking in someone's direction as you are looking at the screen it creates this almost soul-less void in your eyes, making you look dead. - Voice recognition at least for British accents isn't great so far, but it's not bad

While I haven't used Google Glass yet, I can't imagine being productive (or being able to relax) while using it. I usually try to disable as many potential distractions as possible when working. I don't have mail notifications, I don't have chat notifications, I don't even have a clock that shows the time on my desktop. I'm way more productive when handling those things on my own schedule (e.g., batched handling of email every few hours).

Using something like Google Glass would probably drive me crazy. I wonder how (and if) Google Glass users can get productive work done. Do you wear Glass while you do things such as coding?

Well, I've got the same idea about people who acknowledge every bleep and buzz their phone gives. I'd say it's the same thing, and notifications on the thing can be acknowledged or ignored.

It's designed to be out of your way, when you get a message for example it plays a soft chime that you can hear but nothing pops up. For something to come up you either have to tap it or tilt your head to see what the notification is. With your phone you'd have to take it out, unlock, open the app that made the noise, and put it away. The interface is quite streamlined since it is intended for quick notifications. Of course anything that notifies you of something could be distracting but since it only does so for high priority emails and in a way that's easy to ignore I don't think it is. In your case though, if you specifically don't want anything to interrupt you while coding then I'd just say don't use it while doing that? My personal style while coding is more event based (short time intervals per-task), I regularly pop between different projects and try to keep everything busy all at once (e.g., cluster going full tilt, 3d printer chugging away, teams tasked with work). Glass works well for me, I can triage emails by lifting my head up when I hear the chime without moving my hands from the keyboard while typing. Everyone has their own personal style that fits with the type of work they do and how they like doing it.

I was very disappointed with my Google Glass experience. Incredibly difficult to setup - it never synced properly with my Android devices, couldn't get it to scan my wifi network, and baffling controls.

Add to all of that I never found a single compelling use case. It was an interesting, but frustrating, novelty.

I was ready to go when I signed up to be a beta tester. I was ready to transform my entire, dull life just to seem more active for the beta phase (We want active testers!) but then Google called my bluff and asked me to fork over $1,500. Ouch! I was expecting maybe a third of that.

Did you feel disappointed with losing out on the money, or did that aspect not factor into your afterthoughts much?

I borrowed one for a few weeks from a friend.

Do they feel disappointed with spending all that money? Was their experience the same?

Most likely yes. Otherwise why lend it out for several weeks ;)

I used glass a couple of times and i was underwhelmed by the technology. The screen is tiny and of poor quality. Controls aren't all that great. Battery life is terrible.

So yeah, it's fun and novel for a few minutes, but not much more. I'm more excited by some better use of frame mounted displays like the oculus however.

I have tried the developer version a couple of weeks ago, and while I found it cool at first, I noticed the same flaws that you mentioned, and after using it too much it needs time to cool down which is a little weird at first. I'm actually much more interested in the Oculus rift and the Valve display as well.

Same here. My employer joined the program/is looking into Glass as a potential market.

While my boss was constantly amazed and happy like a child on Christmas Eve, I .. was utterly disappointed. The battery (supposedly fully charged before I ever got near that thing) died a couple of times, the thing got warm to the touch, the display is unreadable/tiny/useless and the controls are weird, if we're friendly here.

At least I could witness that this thing HAS an appeal to some people - I just don't understand why and don't think the technology in its current state is good for anything but novelty anyway.

While I think Glass is a flawed concept, remember this is a single anecdote. This is not evidence of the product causing headaches.

I was wearing Glass every day, all day long; I would wear it to Starbucks; I would wear it to the mall; I would wear it driving, and I would wear it at my office. There wasn't a minute I didn't have it on.

Maybe that's the problem? I wear mine in moderation and I've never had any pain problems with it on.

I'm still on the fence about ordering my Glass. I wear glasses right now and I'm worried that a new prescription (I'm due) + Glass will cause headaches for me. How often do you wear yours?

For a prescription glasses users, aren't they counted on to wear it all the time? (not saying the author is one, I don't know).

I often wear mine for days at a time with absolutely no problem. People are different; saying "never had any problems" really doesn't mean anything in this sort of situation. What's fine for you and I might well not be for others.

I wish google was less opaque about procuring a google glass. I did their begging/twitter spam but was not one of the chosen few. They do not even release projections on when they will release more. They never email me even though I signed up for their list. Oh well....

Want my invite? Let me know how to reach you. (I thought about buying it and returning it after 30 days, but feel like that's kind of a dick move. And no way I'm actually laying out 1500 for it.)

Hey, Yes pretty please and thanks! elias.majic@gmail.com

I wonder about headaches from getting punched by people who don't want to be recorded.

>Will someone now invent the equivalent of a missile shield defense that prevents you from being photographed when, say, you're out on the street?

I've idly wondered about this before. Some form of glasses/hat/other wearable that detect google glasses and direct a laser into their camera. I'd wear those.

Heh. Glass looks bad enough... imagine seeing people walking around with little swivelling laser turrets strapped to the side of their head.

In Cory Doctorow's novel Pirate Cinema those exist as hats, although targeted at stationary surveillance cameras.

Hey, just to provide a counterexample: I wear Glass a lot and don't experience headaches. I also wear glasses all the time. I really enjoy the technology, and I just wanted to say it might be a person-specific factor that makes Glass cause headaches, if it does.

I don't like wearing them if I have a headache already, but they don't cause me to have one. My headache with them is other people.

About your other people comment, it's a two way street. Other people also get headaches from the obnoxiousness of these devices.

If someone is sitting next to me glancing at my smartphone screen, it's usually not a big deal. But if they might be recording my screen, that's more likely to be a big deal. Even though it can be a mix of perception and reality, I think privacy issues are the root cause of the discomfort with these devices.

This is the kind of headaches I thought were being talked about when I saw the title.

When I wear sun glasses for a long period of time I get headaches. I find they restrict blood flow to parts of my head above my ears. So it could be just the physical design/weight/tightness of the frame. There's no way I could wear my sunglasses for 8 hours straight and they aren't carrying any kind of special electronics.

At the same point of time , using glass you need to concentrate on small area to see information on screen(based on glass videos) , so I think its design issue which can be improved .

Consider looking into some larger frames -- I had the same problem, then my wife bought me some sized sunglasses (from Persol) that fit my giant head perfectly. No more headaches.

The second argument he's raising is that the novelty and thus the daily use has worn off.

What I gathered from the first users of Glass who said it was amazing... was also that they were the center of attention all day long, people interested in them and the device, wanting to touch it, etc. If that novelty's worn off, or if people get tired of the attention, I can imagine it's not that great a device anymore.

Welcome to wearing glasses

Have there been many cases of this? I mean, I know people who can't wear 3D glasses for long, people who can't stay in front of a computer screen for very long and so on. So is it a problem with the technology?

On an unrelated note: Does anybody know when Glass will be available in other countries? I've been interested in obtaining a pair for a while but I'm not sure how to go about it.

Interesting. Jeff Jarvis, who's also generally quite gung-ho on Google (and Glass early adopter) seems to have also seen the bloom go off the rose:

"I just called Google begging to get out of +Google Glass." (Feb 4, 2014)

https://plus.google.com/105076678694475690385/posts/4hWFG7XY...

A dude gets two headaches and now Google Glass is a health hazard? Hardly a wealth of data points. Maybe it had something to do with being filmed for 8 hours by a Korean documentary crew - that sounds pretty stressful if you're not used to it. This article is typical cnet link bait.

I used Google Glass once... The migraine set in after only a few minutes. It was horrible.

It felt like I was using a 60 Hz CRT monitor, so I suspect that the problem is that the refresh rate is too low.

Also, the eye strain of looking up in a weird way certainly didn't help!

I just checked ebay and there were hardly any Google Glass(es) on offer. So it seems to me users are not abandoning it in droves. Or is it all offline, the next nerd is already qeueing behind you to take over your glasses?

Or you could not wear it for 8 hours a day. I wear my glasses for half that amount and I get headaches, to wear it everywhere is insane. I'd figure it would be more of a situational thing than anything.

That's just crazy talk.

8 hours a day? If I had a pair, I'd wear them 16-18h / day.

That's exactly what us billion or more people who wear glasses do. Wear them all day ;)

Yup, I'm a glass wearer as well ;).

I think this problem is fixable with technology. Or sometimes it can just happen to a small number of people, just like 3D glasses.

Do we know whether Chris regularly wears glasses or not?

I do not wear prescription glasses.

This google glass. I do not understand.

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