Google Glass Still Needs a Killer App
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
Another app that I expect to see would be some sort of Robocop/Terminator display for law enforcement. I have been to the SHOT Show(1) in Las Vegas, and the number of toys available to LEO is surprisingly large. Things like guns that shoot around corners (uses camera), to small tank like things. Google glass combined with a camera on a weapon would be something likely to develop.
I think once someone like Oakley can integrate Glass into their eyewear make it less obvious that will change some things too. As it stands I have no particular desire for this piece of technology.
(1) Shooting Hunting Outdoors Trade show http://www.shotshow.org/
Google Glass is already dusted. It occupies the very centre of an 'uncanny valley' when it comes to wearable computing. It's simply too creepy to have people walking around with a HUD and and camera next to one eye. And coming from Google no less.
Should have positioned it more as something you wear for outdoor sports, or for specific activities (I know they tried a bit)... but as an everyday computing/sensor device it fails the cultural/social challenge.
Personally I find the applications for a HUD to be endless, given enough time and polish.
A personal HUD with sufficient utility might gain acceptance by people not wearing the device. Coupled to an eye mounted 'recording other people without their consent' device and Google's servers though?
(And yes, my tone is indicative of a luddite stance in this particular instance)
Well, we still have the same complaints, we just find it so useful we've accepted the "cell phone zombification" of society.
HUDs will be the same, and like Bluetooth-enabled earpieces will gradually disappear into barely-visible devices.
As glass becomes smaller, I'd imagine the pushback will abate. But until it seamlessly disappears into frames, people are going to react poorly to what is being perceived as a clearly-worn borderline-spy-camera. [1]
[1] Spy camera in the sense that there isn't much of a physical cue that someone's taking a picture or not. The light is hardly as visible as holding a camera or phone up to your face.
Glasses suck. I wear them since I was a child and I don't like them. I'm planning to get laser eye surgery done just to get rid of glasses. I would be very surprised if suddenly lots of people with good sight are fine with wearing glasses all the time.
Narrative (formerly Memoto) develops a similar pinhole: a clip-on camera meant to be worn all day long. It offers a lot of the benefits that people list (record keeping for legal or personal archives); they might need a button to snap, but they face none of the backlash Google has, while they record a lot more. Their product is much easier to ignore, because it doesn’t sit on your face.
Google could rapidly solve that by adding in the angle of Glass a collapsible pane, a tiny plastic shield that would swipe away & reveal, then back in front of & hide the pinhole; it could even act as a button for most of the camera action.
The immediate need and future for wearables is in the service and manufacturing industries where humans are still required but need to be more efficient.
Being able to see the status of every order, take a pic of every order as it heads out for QA, being able to see the customer placing the order at the drive thru or maybe through an app on their phone in the parking lot or driving up, etc.
People don't have an immediate need for wearables in their casual, everyday life. But they do have a need for those in the service industry to continue to create better, more efficient experiences. And then you have manufacturing and fulfillment facilities where people already carry around small computers and thermal printers for identifying and noting batches and statuses on the floor.
So does the Google Now style "you should leave for the party now", "here are the directions", "would you like to share the pictures", though that's less improved by being wearable, rather than smartphone based.
I want to look around a bustling city street and drink from the fire-hose of information of everything The Internet knows about this area.
(Sure, you could use google glass to peruse yelp reviews for the street outside while you sit in a lobby, but you gain almost none of the sci-fi AR experience)
The apps that justify HUDs are situations where you could benefit from augmented reality apps/guides/references but your hands are likely otherwise occupied.
e.g. mechanics, building inspectors, surgeons, etc.
Also, the Glass API could easily be reused in a car - keep the software, but use a windshield-mounted GPS-style screen/camera instead of the hardware.
EDIT: to clarify: it's not just "hands busy, can't type". It's "hands busy, can't type, but would benefit from concurrent computing enough to justify the cost of a dedicated face-computer"
And in-car HUDs have been available for years and people don't seem to care. Putting GPS instructions up there might get more attention [1], but at the point that Glass is merely beaming data to a remote display, it loses any advantages of its form factor.
The API could be re-used but good luck getting car manufacturers to decide on a standard for such things, let alone a standard from an outside party.
[1] though suffering from the same problem of "browsing a street full of business": how often do most people really need GPS, that marginally-improved GPS access is worth a non-trivial cost?
It's far from a "killer app" but it does solve a problem I've had (you don't need a second screen pointing towards the presenter at a conference, and you don't need a device in your hand to progress your slides during a talk)
https://github.com/yeldarby/glass-presentation-remote
Most of the apps released so far have been of the "because I can" genre. There's not a compelling reason to use them on Glass rather than your smartphone.
Well, except they are Swedish ethnographers so they care about you taking pictures of your baby while you spend a year taking care of him or her (and auto-send cute pictures to the grand-parents) and not US ambulance chasers suing the life out of everyone, or gun-totting libertarian testing Sheriff's patience, but cultural idiosyncrasies apart, the idea’s roughly the same. :)
How about labeling players with their names at a soccer/football game? I'm not that much of a fan, but watching live soccer games is fun and unfortunately I can't recognize the players by their shirt number or field position like die-hard fans can. And this takes away some fun from being on that stadium.
Or how about labeling points of interests when walking around in a foreign city? Speaking of which, Google Maps's walk directions could be interesting on Glass.
Also, I have a bad memory so related to what you've said - I tend to forget names, so it would be awesome if the HUD showed me the name of the person I'm talking with. I wouldn't need much, just their first name.
Basically it doesn't have to be an all creepy all invasive thing. With enough time and polish this could be useful and for tasks that don't intrude on people's privacy. With a red led signaling whether the camera is recording or not it would also take away the fear of talking with somebody wearing glasses. And after all, those glasses aren't the only way you can sneakily record somebody.
Nothing else, it doesn't have to bring up their facebook profile, twitter feed or anything else. It could even rely simply on entries I've entered myself, knowing someone before they've introduced themselves would be creepy. But just something so that when people remember me I don't stand like a dick because I can't recognise their face would be nice.
Add license plate recognition to that (per another current thread). Cars correlate real close with their owners.
Honestly, I'm glad they're concerned about privacy, and hope that it stays that way. I'm not sure that the privacy concerns will ever go away, and worry that there may be a time when leaving you house could lead to being harassed by random strangers because of something written on an online profile.
[1]https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/fAe5vo4Z...
I have a reminder system that I would like to extend and make public, maybe I could integrate it with google glass.
When I am leaving my house, at 8:15am, it throws up the outside weather and any train delays. If it's raining or cold it suggests I grab the umbrella.
While I'm talking to the station, it quickly lists my todo items for the day, so I can muse on them.
Then onto interesting news articles and summaries (I use a trained nltk "filtering" system to decide what I find interesting)
Glass needs to have several todo lists that I can talk to. I often think of ideas on the fly, I just wanna blurt them out with a voice command and have them on the list, dont want to reach for my phone and write it out.
when I meet someone at the hacker news meetups I wanna say "glass meet john" and it will take their photo and write their name. Later after hacker news meetup I can review the people again as a quick slideshow to help me remember their names.
I want a flashcard system, so that I can learn new things when I have some downtime. Waiting in the lift, I'll do 5 flashcards on organic chemistry I'm learning.
I want an opt-in proximity app, where I can say to it "Glass: next time I'm near John, remind me to tell him about the doohickey". When john is within <n> meters of me, it will prompt me. Location sharing is opt-in and can be taken offline easily.
I want to be able to query it for basic knowledge (what's the speed of light?), nothing too complicated just a wolfram alpha API to start off with.
Edit: These are all productivity ideas, there needs to be some creative stuff in there too. I think the first one is a meditation app ... 20 mins spare on the train I'd like to meditate with music and scenes of nature. Maybe 3-4 different scene packs (forest, beach, etc)
Also a dribbble app -- I'm not a designer, but often seek inspiration from looking through the galleries of others ("When one's imagination cannot provide an answer, one must seek out a higher imagination") all of this can be done on the gallery app, and give me time to think ...
this can turn all of those downtime moments into either productivity or relaxation!
I'm sure I'd think of other things once I started using it!
http://livingbetweenwednesdays.com/wp-content/uploads/image/...
A chording keyboard and ssh (I use Emacs anyway). This needs a good battery and enough screen quality for readable 80+ character without headaches.
Then I could go walking with a backpack filled with coffee and lunch... It might be hard to combine a readable screen with a not too high risk for getting my hit by cars.
(Possibly two chording keyboards if they leave the hands usable when strapped on?)
But the main problem I see is to follow a page or two of code/text at the same time as the external world. You probably would have to use "Steve Mann style" opaque glasses and projecting camera output on them, with intelligence for when more world interaction is needed.
(Sorry for being late, I was off for a language lesson.)