Reg man looks through a Glass, darkly: Google's toy ploy or killer tech specs? Seldom has a device been so reviled and praised at the same time. But is Google Glass the future of wearable connectivity or simply the toy of the self-appointed tech elite? Is it perhaps something in between? I’m by no means an early adopter of gadgetry. I buy kit only when can I see a clear use for it and I don’t …
I'll be doing brain surgery in less than a week.
"Align the cross marks with the patient's subdural hemiotrophic epicyclic complex.
Confirm that you are standing on the patient's left, looking towards their feet.
Make a shallow incision along the green dotted line.
Be ready to quickly... Buffering 10% 20%..."
Now you're scrambling my head. Is there a YouTube How To Use Google Glass which you can view on Google Glass?
And on the Joe 90 front... IIRC the first "brain dump" Joe got was of his father's own knowledge and experience... so wouldn't that mean he gained the memory of doing his own mother? Sick! And in a later episode, he brain raped his father's girlfriend to see if she was a spy. That poor kid's going to need a psychiatrist. Or do they just download one into his brain to fix it from the inside?
A pair of glasses that gives you instant access to a whole library of skills, experience and knowledge.
.. and at the same time carefully charts your entire life, right up to what your kids look like when you give them a bath - until the Met Police needs another easy win for its child porn arrest statistics. OK, I'm exaggerating here but you ARE giving permission to an entirely untrustworthy party to invade your life to a degree it never achieved before, and by carrying this thing around you're doing this to others too without their permission - hence the potential for serious objections.
In that context (from the article):
nobody so much as raised an eyebrow bar a chirpy lass in the Apple Store who asked what I thought of it. I’m beginning to suspect this whole "glasshole" brouhaha is little more than a media invention.
That's because most people don't even have an *idea* of how deep Glassholes can rip into their privacy - just as most average end user has no idea just how much they are taken for a ride by companies like Google when they proclaim their services as "free". The more this product spreads, the more this will become clear, and at that point I would like to see them try again.
It's actually nice to read a review that didn't just jump on the usual sensationalist horseshit we have had to suffer.
Glass isn't designed to be used 24x7, just like your Bluetooth headset for your phone isn't either. Both make you look a dickhead if you use it when doing the shopping.
It's a shame that other reviewers don't grasp this quite simple concept.
I can think of ALOT of uses for glass, and many of them are niche, but if the price drops to £300 ish, then I would consider buying one. For example you can get Ski Goggles with LESS functionality that this that cost quite alot more, and are JUST ski goggles.
Heads-up navigating while driving, where's the nearest (loo, gas station, Chinese restaurant, etc.), fun for architecture buffs or museum-goers, plus useful for, say, skills like changing a tire or learning a language. Oh,and I WOULD use it while shopping, for my list and where to find it in the store, plus calculating total I'm spending. Yup, expensive,but I'm not an early adopter, so will look at it when the price drops.
I can think of ALOT of uses for glass
I can think of one: it could notice when someone types "ALOT" and inform them that the Alot is better than you at everything.
I don't have any Apple devices and haven't purchased anything in iTunes, should I buy an iWatch?
I think the review nails it; a friend has the Glass (academic discounts FTW) and it's a nice piece of kit with a tiny, specialist use case. I cannot justify buying one myself because I'm also not invested in the Google ecosystem (never mind the current asking price), but they jumped at the chance.
It is cool to play with for one for 5 minutes or so though :)
"As for the potential for getting punched on the nose if you walk into a bar wearing Glass... well, idiots get thumped all the time for lesser reasons and anyone who shows such a staggering lack of social grace will get no sympathy for me."
.......if you did walk into a bar with a camera and start photographing perfect strangers without their say-so that is very like what would happen. When equipped as a glasshole however a certain type is going to assume that:
A. He cannot see whether you are using the camera or not.
B. He will then insist that you take them off so that you couldn't take any.
C. He will then thump you if/when you refuse.
The old tradition (from a very long time ago) that it is unfair to hit someone wearing glasses will take on a whole new meaning in as much as those wearing glasses will be considered to be fair game in certain circles.
Really? You must go to some pretty crappy bars then. I see people taking smartphone pics all the time even in bars, capturing at least a dozen 'strangers' in the process of taking their selfie.
The bar itself is almost definitely fitted with CCTV recording absolutely everyone who walks in.
The idea that someone who wears Glass is going to walk up to you, look at you and take your picture (just for giggles) is ridiculous. If you think that you are so photo-worthy or paranoid that everyone wants to take a picture of your mug you also probably shouldn't be roaming the streets alone. It would be as mad as a stranger walking up to you and asking "can I take your photo", it just isn't going to happen - why would they, why would you think they would?
"It would be as mad as a stranger walking up to you and asking "can I take your photo", it just isn't going to happen"
About as mad as being paranoid that lamp posts would want your picture, eh?
And yet, there the cameras are.
And like the lamppost. it isn't the person wearing the glass that's the problem, it's who's monitoring at the other end.
Disclaimer: I wasn't born paranoid, but recent events show it's the best policy.
I think the rule is that it's unfair to hit someone who *needs* to wear glasses. I think hitting someone who wears glasses for no reason other than fashion has always been obligatory.
(This still applies to Google Glass, since as the reviewer points out, their practical use is near nil. People only wear them as an attention-seeking device.)
@AC: You know perfectly well that there is a difference between someone taking a picture on their smartphone in which you are an irrelevant part of the background, and someone walking up to you, holding a camera in your face and deliberately recording everything you say and do. This is what someone who does not remove their Google Glasses is doing.
"Seriously?"
Yes, seriously. You always treat a gun as if it's loaded. You always treat a microphone, a tape recorder or a video camera as if it's recording. Even if you've been told it's off. Those who forget this rule end up on YouTube and in the dole queue. Or in the Darwin Awards, in the case of the gun.
I'm not sure people would thump you in reality, although as you have set the location to be a bar who knows what people will do when they've been drinking.
There is a guy in America who gets someone to film him as he walks through Da Hood filming strangers. Predictably they mostly do all get immediately violent, some of them even pulling guns. I prefer to think UK bods would be a bit more like "now look here old chap".
Regardless, I think if you actually did thump someone merely on the grounds that they might have been filming you then you would be getting your collar felt shortly afterwards.
"I'm not sure people would thump you in reality"
I have a feeling people will get punched, and for wearing glass - but not for privacy reasons.
There's going to be quite a lot of mugging victims when you're wearing something on your head as expensive as a high end smartphone for all to see - and it stands out.
I take lots of photographs on my travels to various cities around the world - with a rather conspicuous camera. Over many years I have found that most people just smile, even if they are not the subject of the photo. A few act up for the camera (a large proportion but not all seem to be inebriated). A small minority ask questions about my interest, so I show them photos I have been taking, and the only objections I have received are from people involved in criminal activities - the last case was a young man stealing metal from a recycling bin in Skopje, Macedonia.
What would be really cool with google glass would be a second camera that photographed your eyeball to determine what you are looking at. Many years ago I helped a market research company purchase an eye-mark camera. An interesting and seriously expensive piece of kit costing £33,000 in 1990's money.
"The old tradition (from a very long time ago) that it is unfair to hit someone wearing glasses will take on a whole new meaning in as much as those wearing glasses will be considered to be fair game in certain circles."
What a twuntish statement.
> Don't go to the type of bars where people find thumping strangers fun. I doubt that would restrict my choice of bars because why would you go somewhere like that anyway?
"To thump strangers", said the sadist.
--To be thumped by strangers!!--interjected the masochist.
My office has them, had a play over the recent long weekend, and despite my being a complete google fanboy, they were much less impressive than I had hoped.
They did very little that my pebble doesn't do, except the pictures. Sadly as alluded to in the article, these aren't great. The navigation was a nice touch, but the voice recognition was terrible compared to my Nexus 4. Conversely I found battery life to be quite decent when integrated with my general working day, but I was never able to dismiss the overlay of the prism from my vision, it was very annoying.
General view for me was, it's fantastic for taking bad pictures quickly.
Not all people want the thing on their right eye, I for instance have a strabismus which means my less dominant left eye would be a perfect place to put the screen where it doesn't get in the way.
So I'd add the ability to flip it to right and left sides to your list of killer options for a Glass-for-the-masses.
Alun,
Did you have a problem where all the info was going to one eye, so all that one-eyed reading gave you a headache? Or were you not using it much at any one time? It was what I first thougth of when you mentioned using it to watch video.
On that photo you took when driving, with sat-nav displayed, is that the real apparent size of the text in your visual field? Or have Google made that little insert bigger in the photos than it looks in real life? I think Glass could be a brilliant tool, mainly for travelling. I'm not interested in checking my emails while walking down the street, but to be able to use sat-nav and look up info on public transport while wandering London would be very useful. As well as seeing texts from whoever I'm meeting. But my eyesight is rubbish, so I'm interested in how big the text is. I can just about read subtitles on a 50" telly at 6-8 feet (no chance on a 26"). But then subtitles may be a smaller font size than the equivalent Google use on Glass. I hope.
Re. getting a headache, surprisingly not. I longest I had them on continuously was just over two hours (while driving) and though I expected a headache, none arrived.
In regard to the vignette with the satnav showing, the navigation box actually appears a little larger than that by a factor of about x 1.5. Also, as you move your head to the left and/or down the box appears to move more into the centre of your line of sight.
Incidentally I wear contacts (+2.25 left, +2.5 right) but found that this caused no issues with Glass.
Thanks for that. It's a lot bigger than I was expecting then.
One thing I liked the idea of using it for was for reading signs. Hopefully the camera can magnify live images (I assume it acts as a viewfinder). Otherwise take snap of train departure board, then magnify and read. Although you can often go online and get stuff so that you don't have to read signs now - most train apps tell you the platform. That probably doesn't work in airports though, where a monocular comes in handy, and Google Glass could be rather useful. These places do like to put vital information on signs 20 foot up in the air. Which guarantees you can never get close enough to read them.
It needs to be about x 3 resolution
optionally both eyes
Less obtrusive and the electronics demountable from holder and mountable on ANY spec frame.
Can it use a battery & feature expansion pack styled like a phone/MP3 player/pocket radio with cord only needed for power? If not, why not.
Needs to be configurable for any services including your own home server. I'm never EVER going to buy a "walled garden" gadget again. It becomes a brick if vendor loses interest or goes bust. At least my Kindle can be used still if Amazon vanishes, though its "Share" feature is stupidity as it only works with Twitter or Facebook, but at least the notes can be read as text via USB storage (but missing context!).
The Glass appears to be uselessly Google centric and invasive to privacy of the user. (who has really just taken out a lease rather than actually buying a gadget.
I've seen discussions that people with both Glass and Android Wear (the "smart" watches) say that basically the latter does for a couple of hundred quid what the former does for a grand, i.e. easy-access notifications and access to Google Now. Does El Reg have plans for a Wear review?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
