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Poll: Do you own a Google glass?
28 points by michaelkscott 4797 days ago
18 comments

I put yes, but I don't get to pick mine up until a few days from now.

Very excited about:

* how it enhances the external mind concept

* always on Bluetooth headphones (I think there are a lot of novel use cases that can spawn from this)

* Spaced repetition applications

* Building habits and changing behaviors (e.g. might be more inclined to build the habit of going to the gym if I had intelligently timed questions/feedback on the glasses)

* Life logging enhancements (picture notes and voice notes - I'm betting glass will encourage this more often)

One cool idea would be to be able to improve day-to-day activities.

I would love the ability to have OCR and being able to integrate that seamlessly into emails/txt/searches/etc.

I own one already. Feel free to ask me any questions!

Edit: I actually posted a short blog post about the pickup/first couple days of use: http://michaelevans.org/blog/2013/04/29/hands-on-with-google...

How much of your field of vision does it generally take up? If I catch someone using it when we're ostensibly having a conversation, will I be able to sucker punch them with impunity?
Not too much, only the top right corner. And why are the sucker punches limited to just Glass? Why not someone who stares at their phone during a conversation?
It's harder with smartphones because they generally notice what you're doing at the last moment. Apparently this will still apply to glass.
Check the video of it being demoed, you can tell when they use it because they look like they're having a stroke
Are there any apps yet?

Do any of these apps overlay information into your field of vision/hearing about what you are looking at? If so, how is the performance (is it real time or laggy?), and is it distracting?

Yeah there are a few apps (well, web services known as "Glassware") already. I haven't played with too many of them yet.

None of the third party apps are overlaying information in an augmented reality fashion. The performance is pretty good, the navigation maps turn smoothly when you turn, etc.

It is a little distracting, but not nearly as distracting as I was expecting.

I am keen to read while driving on an autobahn, is it save? Can I develop while looking out of the window? That would be great, this staring on a screen always felt somewhat autistic.
Does the connectivity drop sometimes? Does it become just a bit of plastic when that happens or does it still do something?

Have you tested it outside a city?

Yep it has, since it's tethered to my Nexus 4 for data when not on Wifi. Plenty still works without data, you can still take photos, browse the "cards" that are on the device, etc.
Not in the current guise. It looks like the-new-bluetooth-earpiece, hides stuff coming at you from the RHS and I quite like the amount of connectedness I have now. It's not easily foldable and it probably doesn't handle scratching that well. I'll give it a few years.
A thought occurred to me this morning about Google Glass: would a good alternative to wearing glasses that project a HUD into your eye be instead to simply wear a wrist watch that connects up to a wireless camera that you can mount to whatever you want, your head included.

The benefit would be that you could mount the camera in a less conspicuous way, perhaps as a more traditional looking bluetooth headset. Or, you could mount the camera wherever you wanted; facing behind you, on your bike handlebars, leave it at your car while you're at a restaurant, put it on your RC airplane, etc. The camera would communicate wireless with the wrist watch, which would have a microphone you could speak commands to, and perhaps additional buttons to control the camera or even a multitouch screen.

And why stop at one camera? You could pair multiple cameras to your watch and control them individually. Put one facing behind you and in front of you, or give one to your friend while you both play one-on-one basketball.

Glancing down at a watch doesn't seem that much less convenient than staring at a HUD projected into your eye, and there's a lot less stigma attached to wearing a watch than wearing the goofy looking Glass.

Just a thought, I don't know how viable it would be.

> Glancing down at a watch doesn't seem that less convenient than staring at a HUD projected into your eye, and there's a lot less stigma attached to wearing a watch than wearing the goofy looking Glass.

Glancing at a watch is essentially the same as glancing at a phone, and that's already too much time and effort for lots and lots of use cases (including a lot of Google Nowish things that could be alerted to you if you were likely to look immediately, but useless in two minutes).

The stigma will go away pretty quickly, except from the people who always object to trying new things.

> Glancing at a watch is essentially the same as glancing at a phone

You can't just "glance down at your phone", you have to take it out of your pocket first, and unlock it in most cases. Your watch is already in your peripheral view and very little effort is required to position it correctly and look down at it. I recently received my Pebble (http://getpebble.com) watch and you'll have to take my word for it. Being able to glance down at my watch to see text messages and caller ID's is much more natural and fluid than pulling my phone out of my pocket; especially when I'm sitting down.

I have a feeling that people will soon adapt the ability to tell that a glass user isn't paying attention due to distraction from the glass, almost as easily as it is to tell now that a smartphone user isn't paying attention due to distraction from the smartphone.
I don't plan on owning one. I wore glasses until the 6th grade and getting contacts was one of the best days of my life!
Get Lasik, best thing I ever did.
Then you should wait for google contacts. Just like glass, but display is embedded on contacts.
At $1500 I certainly don't plan on owning one. Depending on price points I could see buying one
A 'meh' review of the alpha (beta?) devices floating around right now:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-glass-googles-wearab...

I don't plan on being able to afford one
I don't plan to, but only because I don't plan on sparring $1500 and moving to US. If it were available in my country at moderate cost, I would definitely buy it.
If I ever have to get glasses, I might think about it. But I'm not going to start wearing glasses just to use another device.
I think you might be missing the point.
Would you wear a contact lens version of Glass if it was available or does the same apply?
I doubt it. I can't even put in eyedrops, so I doubt contacts would work for me.
Someone already pointed this out in another thread: what if someone hacks it, starts displaying shock porn. Closing your eyes won't help, neither can you take them off as easy as glasses.
Until someone develops active (LED-based) contacts with high enough resolution to really shock you, that's not a great risk.

I think the current research front is at around 2^8 or 2^9 pixels, perhaps. I'd feel pretty safe from being "eye-raped" by anything on such a display. Note that I mean total pixels, not "pixels squared", i.e. a couple of hundred pixels total.

Of course, a big always-on or annoyingly flashing block of color in your field of vision even with your eyes closed would be pretty annoying. But only until you've managed to take out the contact, which is not all that hard to do with some practice.

Unless they overlaid a big opaque black block while you were driving at high speed...

(Granted I'm sure they'll think about that during the design phase, and maybe not allow 100% opacity or something.)

How many times on your computer have you been targeted by a hacker who showed you shock porn ? If the answer is nil, why do you think it will happen on your glass?
It's called "ratting" [1] and happens awfully more often that it should.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_administration_software

If we manage to put hight resolution active displays in contact lenses, I'm pretty sure we can manage to implement a convenient safety switch (blink eyes three times? I'm sure somebody will come with something better)
If somebody is going to do malicious hacking on glass or a glass-like device, I would say that displaying offensive material is among the least of our worries.
If the technology were there to have a workable version of Glass as a contact lens, I'd wear it all day every day. Augmentation of the senses is the next logical step, right?
I don't think that I would like to have one, when all your friends know that it could be in video recording mode. Privacy?
I'm quite content with my Batman mug.
You're such a joker.
To ask about price, which determines buying decisions, I just added: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5644984
I have a good phone and a great laptop. I can't really justify buying one. I have some friends that plan on buying them, so at least I have the chance to try them out.
I don't have one.

I will want one.

I hope they avoid the bluetooth headset problem - I hope they last longer and are more common than bluetooth headsets are now.

I've paid for one over the weekend, and am now just waiting for them to get around to ship it to me so I can start digging in with it.
Anyone know when those of us who "won" access via the social media promo will be able to get them?
Not until all the IO12 Explorers get theirs. I'd think a few weeks at least.
I think 8h+ at work in front of 2 panels is enough for me, I plan to downgrade my mobile experience choosing dumbest nokia phone model 105, now I use Android mobile phone. Google Glass is gadget for teenagers with a lots of friends status updates and stuff that is not really matters.
>Google Glass is gadget for teenagers with a lots of friends status updates and stuff that is not really matters.

Wow, that's a pretty scathing statement. I wonder how many of the people who own a Glass in this thread are teenagers with stuff that doesn't matter.

I found out many things I do, I can do without any gadget, walking down the street without Google Glass and finding place to take a coffee is easy, just turn your head, and you will find many cafes around you, if you are traveling, why do you need assistance, it is more interesting to travel without any assistance, if you cant find something, you always can ask people around you (google glass owners), where is the place you are looking for. Or buy "analog" :) compass with paper map, and manage how do they work. Imagine, no battery for magnet compass and paper map is needed, incredible!!!

Do you really need notifications from every place you have signed up the news letter while driving, while eating, while taking a look at the beautiful thing around you (in truuuuu HD, retina eyes provides you with truuuu HD, trust me).

Take a deep breath, open your eyes, look around you, do you see crazy people? Buy Google Glass and become one of them, join the dark insanely stupid legion controlled by Google.