You forgot
Vivid technology's haptic sex suit which was rejected by the FDA because the safety of wearers could not be assured "under moist conditions".
http://www.virtualworldlets.net/Shop/ProductsDisplay/VRInterface.php?ID=3
The Chocolate Factory has the technology for its Google Glass locked down in a patent but it has to collaborate with fashion retailer Warby Parker to make its artificial eye tech look cool, says the New York Times. The augmented reality spectacles are supposed to change the world, but currently they look too dorky to catch on …
Many glasses wearers have been trying to get away from wearing them, look at the popularity of laser eye surgery and even contact lenses.
Now if Google can adapt it to contact lenses then they are onto a winner. If not, the invention will again be a postscript in history just like the other attempts.
"Many glasses wearers have been trying to get away from wearing them, look at the popularity of laser eye surgery and even contact lenses."
You've stumbled on to a good idea here but have failed to recognize it. The "tech" part of these google glasses should just be implanted in the skull of anyone who would want to wear them; it's a pretty sure bet that there's plenty of room in there...
"Many glasses wearers have been trying to get away from wearing them, look at the popularity of laser eye surgery and even contact lenses"
Those are only popular with people who never wore their glasses at school as a child because they wanted to be like all the other little lambs. I.e. were terrified of being labelled a nerd.
So if Google whack them on a pair of chunky D&Gs (which look like utter crap anyway) and they get some vapid celeb to wear them then those same people will buy them in droves.
Personally I wont bother because I just don't see the point.
"Those are only popular with people who never wore their glasses at school as a child because they wanted to be like all the other little lambs. I.e. were terrified of being labelled a nerd."
Or they're tired of looking at the rest of the world like it's on a giant TV. Or they're tired of feeling like their glasses are putting a glass wall between them and others.
They need to get away from the Wonky Look.
Fair enough the thing is asymmetric, but the guy wearing them in that image seems typical of many, many amusing and geeky traits and is doing a good job of achieving a jaunty angle.
Perhaps this would be solved by a big wodge of elastoplast or araldite on one of the hinges?
As glasses wearers will have probably spotted, the Google glasses will never fly in their current form - witness the jaunty angle in the press clip - too much weight on one side. They will be an enormous pain in the ass until both sides balance, and the glasses sit there without user intervention.
But this raises another problem...adding some counter weight to the other side, will add weight to the glasses; in summer, this will manifest in "sweaty nose slippage", requiring them to be pushed up every 5 minutes. Annoying.
Then there's the sheer ugliness factor, which will prevent you wearing them in public for fear for constant ridicule.
No...methinks not. Wake me up when neural laces are available on the NHS.
"I'm the type of guy who has always despised people who wear sunglasses after sundown, so I guess it's a matter of taste."
Sunglasses indoors/at night are one of those things that in theory should be cool, but in reality just screams "trying too hard". A bit like Google-Specs.
I got somethin' to say to you and you better listen -
i'm gonna tell ya how to be cool in one easy lesson ..go!
sunglasses after dark
aaah, they're so sharp
and you'll be cool
and the squares will drool...
it's real simple...
sunglasses after dark
aaah, it's so sharp
listen to this ...
went out last saturday night
got myself in a night fight
everybody got clubbed including me
'cause there wasn't one of those cats could see
see..we had on S.A.D.
that's right... I was hangin' around on the street
and this great big guy ran right into me
I could hardly make him out , everything was so dim..
but then I seen what was wrong with him..
he was wearin' sunglasses after dark...
sunglasses after dark..
aaah, you're so sharp
sunglasses after dark..
it's so simple...
(where am I by the way?)
"Then again, I'm the type of guy who has always despised people who wear sunglasses after sundown, so I guess it's a matter of taste."
For those who often have their picture taken, you can understand the appeal. Otherwise, bright flashes in the face in darkened room = headlines the next day of "Joe Celebrity drunk!" featuring picture with glazed, half-open, dilated eyes.
For everyone else, they're just pretending that the same applies to them and I share your aversion.
I am now considering them at night due to all the car LED lighting. Those give me a headache.
There is a certain Peugeot model convertable with tin roof I cannot even follow without being on main beam due to very bright and flickering.
As I told my wife when everyone has those bright flickery lights I'm either giving up driving or trying sunglasses.
Probably wouldn't bought it myself as too geeky, but I got it as a present a couple of years ago and use it ever since. It suits me well - I am horribly absent-minded, and this is the phone you cannot leave behind, and I am quite sure that twitter is for twits, so the absence of passable keyboard is not an issue at all.
Was the SPOT ahead of its time? or just pointless without anything to interact with? (I know you could spend thousands to enable your home so you could 'turn on a kettle')
now I am wearing a pebble, and its interactions with my smartphone are quite good, I don't want it to make tea for me.
The only augmented reality I'll be wearing is my 'punch the twat harder' from robo-armour. I'm 6'5 and 21 stone and dickheads with phones/pads cant see me when they're walking so what the fuck it will be like when they're all looking for food-free calories through lampposts.
Mind you a well organised flash-mob on a bridge over the M25 might just increase the average IQ and rid the world of a couple of redundant layers of management!
Dunno, I haven't used headphones whilst on the piste, but snowboarding takes you in zig tags, and generally you are visually aware of your surroundings. Unlike being on a road, the moving objects that are likely to hit you make the same sort of noise as you yourself are making, and often your ears are muffled by a hood, hat or helmet anyway.
As if people who need to wear glasses needed some company to make them appear geekier.
Such glasses are just another nerd toy. They won't catch on in the mainstream for many reasons, much like the smartphone didn't catch on until Apple dispensed with the stylus.
Glasses are cumbersome at best, people spend a fortune trying to get rid of glasses by having laser eye surgery. So why would anyone choose to wear them to get some information of very little interest (before walking into a lampost).
Google comes out with some right tosh at times, stuff that they think is useful but will just cause accidents. Their self driving cars will kill someone eventually and it won't be long before someone reading a twitter update on their glasses gets flattened by a car (would be ironic if it was one of their self driving cars).
Technology needs to be limited to situations where it won't cause death or injury to the user or others around them.
"much like the smartphone didn't catch on until Apple dispensed with the stylus"
The feature Apple that sold their iPhone was a comparatively slick UI (and to a large degree existing brand appeal)... it definitely was not them "dispensing" the stylus, as many smartphones before it didn't have them either.
"Glasses are cumbersome at best, people spend a fortune trying to get rid of glasses by having laser eye surgery"
A small percentage of people hate their glasses, and spend money on getting surgery... the vast majority of people who need glasses will happily wear glasses (or just hate the idea of eye surgery enough to keep the glasses).
"Technology needs to be limited to situations where it won't cause death or injury to the user or others around them."
I assume you don't drive cars, take trains, take flights, use computers, or even electricity, or eat food (created by technology!)... or do anything really.
They need some kind of fold down action to show it's off. Who wants to be in a bar where the guy next to you is uploading everything live to the cloud or blogging from the urinals. It's not as if they haven't put people in jail for comments they've made that have been recorded.
A joke about terrorism/airports/Iraq in a bar could have your home being searched and your computers confiscated while you're still on the first round. GGs will be a mixture of the autistically anti social and retired busy bodies recording you leaving the recycling bin 16 inches from the kerb or leaving your car to warm up on the driveway.
from people who've not actually used the Google Glass. Oddly, none of the complaints here have been mentioned by the review on another famous tech website (I'm sure i'm not allowed to link). This reviewer used them, didn't look like a geek and so I'll trust his review as I have no others to go on, other than random guess-work and speculative comments.
And not everyone wants to avoid glasses, some people actually like wearing them and it can help with appearance (No, i don't have glasses or contacts).
You need to look up the current Explorer edition which allows lenses to be attached, although at the moment just Google built ones I believe. Google are working on a "framework" (Don't know if pun intended or not) that manufacturers can adapt too, so the hope is you can use the lenses of your choice.
I found myself a bit torn when it comes to Google Glass. Part of me thinks it's really cool and part of me thinks that the only thing it can do that my phone can't is make people point and laugh at me. I don't think I would want to go out wearing it until it had been around long enough to be considered normal, which might take a while.
The main problem with wearable tech (apart from making you look like a weirdo) is that it seems to be a solution in search of a problem. I can't think of a single practical use that I would have for it.
If anyone is interested in makeing their own wearable tech Adafruit make a cool line of in house designed Arduino compatable wearbale devices that can be sewn together with conductive thread. They call it Flora.
http://www.adafruit.com/products/659
Much cooler if you make it yourself :-)
Some 10 years ago or so, there was a stylish looking device called "Eyetop". It was essentially a pair of moderately stylish sunglasses with a built in screen you could see out of a corner of your eye. It had composite analogue AV input. It was fairly unobtrusive, but if you wanted to use it with a computer you need a VGA->TV adapter and a small laptop (back then the choice was probably a Sony Vaio PCG-U1 or U3). Google have essentially done the same thing with next to no improvements, other than bundling an Android computer into it (no difficult feat these days), and priced it outrageously high for what it is considering the technology has hardly changed.