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Google Glass is coming back
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cjfont 11y ago> Then again, consumers might not be the main focus for Glass anymore. So, that's like saying it's dead for the consumer market, and isn't this the playing field we're talking about? It shouldn't be a surprise that a product like this would cater to a niche market, but that doesn't qualify it as "coming back".
- Navarr 11y agoI'm not sure Enterprise is niche. There are, of course, the "privacy concerns" against glass that make it not much of a consumer product - but it has shown to be fantastic for certain use cases. So maybe it's not "coming back" but it's not "dead"
- theklub 11y agoWhat use cases is it fantastic for?
- rickyc091 11y agoIt's been used a bit in the medical industry. Just do a google for it and a lot more articles come up. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/02/medical-students-startup-uses-google-glass.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/02/medical-stude... http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/google-glass-enters-the-operating-room/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/google-glass-enters...
- pierpaolo 11y agoIt can be very useful as a personal protective equipment in some industrial sectors too. Augmented reality can save lives!
- Daviey 11y agoThis. http://vimeo.com/101826751 http://vimeo.com/101826751
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoThe "privacy concerns" the news focused on was mostly nonsense. It's pretty impossible to covertly record someone with Glass. Yet most people didn't realize the real privacy concerns... Google insisted on uploading Glass owners' photos to their servers without their permission.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoI think uploading users' photos without their permission definitely counts as a privacy concern. I'm still unconvinced by the form factor. Perhaps Google Fedora would be an easier sell?
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoOh God, can you imagine the jokes? "Fedora guys" are an Internet joke already. I actually loved the form factor, if it wasn't for the software, I'd still be wearing mine. As a prescription lens user to begin with, the majority of people I interacted with didn't seem to notice my Glass a lot of the time, and I forgot I was wearing it myself when I wasn't using it.
- alfiedotwtf 11y agoPost Snowden, I don't think Glass can ever happen Downvoters: don't just hit down... let me know why I'm wrong!
- Joeboy 11y agoWhy not? Have significant numbers of people changed their behaviour post-Snowden?
- alfiedotwtf 11y agoEven when talking with non-tech people, I've seen that it's had a chilling effect. People are now aware of the depth of the surveillance state. Sadly, this hasn't caused any uprisings.
- hiddencost 11y agoAmazon hired some key folks who worked on Google glass v1 (babak parviz and friends). Best guess, they're building something for warehouse workers.
- rasz_pl 11y agonot likely, Amazon is building something to _replace_ meatbag workers, why would they want to invest in meat?
- hiddencost 11y agoThey're replacing some "meatbags", in the next decade. And they only add Kiva to new warehouses, they haven't been retrofitting. So they'll have "meatbags" for a while. If they can build a compelling warehouse assistant HUD they'll then sell it to others and then expand into larger markets like everything else they do? If they can get something compelling for 5 years that saves 10% on labor, that's billions of dollars and established expertise in a major market.
- 11y ago
- ereckers 11y agoIf they can prevent the image of Robert Scoble in the shower becoming the public perception of Google Glass this time around, they might just make it.
- chippy 11y agoI think they could tap into "The Selfies Craze" - in other words, turn the camera to face the wearer. Edits - so instead of "World, here's what I'm seeing" they should focus on "World, here's me looking at cool stuff". Sad, but probably more consumer friendly.
- Balgair 11y agoI mean, that's not a BAD idea. It's crazy and a total abuse of a great tech. But the selfie stick inventor and cardboard sleeve around the coffee inventor dude probably both thought the same thing.
- danso 11y agoWas there any doubt to this? I like spending my day at the command line and never tried out the Glass but I find it pretty easy to see the advantages of. I mean, the concept of its advantages seem at least as good as they do for having an extra monitor. Perhaps Google's big mistake was to release it as a consumer product first? If it dominated enterprise, particularly in hands-on fields like surgery and repair...seems like consumers would adopt it out of technoenvy.
- rasz_pl 11y agothere is no extra monitor, you get postage stamp size EGA resolution window in upper right corner of one eye
- stewartbutler 11y agoI don't think they intended to release explorer edition for consumer use at all; however, when the news hit and everyone was trying to get their hands on one they ended up trying to pivot a beta development platform into a consumer product and failed. Seems to me they have simply rolled back to their initial release plan. It is also worth noting that Google is known to sink money into projects where the main payoff is data for another project; see Google 411, which was used as training data for their voice recognition.
- qq66 11y agoI hope they target this iteration more towards people who already wear glasses -- these are people who have already resigned themselves to placing a plastic object on their face every single day. The amount of change from there to a Google Glass is much less than for someone who doesn't wear glasses. If you could order Google Glass with prescription lenses, you'd probably find a lot more takers than people who are suddenly willing to put a computer on their face.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoThe funny thing is, I finally got the prescription frames for Glass... about a month before I stopped wearing them. Even with their frames, the cost to buy lenses specifically for a device I may not use all the time... It's a big cost. They'd likely be far better off figuring out how to clip Glass to existing frames, or at least ensure if they do offer specific prescription frames for Glass, that the Glass device itself can be removed from them.
- randycupertino 11y ago... as if prescription frames and lenses aren't already pricey enough! I got my new frames from this cute shop in the Castro and between the lenses and frames WITH insurance it was still $800. Oof.
- mattdlondon 11y agoNot sure if that was bait or not, but you can get normal (i.e. not google glass) lens + frames for less than £10 delivered in the UK from many different online retailers. The quality is not amazing - they probably won't last more than a year or so, but then neither does a prescription. Glasses don't need to be expensive.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoMaybe things are handled a bit different in the UK than they are here. Generally getting any glasses starts with a visit to your optometrist. Very few people actually get the prescription settings of their lenses handed to them (maybe that's different in the UK?), but place their order through the same vision place as their eye doctor. Lenses are usually a couple hundred dollars, and your frames will probably be a hundred or more as well. Usually if you have insurance with vision coverage, it helps pay for some or all of that, for a single pair, on a semi-regular basis.
- dexwiz 11y agoGoogle Glass is just the natural evolution of the wearable. It will not replace smartphones, but will extend it. Everyone talks about the camera, but there were some fundamental issues with the Glass that have been addressed by wearables and advancing tech. Do I have to touch my face to use it? Talking to it seemed awkward at the time, and voice interfaces for smartphones were still new in 2013. But now with Siri/Ok Google/Alexa, talking to a computer seems more natural. And it just works better. What do I do with the screen? Wearables have shown that you don't have to choose between a smart phone in and a watch, and they work better together. Expect better apps that display notifications or core information (like navigation) on the Glass but advanced features and configuration is still on the phone. Do I look like an asshole? The first generation showed that people don't want to wear something so alien. Wearables don't look like Leela's communicator. They look like watches. Everyone saw this coming. The Glass was a bit early still for the tech, and people's acceptance of it.
- x3n0ph3n3 11y agoThe big problem with The Glass is that people don't like being overtly recorded in private spaces. Bars started banning them for good reason.
- dexwiz 11y agoI think that issue will fade over time. Society is quickly adjusting to the panoptical norm. People complain that they do not like being monitored, but few do anything beyond the cursory installation of an ad blocker. HN is very much in the minority when it comes to digital privacy concerns. Also, it's not hard to record covertly with a smartphone right now.
- nsxwolf 11y agoIt's actually very difficult to covertly record with a smartphone. You may think you're being sly and discrete, but everyone sees you doing it. You can put it in some kind of camouflaged spy gadget, but I expect that to be about 1 in a million random weirdos so I don't worry about it. When suddenly everyone has the opportunity to do it with some thing on their face, it's a different story.
- lips 11y agoIsn't this old news? I can't find the specific article I recall reading w/Google talking about renewing efforts to integrate with industrial and medical uses, but there are tons of recent links out there: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/02/medical-students-startup-uses-google-glass.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/02/medical-stude... http://www.thenational.ae/uae/health/uae-doctors-use-google-glass-for-surgery-advances http://www.thenational.ae/uae/health/uae-doctors-use-google-... and the developer page shows at least 3 medical-oriented partner cos: https://developers.google.com/glass/distribute/glass-at-work?hl=en https://developers.google.com/glass/distribute/glass-at-work... Here's a craigslist job ad for a co using Glass: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/tch/5353555299.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/tch/5353555299.html And this article says that the "Glass at Work" program was started in April 2014: http://www.eweek.com/mobile/next-google-glass-version-could-be-display-free-report.html http://www.eweek.com/mobile/next-google-glass-version-could-... Sooo.. clickbait and old-news.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- chuckcode 11y agoIt seemed to me like it was the camera that provoked a backlash from general public. People still like to know when they are being photographed or in a video and I'm not sure putting a light on it is going to solve that. Wish Google would make the camera a separate and obvious accessory for those sort of social interaction concerns as I'd actually be interested in a quick heads up display.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoOr maybe make it produce a loud "snap" sound, like all Japanese cellphones do (by industry-wide agreement, to prevent... perhaps obvious things), but that might not persuade the public.
- x1798DE 11y agoIt would be almost impossible to enforce this. I've had several phones that try to force a shutter sound on me and I have always found a way to disable them.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoYeah, that's a problem. A determined person could even open it up and just remove the speaker.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoWhile the wink-to-take-a-photo feature added much later might've been a concern, the two primary (and most reliable) ways to take photos were to physically raise your hand to press the shutter button, or to say "Okay glass, take a photo". Neither of those two methods are remotely subtle. It's unlikely this is any less obvious of an interaction than anything you could accomplish while holding a smartphone. I wasn't a big user of the camera feature on my Glass because of Google's mandatory policy of Auto Upload, so it certainly wasn't a key requirement for me. But I don't see that backlash as legitimate. I also never got concerns or complaints while wearing it for over a year, most people who took issue online, when asked, admitted they'd never seen the device in real life.
- ntumlin 11y agoDoes adding a light to Glass really solve the problem of covert recording? Does getting rid of Glass even do that? Cameras are tiny. Privacy is dying.
- icebraining 11y agoThe difference is what's called "normalization". Sure, everyone can get a covert camera. But few people are going to buy and use one, because they'd feel like a creep and/or they can't use it as a fashion statement and/or it's not as useful by itself. So unless you're being specifically targeted, the chances of being filmed are small. But if using a device with a camera always pointed at others (unlike cellphones, which usually remain in pockets and bags) and which uploads everything to "the cloud" becomes normal, it becomes almost impossible to avoid the pervasive monitorization. As the US Privacy Study Commission wrote in 1977, "the real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."
- tracker1 11y agoGiven the likes of Amazon, FedEx, UPS etc, I would think that inventory management would be a huge use for something like Google Glass... drivers, part pickers, packers, etc... anyone that needs to move the right products from A to B, mapping where A and B are, etc. The time savings could be significant.
- mentos 11y agoI think Google should solve a problem with this hardware internally, baking it until its something every employee wants and then look towards the consumer.
- randycupertino 11y agoBetween glass and google plus, I don't get why they try to force these lame things nobody wants on their customers. Shouldn't google be smarter than that??
- Mahn 11y agoIt's called experimenting. You can't always get it right without getting it wrong sometimes.