Google Glass Makes an Official Return (cnbc.com) 106
Alphabet's Google has officially launched the "Enterprise Edition" of its smart glasses hardware, which is now available to a network of Google partners. From a report: The company's developer partners range from logistics and manufacturing to patient care. These apps have long-been involved with Glass through the business-focused "Glass at Work" program. In a blog post Tuesday, Google Glass project leader Jay Kothari said partners such as GE Aviation, AGCO, DHL, Dignity Health, NSF International, Sutter Health, Boeing and Volkswagen have been using Glass over the past several years, and make up just a sampling of 50 companies using the wearable. Wired said several of these companies found the original Google Glass to be very useful in factories and other enterprise environments. Google discovered this and began work on a product built by a team dedicated to building a new version of Glass for the enterprise. According to Kothari, the Google Glass Enterprise Edition glasses are lighter and more "comfortable for long term wear." They also offer more power and longer battery life and, offer support for folks with prescription lenses, Wired said. The glasses, too, are stronger and do double duty as safety glasses. Further reading: Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act.
Ah the return of glassholes (Score:1)
Re:Ah the return of glassholes (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly though - the workplace, and particularly manufacturing and industry, is where this product makes a whole lot of sense. Do you really want people reaching for a phone or tablet (or even looking away from what they are doing) when operating an industrial press, or some other dangerous machinery? And, because this product is likely completely controlled by the company that provides it, the worker wearing it is far less likely to be distracted by non-work text messages and other banal content not related to the hazardous activity they are performing.
Google Glass for every day knuckleheads on the street just wasn't a useful thing, which is why it died. It was a solution looking for a problem that nobody had. This seems like a good use for that R&D, especially if the companies using it are seeing marked improvements in productivity and product quality, which TFA claims.
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Honestly though - the workplace, and particularly manufacturing and industry, is where this product makes a whole lot of sense. Do you really want people reaching for a phone or tablet (or even looking away from what they are doing) when operating an industrial press, or some other dangerous machinery?
What you said is a nice idea but it isn't really practical or safe to use in that environment. I do with lathes, mills and welding and you wouldn't even use these glasses while operating a machine. If I have to look at a design I step away from the machine and check the design. I'm not going to have a whirly machine of death running while I am looking at the design.
Re:Ah the return of glassholes (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's your particular case, but not everyone's. Here are some things that could work:
- A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.
- A factory worker could have a list of steps to follow to complete an assembly
- A floor supervisor could monitor progress of the line before or after their location
- Even you could step back a safe distance, triggering a reappearance of the display that you can check, which then disappears when you approach the machine to ensure that you have no visual distractions.
All of this could also be recorded or streamed for training, troubleshooting, or performance checks.
Glass was just ahead of its time and suffered from being the first to market, as many such efforts do. The same privacy complaints occurred as soon as cameras began appearing in phones, and got louder as smartphones became more common. Underskirt photos led to attempts to require that all devices make a sound when a picture is taken, even when the device is silenced. Now, no one bats an eye at smartphones. I could record everything in front of me just by putting the phone in my chest pocket, and you'd never know, compared to Glass with its LED. With augmented reality becoming easier to process and the applications growing, it's only a matter of time before Glass, HoloLens, and a dozen other products that rely on cameras are ubiquitous. The first app with universal appeal will be a game, but GPS directions will follow soon, and then you'll be able to pop menus out of restaurants in your field of vision.
It's going to happen. It will probably be a few years yet, but it's going to be come the norm.
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No, you didn't fix it. You changed it to something completely different. It wasn't a matter of mismarketing, but of no one having an understanding of where it would have fit. It's not that these ideas weren't there, but that they couldn't be done at the time. The capabilities just didn't exist, and they only barely do now. Google just kind of threw it out into the world to see what people would come up with, but that turned out to be a very small list. It wasn't until they had the real-world failure that th
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It wasn't a matter of mismarketing, but of no one having an understanding of where it would have fit.
Sounds like mismarketing to me - the marketing should have told people where it would fit. Having tried it, I was extremely unimpressed, however it was called the 'Explorer Edition' for a reason. Google were hoping that a few people would buy them, work out what they were useful for and then Google could refine them for an actual commercial product. It seems like that may be what has happened.
On a side note, I tried Hololens recently and that has real potential if they can increase the tiny field of view so
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Did you forget again the first law of tech? (Score:1)
Porn. It's first widespread use will be for porn. First person POV porn, to be exact.
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And that's your particular case, but not everyone's. Here are some things that could work:
- A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.
- A factory worker could have a list of steps to follow to complete an assembly
- A floor supervisor could monitor progress of the line before or after their location
- Even you could step back a safe distance, triggering a reappearance of the display that you can check, which then disappears when you approach the machine to ensure that you have no visual distractions.
You can already do all this and more with regular ass displays. There's no need to wear it on your face, and no benefit to doing so. You still have to switch your focus physically and mentally.
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There are a lot of things we can do with regular displays, and yet we choose to carry tablets and phones with us to handle them instead. It's lighter and more convenient to do so. The same thing will happen with this tech: it will become the lighter, more convenient way to do things, plus it will provide a free hand that's currently used to manipulate a device. There's also a difference between moving your head to look over at a monitor and glancing up with your eyes to see what's projected.
You're also miss
Re:Ah the return of glassholes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ah the return of glassholes (Score:4, Interesting)
What you said is a nice idea but it isn't really practical or safe to use in that environment. I do with lathes, mills and welding and you wouldn't even use these glasses while operating a machine. If I have to look at a design I step away from the machine and check the design. I'm not going to have a whirly machine of death running while I am looking at the design.
As far as welding goes, here's a slashdot story from five years ago [slashdot.org]. The demo video [eyetap.org] is fantastic.
Just because you can't see the use immediately doesn't mean there isn't one.
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I'm no machinist, so excuse the analogies, but what about validation data while welding-- temperature, flow, speed tracking, etc. adding information that you cannot ascertain visually. Could help with learning the trade at a minimum, and manage complex tasks where thermal management and distortion comes into play.
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A factory is bigger than your toy. Just because you work with one piece of equipment doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense in a factory especially where the equipment is interconnected as part of a larger system. Plant context is something every industry is working towards.
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It's not just that it wasn't that useful, it's that it was actively infringing on people's increasingly limited ability to disappear into a crowd.
Ultimately, if they didn't have a camera attached, I don't think people would have had so much trouble with it. But, the included camera meant that there was no way that people could tell if it was being used for that or for just doing augmented reality. Which is a shame.
I'd love to see an iteration of Google glass without the camera. Something that could do thing
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In 1988 or 1989, a friend of mine wanted to get a cell phone in his car. Everyone told him that a cell phone was a useless gadget for ordinary people. Except for very few business people, no one needed a cell phone.
Only twelve years ago, I remember a lot of people saying that smartphones were useless. Everyone agreed it could be useful to some business people, but not to ordinary people. Blackberry phones were called "crackberry" as a way to mock ordinary people using those smartphones.
Only five years ago,
New tech haters on /. (Score:1)
No the reason it 'died' was because luddites like yourself were being abusive about it. 'Glassholes', really? What did technology ever do to you? I bet there were a bunch of old people that said the same thing about cell phones when they came out a few decades back.
I dont know any better than you what will become the killer app for this hardware, but there will be something cool that people do with t
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1. Does it work?
2. Will I get my ass kicked wearing it in a bar?
3. I wear glasses, can I have my prescription installed?
4. I fly light aircraft, could this help me spot other oncoming aircraft?
5. I drive a car, could this help me make a better decision?
6. Taking my eyes of a mad dog will get me bit, is there another way to communicate to it?
7. And dogs don't like people that wear glasses.
8. Is the interface open source?
9. Not under $150? I can wait.
10. Can I connect it to my Raspberry
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But.... putting it into the hands of the knuckleheads on the street was probably the fastest way to get it introduced into the industrial settings where it makes sense.
Law Enforcement. (Score:4)
Seems like these upgraded glasses would be perfect for Law Enforcement. See what they saw in High Def.
Of course it has scary implications such as Face Recognition as they look at people...almost like portrayed in the Terminator movies.
Actually, that'd be kind of cool if you were the one wearing them.
Re: Law Enforcement. (Score:2, Insightful)
That is the most pathetic and lazy thing I've ever heard in my life (close, anyway). You are not exactly disowning the glasshole moniker, there, man. Then again, I'd imagine your narcissism prevents you from caring much.
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He wants to appear as if he cares so he can fake normal social interaction. He's a sociopath.
A normal person would either have this shit come naturally or would avoid pointless smalltalk and bullshit.
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You're the one assuming the parent is pathetic, lazy and a narcissist. Who is the asshole, really?
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(I'm not the GP)
Hi, my name is Troed, and I suffer from prosopagnosia.
For various degrees of the definition, I'm not a "normal person". Between 2-10% of the population suffer from it, to various degrees. In the severe cases, like mine, it's a cause for many social mishaps.
I long for the day when my glasses can do the facial recognition for me, the one that your brain provides and mine doesn't.
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Battery life makes them useless. Glass lasted only something like 30min when recording video, a Taser Axon can lasts 12 hours in comparison.
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This is why they will ultimately move to Imperial Storm Trooper Helmets.
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Police body cams are already getting facial recognition, whether supplied by Google or others.
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Your Safety Glasses Will Monitor Your Co-Workers (Score:1)
Now put them on, because the timeclock is integrated into them, too.
Google glass (Score:1)
Great. More glassholes (Score:2, Insightful)
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You might want to borrow it, you know, to keep anymore of your brains from falling out.
OMG, when the stupid GP replies to a criticism of his stupid comment as AC. Like anybody is being fooled. Better to be seen as an asshole than a coward.
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Only if the 'glasshole' had any intention to profit in some way from what they were photographing or videoing.
I would positively love it if "whole-life" records were a viable thing right now as an aid to human memory, and I see concepts like Google Glass as a step in that direction.
Anyone could be uploading information about you to an agrgegat
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I am opposed to pervasive surveillance, by wearing Google glass around me you are removing that choice from me.
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By extension, you must be similarly opposed to anyone looking at you who happens to remember what they saw. As I said, video is simply one form of historical record. The written word, audio recordings, and even human recollection are other forms, some of which are considered less reliable than others, but at their core they are no different, since it does not violate any physical laws of this un
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That is, if you happen to pass me on the the street, and you don't know me, you will never know I was there. Even if you know me, unless something memorable happened, you will quickly forget it happened. If
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So it's not my intentions that bother you, it's the intentions of those who might use the database...
Right.
Exactly like how it's not the intentions of developers like Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman w
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Yes, but these are Enterprise Glassholes. They have blue-er collars.
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This is exactly what we needed, more glassholes continuously uploading video feed to the largest data aggregator company in the world that has facial recognition, geo location, reads our email, and knows about our web searches.
So, don't go into a business that is using Enterprise Glass in their operations. Derp, what part of this is hard?
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You're part of the problem. (Score:1)
Ubiquitous facial/object recognition isn't a bad thing. What is a bad thing is not having it and refusing to figure out how to integrate it with regular individuals.
This should have been the initial release (Score:4)
Glass is a great idea for surgeons, mechanics, and any worker who needs a hands-free way of looking at reference material while working inside a motorcycle or a human heart. Niche applications would have given Glass a cool factor to take into the larger world, rather than having acquired an asshole factor in the outside world first and having to overcome that in the workplace.
Hated only by a few. (Score:1)
The only "assholes" that are around are the ones that oppose Glass.
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What we discovered with the public beta of Glass was that sousveillance, watching other people from within a scene, is deemed creepier than surveillance, monitoring a scene from outside it. Credit Google with discovering something new about human nature. Now we know how to do Glass, or its successor, right.
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Best I can see the only people who contributed to the "asshole factor" was the media. For all the name calling the only people actually acting like asshole were the ones without Google glass.
Cooking (Score:2)
Done that, part duo (Score:1)
Use Them At My Job (Score:1)
Would be nice to see them available to Rest of Us (Score:1)
It's one thing to have them available to the few, it's another to have them available to the rest of us.
The concerns are too overblown to not allow mere mortals access to Glass in non-business settings.
Glasses will be huge as soon as (Score:1)
The normal glasses I wear now for either my vision correction or as sunglasses have the tech with no added size or shape or noticeable by anyone else change to the lenses. Basically smart glasses that look like our normal glasses.
Augmented reality will be awesome . . . but remember how Palm Pilot was around for a fifteen years and just never made it huge (never reached everyone's hands) and then Apple killed Palm with the release of the iPhone in '07?
Google Glass will likely be like Palm. It will sit around
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