For Some Would-Be Google Glass Buyers and Devs, Delays May Mean Giving Up 154
ErnieKey writes with a Reuters story that says Google's Glass, not yet out for general purchase, has been wearing on the patience of both developers and would-be customers: "After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.' Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear? Or perhaps it's the invasion of privacy that is deterring people from wearing them. Regardless, Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers. From the article: Of 16 Glass app makers contacted, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects.
Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps on the official website include Facebook and OpenTable, although one major player recently defected: Twitter.
"If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, the chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift.
Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.
Early adopters (Score:4, Insightful)
Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers.
They might not be losing potential customers. Perhaps the market is just already saturated.
Re:Early adopters (Score:5, Insightful)
Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers.
They might not be losing potential customers. Perhaps the market is just already saturated.
Exactly. Everyone who is willing to drop $1500 on a gadget that is nothing more than a solution searching for a problem, has already done so.
Re:Early adopters (Score:4, Insightful)
The fulcrum of backlash against the device in an almost uniform, vehement, and studied way exposing Google's complete disdain for respect of privacy might have something to do with it as well. Pulling back the Oz Curtain and exposing that Google's business model is the complete ownership of your personal information for their profit might be just too much advance with just one product.
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No one owns your information, least of all you. It's publicly accessible information that Joe Schmuckatelli lives at 1234 Schmuckatelli Lane. Dig a little further and you find out that Mr. Schmucklatelli went to a certain high school in a certain town. You don't own this information, and neither do they. They just aggregate it and make it easily available. What's wrong with that?
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They've been caught opening emails and clicking on contained urls. What wrong with that?
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Who's "they"? Google? I'm going to have to call BS here. Please provide a reference. If your email is ever looked at by a human, it would never have any identifying information and the only reason a human would look at it is to assure the ads are relevant or results from an algorithm return are useful and of high quality. These uses are expressly disclosed in the TOS you agreed to when you opted to use their services.
The times Google has screwed up (street view issues and WIFI mapping) they've admit
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Pay no mind to Oligonicella, he's just a raving asshole. All of his posts are very similarly sarcastic and condescending.
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If any URLs were ever "clicked", it would probably be a result of gmail's rather aggressive anti-spam system looking for signs that it's a phishing site.
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If you can't see the difference between the two situations and the social/privacy problems involved, you're not thinking hard enough.
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I was incredibly interested in Google Glass but when I found out it would be uploading everything to Google; that they were essentially useless without sharing everything with Google, I was immediately and completely turned off.
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I would have bought one ages ago if they'd fucking sell them outside the US.
They should have realized that Americans would be the least receptive people on earth to this thing.
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It's a combination of this and the cultural offensiveness of the device. Google Glass as it exists is functionally nothing more than wearing a recording device and tiny external screen attached to your head for $1500, wearing one is like walking around very conspicuously pointing a camera at everyone near you all the time. Now compare that with the Eyetap, which has been around for decades at this point. The Eyetap actually processes and enhances your vision in realtime giving you a HUD or displaying inform
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Surely not both of them!
Re:Early adopters - Glass is another Segway (Score:2)
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Re:Early adopters (Score:5, Informative)
As a GG app developer, let me give my perspective. There are plenty of potential applications, and few of those involve wandering around in public while wearing them. I developed an app for classroom management. The teacher wears the GG, and sees a "popup" whenever a student is stuck. The student could indicate this by using a clicker, or it could be indicated automatically if the student has several consecutive failures while using computerized learning, such as Khan Academy. This would be most useful for flipped classrooms [wikipedia.org] so the teacher does not need to return to the desktop dashboard between helping students, but can go from student-to-student-to-student. I also worked on a warehouse app, that would guide pickers to the destination rack and shelf. But I gave up. The problem is that GG seems to be stuck in "beta" forever, with no roadmap to ever turn into an actual released product. It is supposed to only be for "developers", and only for a price of $1500, which is way, way too high for broad applications. Google needs to get this product out, to the general public, at a reasonable price (~ $100). If they don't, it is going to die, or be replaced by a product from a company that knows how to ship a product.
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As a longtime GG user [thenakedscientists.com], perspective is a dim and distant memory.
Re:Early adopters (Score:4, Insightful)
The product; just like smart watches; is currently impossible ... until we get battery technology which lets you have at least android phone computing power
Not true. Battery life isn't that much of an issue. GG is not standalone. You use it with another device, and any heavy computing can be offloaded to a cellphone, and from there, maybe, to a server. Many people think that GG is "always on" and displaying/recording continuously. It doesn't work that way. The display doesn't use much power, and power can be reduced even more by dimming or using the display intermittently. In my applications, the display only turns on when there is a new notification. The notification is on for a few seconds, and then fades. The user can then speak or tap the glasses to light it back up. A user can go all day on one charge.
It seems to me that Google really hasn't figured out what to do with this device, or how to attract developers, and they seem to have no idea how to get people to accept it. The anecdote in TFA about Sergey wearing it to the beach is indicative of the problem. The beach is probably the place where people would be most offended at the perception of being recorded, and I can't see any possible practical use for it there.
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Maybe there is is highly specialized use for hands free imaging for some people, but thinking that you will have hands free use of your cell phone for texts, emails, calls etc. is totally wrong.
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See, this is what turns me off. I don't want to have to use another device! It should just be a standalone device. I don't want to carry and be near another device. Also, I do not need to be online all the time. Hence, why I still wear and use my Casio Data Bank 150 calculator watch!
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I do not need to be online all the time
You're probably not the ideal Google/Apple/Facebook customer then.
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Correct. However, I am an Internet addict/junkie but care about my privacy.
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The product; just like smart watches; is currently impossible. Smart watches are impossible products (as opposed to geek toys) because the minimum battery life for something that you wear all day and don't want to put down is probably around six months and even a year is probably a bit short.
Quite frankly, that's bullshit. I charge my cell phone every night and if there was a tangible benefit I'd just as easily plug my wrist watch in as well. The problem is that a watch has practically no screen real estate to speak of. Either the controls are microscopic, the choices ten levels deep or you're swiping and scrolling like crazy to find what you're looking for and your finger covers half the screen. Meanwhile in your pocket you got a 4-5" device that takes a little bit more effort to pull out and
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If only there was a way for watches to capture & store energy from something like the wearer's movements or - let's really push the envelope here - light.
Wouldn't that just be dreamy?
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If only there was a way for watches to capture & store energy from something like the wearer's movements or - let's really push the envelope here - light.
Wouldn't that just be dreamy?
I think it's just within the bounds of plausibility that this has occurred to someone already.
In the meantime, I'd nip down to the patent office sharpish, with a couple of pix of current kinetic/solar watches, but with the maker's name over-written with "internet watch" or something.
Re:Early adopters (Score:5, Insightful)
"This would be most useful for flipped classrooms [wikipedia.org] so the teacher does not need to return to the desktop dashboard between helping students, but can go from student-to-student-to-student. "
Or...and I know this is a shocking concept...the students could raise their hands when they need assistance?
This is what the OP meant by a solution in search of a problem.
Re:Early adopters (Score:4, Insightful)
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For the price you can get instant messaging software for the teacher and she can pull up a cue on her tablet computer, if they're too afraid to raise their hands.
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If you cannot either admit your ignorance or reasonably display your knowledge, you have a social problem.
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the students could raise their hands when they need assistance?
There are many extroverted students that will raise their hand just to get attention.
There are many introverted students that will not raise their hand, even if they are failing the class.
Clickers have become popular precisely because they provide a better, less intrusive, way of signaling the teacher.
An automatic system, based on actual comprehension, would be even better.
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I don't sit at a desk all day. I run around. Charging a phone / watch / whatever multiple times per day is a non starter. My iPhone 4S is barely tolerable. On long days it gets dangerously close to dead. And yes, I can and do charge it while I'm desk bound, but I'd rather not. There is a balance. I don't need a week, I do need 48 hours. YMMV.
The bigger problem is that, if we ever get battery technology good enough to run Google Glass for a week, it's going to have an energy density on the far side
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I charge my android phone several times per day and I don't consider it an inconvenience at all.
I can just about cope with charging it once a day (overnight) but even that would be a problem if I moved around much, or used it much during the day.
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Clickers are bad enough. Are they too lazy to raise their hands these days?
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Clickers are bad enough. Are they too lazy to raise their hands these days?
It is often hard to attract a teacher's attention, especially when the teacher is focused on the whiteboard, or just not looking at the right area of the classroom. Students that raise their hands are not always those in most need of help. Some students will never raise their hand. I went from kindergarten through college, and the number of times I raised my hand in class and drew attention to myself during those 17 years was exactly zero. I would read the book, ask a friend privately, or ask my parents
Pfffffffff (Score:2)
It doesn't show.
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It is often hard to attract a teacher's attention, especially when the teacher is focused on the whiteboard
It's not that hard to raise your hand when appropriate or to say something.
or just not looking at the right area of the classroom.
You're going to see it in your peripheral vision.
Some students will never raise their hand.
And is there some data to suggest that such students would use a clicker instead?
This whole thing seems like an exercise in keeping introverted students introverted in an effort to sell product.
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If your system already has the student using a clicker, why would the teacher need the Google Glass?
The clicker requires the student to click. It doesn't alert the teacher to a student that is silently struggling. Khan Academy provides a dashboard system, that shows the teacher each student's progress, and highlights those that have several consecutive wrong answers. But it requires the teacher to go to the desktop, and update the dashboard. My app takes the data from the KA dashboard, and provides real-time heads-up notifications.
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There is also some value in teaching students how to know when they need help and how to ask for it
Well said. In the real world, knowing your limitations is a priceless asset. I hate it when people either refuse to ask for help, or else just sit there and expect you to telepathically know they're struggling.
There is never in any shame in asking for appropriate help.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Just because you can (Score:3)
There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, the chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms
And why do we need games for Google Glass?
Google Glass is a good example of the old saying "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD."
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Well gee, what else do you expect people to do when they're driving?
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And why do we need games for Google Glass?
Well gee, what else do you expect people to do when they're driving?
Watch pron, obviously.
It's a combination of problems (Score:4, Insightful)
The market is probably saturated, but only because the item is only appealing to a very small market.
First and foremost, you need someone who'd want an always on cellphone display mounted right in front of his eye. Now, I could see me wanting this. Granted, I've been into wearable computing for a while now, but I could well see a lot of people who can't take their fingers off their cellphone long enough to hold down a sensible conversation to want a HMD. That certainly would not be the problem, I can well see a lot of technically interested people wanting something like this. And if the "group selector" ended here, there would actually probably be a huge market for this item.
Then there's the price, which pretty much eliminates the under-21 crowd, arguably one of the biggest early adopters today. Face it, if some cellphone has some new feature, rest assured some high school kid will bind itself to some cell company for longer than their average relationship lasts so they can afford it. Since there is no such thing with Google Glass and the item costs quite a pretty penny, what's left after these two are technologically inclined people with quite a bit of money to spare on what is essentially a novelty luxury item.
The last nail for the coffin is Google itself. Google now doesn't really have a reputation of not wanting to know everything their customers do. That's basically their business model. They sell information. And with Google Glass you'd not only not know where it's been, you also won't know where it is going. And even if they themselves don't really care about privacy, it also means that their friends and collegues must not care about it, or else ... why bother buying something that you can't really use as soon as anyone is nearby? Because the VERY FIRST thing I'd ask a Google Glass user to do is take the thing off while I'm around. Alternatively I'll remove it from his nose.
So the market is for technically inclined people who have good enough jobs to afford this luxury who are neither worried about their privacy nor have coworkers or friends who are.
And that market is REALLY tiny.
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Internet tough guy wants to remove my phone from my pocket? You do know that a cellphone located inside a pocket cannot record any useful video, right? It must be taken out, turned on, and aimed at your tough face before I can record you. At which point it will be obvious to anyone that I'm recording.
On the other hand, a Google Glass wearer is in position to record at any time and it's impossible for others to tell whether they're being videoed or not, aside from an indicator light (which may or may not be
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Nice non-sequitur.
Always a bigger fish. (Score:2)
If you don't like it, you can take it up with the fact that I'm 6'3 and have done roofing, likely can prevent you from removing any of my technology and it would be at your own peril.
"bouncer"
1)The big fat guy standing in front of the doorway of stripclubs. He doesn't want any trouble, but if you hit him, he has every right to pummel you to mush.
They also guard doorways to celebrity parties. The rich guy bouncers are less round and more built, and can easily throw you out of a bulletproof window, but can't overturn cars.
2) A bouncer is the first face you see when entering a bar, pub, or night club. They tend to be large and muscular. their job is to make sure that the bar is safe
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If you don't like it, you can take it up with the fact that I'm 6'3 and have done roofing, likely can prevent you from removing any of my technology and it would be at your own peril.
I love watching people square up to a fight on slashdot. I like the non-sequiteur about roofing (I actually had my house re-roofed recently and the roofer was distinctly normal sized), but bragging about your size and prowess makes me imagine you as a 5'6" 90lb guy, who's probably petrified of going half way up a ladder.
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Could we have a business meeting? Preferably all day, every day? You see, I'd LOVE to turn that bugging device off, but my boss insists that I have it with me.
That's maybe what I forgot to write: Google Glass doesn't have any kind of corporation backing that forces people to use it, like it or not.
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The problem with GG here is that by definition it is always visible. And it will never be as much a status symbol as the cellphone was in its early days when it was a mark of someone being important 'cause he has to be reachable all the time.
Cellphones went through a rather lengthy development phase, and only recently they have become the surveillance tools they are today. GG was this right from the start. Do you think cells would have such an acceptance in business circles today if they had been a security
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Hey, we're all right with making a distinct discrimination between two near identical problems, demonizing one while accepting the other. From various diseases (just think about the insane difference made between swine flu and common flu, despite not really being THAT different in impact... ok, actually your chance to die of the former was by some margin lower than the latter despite the general panic).
We're great at making mountains out of molehills that we don't really know that well while we're quite ok
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the fact that I'm 6'3 and have done roofing,
I read that as "63" (as in years) and couldn't for the life of me work out why it was supposed to sound tough.
"I'm 85 and used to play football, so don't mess with me, young man".
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well I am 6"6' and have done fencing for half my life as well as kick boxing, and yes I would happily remove your technology from you should you decide to use the highly invasion google glass around me.
Hint for internet tough guys: don't boast about your fencing skills unless you habitually wear a sword.
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That's basically their business model. They sell information.
Well, that's what people believe their business model is, even though it's not. Google sells eyeballs, not information.
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I would pay 1500 for the device if all it did was cause you to try to knock it off my nose. I like fighting, and a self defense defense is gold.
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I don't fight. I have people for that.
Yep, tired of the wait (Score:2)
I had initially been interested in Google Glass initially as well, though I didn't really expect to buy one soon. I figured I'd wait a generation or two and for the resolution to be Full-HD and all the kinks worked out. I had expressed my curiosity about Google Glass to my wife who flat out said no way because of the nerdy look in public. Still I followed the progress passively and it never came and it never came. I figured we be on generation 3 by now.
Now Oculus Rift is on my radar – my wife is l
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I can't tell you how awesome it would be to have a 360-degree desktop.
Can you tell me how awesome it would be to have to look at it through a big box on your head that creates false perspective?
How about a trackball next to your other input devices that scrolls you around a desktop like that?
Camera killed it (Score:2)
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Just have one ap
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Style isn't even in the top 5 problems (Score:3)
Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear?
Partly. They aren't stylish nor are they useful enough to overcome that deficit. But that isn't really even among the biggest problems with Google Glass.
1) People who don't need corrective lenses don't generally want to wear glasses. I wore glasses for 17 years before I had lasik and there isn't a way in hell you would get me to wear glasses again except for safety, eye strain or vision correction.
2) People don't generally like to use voice interfaces particularly in public. You don't see a lot of people using Siri out in public so why should Google Glass be any different
3) People are creeped out by the privacy issues even if many of the critiques aren't really justified.
4) They don't fit gracefully into most people's lifestyle. Much of the functionality of Google Glass is already covered by smartphones. Why do I need this conspicuous and much more annoying device second device to do something I mostly already have? It doesn't scratch any itch I have.
5) The best uses for it are more industrial - particularly augmented reality uses. Think work instructions while building a complicated assembly. But Google seems to largely be ignoring these.
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5) The best uses for it are more industrial - particularly augmented reality uses. Think work instructions while building a complicated assembly. But Google seems to largely be ignoring these.
Exactly. Do your gen I stuff in a smaller environment that is less price averse. The problem is that it doesn't fit Google's business plan - not enough 'customer' info in a few, likely secured, industries. Google should spin it off to another company that can figure out how to make it work on it's own.
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" I wore glasses for 17 years before I had lasik and there isn't a way in hell you would get me to wear glasses again except for safety, eye strain or vision correction."
So under what do you file "bright Sun" or "Style"?
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So under what do you file "bright Sun" or "Style"?
Google Glass is not made for bright sun (though they could fix that I guess) and they sure as hell aren't stylish. They look like the geeky research project they are.
If you have to wear glasses for a functional reason then it is fine to worry (a little) about how they look. Anyone who wears glasses purely for style without a functional reason is a douche.
Oh and bright sun = eyestrain. Seemed obvious to me...
Twitter may be right, even though... (Score:2)
Twitter itself is becoming an advertising / corporate platform, perhaps not the social media magnate it once was. I'd argue that, if Glass is dead, so is twitter - or at least heading that way, and that perhaps while their assessment holds true, maybe they need to rethink their own business model.
This is an opportunity for google (Score:2)
Delays always mean some will give up (Score:2)
It is an axiom of sales that delays will always mean that some will give up. Whether it's a 5 second wait for a web page to load, or a 5 month wait for a new computer, a delay always means you will lose some customers.
Google glass WITHOUT camera (Score:3)
Google needs to make a glass without the camera. One that is OBVIOUSLY different to the average person so they do not mistake it for the one with the camera. That could take some of the stigma away from the device. It could look much more like a regular pair of glasses. Sure, half of the applications need the camera, but many ideas do not, and it would reduce the cost. The technology and the software could mature without the social stigma and would have a good chance.
They make me angry (Score:3, Insightful)
So my friend called them glassholes loud enough for them to hear and they didn't even flinch. Obviously not the first person to call them this. When people regularly abuse users of a product then maybe there should be a rethink of the use of that product.
I don't mind someone biking by with their gopro seeing that not every moment is being made available to a faceless corporation. Unless I burst into flames while the gopro person is going by the footage will doubtfully be uploaded. But with any google ass type technology there is a huge chance that some software is able to make a note of my face, place, time, the faces around me, etc. Then this can easily be used to compile a stunningly comprehensive summation of my life. If only 5% of people were wearing them then 1 in 20 people that you pass would be able to note your presence. Without any other information about me that would allow google to compile a map of where I live, where I work, where my friends and family live, who I am in a relationship with, that I have kids, where I shop, where I vacation, everything. Then as this technology gets better it could even start going nuts (and it isn't like google doesn't love more information) and gathering what I wear, what I am buying, etc.
While google glass isn't anywhere near that yet, these things are very close, and why wouldn't google gather this fantastically valuable information. They can swear on a stack of bibles that they won't be evil, but I don't remember ever hearing of google's massive storage being audited. Not to mention that they could use familiar weasel words like "Only collecting meta data."
So I for one am extremely happy to hear that this project is falling flat on its face.
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I don't mind someone biking by with their gopro seeing that not every moment is being made available to a faceless corporation. Unless I burst into flames while the gopro person is going by the footage will doubtfully be uploaded.
Think again — people are uploading that footage even when it's boring. Just take a look at youtube. Some guy uploaded a video of him riding a motorcycle over the 175 Hopland Grade slower than I've whipped it in an Astro, and I told him so :) But seriously, people are uploading every total yawn of a video they shoot, and other people are watching them and even giving them the thumbs-up.
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But I wouldn't live in a city where they are prevalent.
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Because, while doing do much, it does so little... (Score:2)
Glass is a nice thing. It's also frustrating as all heck in it's limitations. I want the text on all the signs I read auto translated for me - and overlaid in such a way as to hide the original language text. I want to see the arrows on the ground/roadway showing me where to turn left, not get a tiny message up above my field of vision.
I want it to give me full on AR, not just auxiliary information.
Me, I'm hoping that Meta can get the price of these down a bit: https://www.spaceglasses.com/ [spaceglasses.com]
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I was hoping that Meta's device would be an Eyetap [wikipedia.org], every time I see someone say "Me, I'm hoping..." in one of these discussions, that's what I'm hoping for. Simply not having to correct for parallax would be better than clever schemes which don't always work well. Although probably at this point we'll have to wait for it to be implemented as a contact lens
Doomed (Score:2)
Google Glass was doomed the second the term Glasshole was coined. They need a complete rebranding for these to be successful. I also think they should have promoted them as utilitarian objects instead of fashion items.
Let me guess (Score:3)
Couldn't be something to do with much of the world now hearing 'NSA' whenever anyone says 'Google'?
No-one wants the NSA watching everything they do when a Glasshole is nearby.
Why I gave up (Score:3)
I bought a pair, hoping to explore using it to keep notes for my slides and help track time when I'm doing a presentation and the like.
I bought it right after Facebook did the Oculus Rift acquisition, when I canceled my dev-kit order, and I wanted a thing I could fiddle around for development purposes.
So far in exchange for my trouble, I mostly get to stop and answer questions about Google Glass several times a day when I wear them. That much isn't so bad.
Now I have a device I wear that has to maintain a constant link to my phone, draining its battery, so now I have to recharge two devices faster and I can't use it as 'more convenient' navigation without getting out my phone anyway to go to the app to turn on GPS, so its day-to-day usage is just flat-out painful.
Oh, and I have to carry an extra pair of glasses, despite having switched the Glass to prescription lenses.
Why? If I walk to work, which takes about an hour and a half, if I use the glass at all during the trip, it is typically out of juice by the end of the walk, so now I have to plug my glasses in at the office, which means I need to get out another pair so I can still see.
And I better remember to carry the case, because if I go to the movie, the MPAA will get me arrested if I forget and wear them in, but since they don't fold up, I have to choose between a huge hard case or a big bulky pouch I'm constantly worried will go crunch.
Oh, and I'd better switch to my real glasses when I drive, lest I get arrested for that, too.
Oh, and if I walk by a school I get paranoid parents who think I'm out to take candid shots of their precious children, despite having a third party lens cap on.
I've had some punk kid try to rip them off my face and run on the T, so there is an apparently increased theft risk.
Now, because they polarize the glass in the prism they use to reflect light to your eye you can't get the lenses polarized or treated with any sort of anti-glare, but if you walk around in sunlight light reflects off the bottom of the prism into your eye constantly.
There is a little bit of silver mirroring that is just deposited on the end of the prism -- not covered with anything. I went for a walk in Australia on a humid, high UV day. It just flaked off, which effectively dropped my screen to about 10% brightness. They did replace it, but it meant a few weeks without a device, during which I decided I didn't really miss the inconvenience.
So in exchange for $1700 or so (after adding prescription lenses) I get to get called a glasshole by the internet and get treated as a even evil child-stalker road-hazard pirate pariah by society, and have to carry another pair of glasses anyways.
Now that's what I call abandonwear (Score:2)
Badoom-ching!
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Batteries are the problem (Score:2)
I think we do have the technology, just look at the size of a raspberry pi.
Doesn't matter. The problem isn't really the electronics. The biggest technology problem is the battery. We simply do not have battery technology that is sufficiently advanced to make a lot cool ideas practical. Hell we can't even make a smartphone that lasts more than about a day or two of heavy use.
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Actually I'm not sure if I want to wear advanced battery technology on my wrist or my face if it is storing sufficient energy to easily rip off my hand or my head when something goes wrong.
Why not? You sit in a car that has fuel with 270 times [wikipedia.org] the specific energy of batteries and FAR more Kgs of combustible material. You could increase the energy of your watch battery two orders of magnitude and still not get to gasoline.
A lithium air battery has half the specific energy of wood. I wouldn't worry too much about a better battery.
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Actually I'm not sure if I want to wear advanced battery technology on my wrist or my face if it is storing sufficient energy to easily rip off my hand or my head when something goes wrong.
Why not? You sit in a car that has fuel with 270 times [wikipedia.org] the specific energy of batteries and FAR more Kgs of combustible material.
That comparison doesn't really hold. For one thing, liquid gasoline isn't very combustible. What's combustible is the right mix of evaporated gasoline and air, as it briefly comes into and goes out of existence inside the engine. /directly/ strapped to my wrist or face..
Liquid gasoline inside the tank is remarkably stable, which is why we don't see cars randomly going up in flames. Plus, it's not
A lithium air battery has half the specific energy of wood. I wouldn't worry [...]
Well, TNT has 1/5 the specific energy of wood.
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It's easier to hold ground than capture it. If you can ship a product, even if it's *cough* a bit sub-optimal, the niche is no longer empty.
That alone could put potential competitors off.
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And outside of a minuscule group of techno-hipsters, the general population couldn't give a shit less.
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Well it might if this was cheap commodity hardware. It's not.
Ridiculous that they would expect you to pet this for beta.
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Wearables just aren't ready yet for mainstream consumers. Tablets existed way before the iPad and worked relatively well, but had many shortcomings that prevented them from becoming synonyms with day to day life (battery life, desktop interface, too heavy and bulky, wifi infrastructure, to name a few) the iPad came at the right time and became a massive success. Google are being pretty smart I think, they could be selling it for 200$, lots of people would flock to buy it, but that would be stupid. They know
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3D printing is past peak, Glass is at the peak and heading down, private space never made sense.
The next innovations will be social, and maybe biological. But one thing I've noticed about so-called technophiles: they completely fall apart when faced with the possibility of extending human life. They turn into the crustiest pessimists the planet has ever seen.
Perhaps because human biology is one hell of a lot more complicated that microprocessors and plastic spoons? We've come a long way in the past 100 years - we still have a much longer way to go. We will get there (and what a mess we will make of it) but neither you or I will be alive when it comes about.
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We will get there (and what a mess we will make of it) but neither you or I will be alive when it comes about.
No, but I will be.
We don't need to magic up immortality tomorrow, we just need to increase lifespan by one year every year.
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We don't need to magic up immortality tomorrow, we just need to increase lifespan by one year every year.
That's a bit like saying we don't need to magic up near light speed travel tomorrow, we just need to increase our capacity by 1% a year, and in 99 years we'll be at 99%.