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Google Clips is a new $249 wearable camera
- gr3yh47 9y agoFTA: >It also doesn’t use any kind of network connection, so it’s not broadcasting the stuff it captures anywhere. You can connect to your phone to check what you’ve got. I'd add: and, once connected, undoubtedly upload everything captured automatically to google for ad services, datamining, and machine learning.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jasonmaydie 9y ago250$ for a 16 frame per sec hidden camera with some machine learning nonsense thrown in?
- atomi 9y agoIt's just business. Let the people buy what they want. We know that you could build something similar with a $6 Aliexpress camera, $1 motion sensor and a $5 rpi zero from Microcenter but we're not the market.
- usaphp 9y agoIt's just an opinion, let the people express their thoughts, comments are here for that reason.
- stesch 9y agoFirst step to "The Circle". :-)
- neilsimp1 9y agoThat was my immediate thought on reading the post title. The Circle is almost complete!
- themaen 9y agoMy thought as well :D In addition, the movie has already reminded me of Google...
- Diederich 9y agoMissed the reference...can you expand on that?
- stesch 9y agoIn the movie "The Circle" a big company (a mixture of Google and Facebook) invents a small camera that you can put everywhere that records everything and broadcasts it for everyone. A post privacy future.
- Diederich 9y agoHuh, I've never heard of this movie. I've been pretty disconnected from normal popular culture for some time. Thanks!
- taylorlapeyre 9y agoNever thought I'd see the day when Google would make a Gopro competitor.
- DarronWyke 9y agoThere's a huge market for Gopro and Contour. Makes sense that Google will attempt to capture some of it.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoGopro's execution is bad, from a financial perspective. Like its so bad that even if 100% of the police departments in the US bought body cameras from them, they would still be an unviable long term investment and since that isn't happening, amongst other possible ways of saturating the market, Google coming in and undermining it should be a serious bearish signal
- jimrandomh 9y agoThe ad copy for this says "100% private. No Internet needed to capture." But the last time Google sold a camera-oriented device, Google Glass, it would upload all the pictures it took to Google's servers without any way to stop it from doing so. And Google gave out instructions to stop it from uploading pictures, but the instructions didn't work. Can an engineer from Google, who has looked at the code or at the network traffic, say confidently that this isn't uploading all your pictures to Google's servers? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20644764/prevent-google-glass-from-auto-uploading-photos https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20644764/prevent-google-...
- soared 9y agoAre you accusing Google of just outright lying? One product says you don't need a network connection, the other heavily relied on a network connection.
- jimrandomh 9y agoI'm saying that Google has had an internal miscommunication about this exact question in the past. That's different from lying, but it does undercut the credibility of their statement, and so I'd like to hear it from someone who's able to check, rather than someone on the marketing side.
- BHSPitMonkey 9y agoIt was very unambiguously an emphasized part of the keynote that they talked about in detail, not a passing misunderstandable remark. And when the public has their hands on these, it would be trivial to see if it violates this claim.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Invictus0 9y agoSeems like this would definitely have a place in a lot of people's lives: it makes photography natural, easy, and simple. It solves the problem of spending time processing and pruning photos, in an age when most people take photos by pressing the shutter button 20 times and praying. However, I think the target audience for this thing would pass at $250, especially when the single most important selling point on smartphones is the camera. This is part of the manifestation of Google's big bet on hardware; the same way they used to put out tons of shitty software just to see what stuck, now they will do the same with hardware. Luckily, hardware breaks, so it will be less painful when your camera dies and is discontinued than when Google pulls the plug on their dead services with little ceremony or redress.
- lalos 9y agoI actually had a similar device called Narrative which went down some months ago. It was weird having a camera all day and when I did want to go back and check a specific moment the photo was almost always blurry. I did use it to create time lapses and that was pretty neat because of the small size of the device. Link for the curious: http://getnarrative.com http://getnarrative.com
- mattnewton 9y agoMy SO bought one of these and she had trouble finding a place to put it on her where it wasn’t pointing slightly up at an awkward angle. A lot of the positions in marketing shots don’t fit female anatomy, and a necklace leaves it flying about taking blurry sideways photos. It’s a cool product for QS type people but didn’t seem useful in practice.
- skinnymuch 9y agoHm my photos weren't blurry too much. I had both versions of it. Sadly the second versions back came off so I can't clip it on even though it works. The company is barely alive now. I really enjoyed having a device to wear that lasted all day. The video quality for manual video taking was great too.
- camillomiller 9y agoGoogle hardware efforts make me cringe. How can they be so tone-deaf? Why creating something that pretends to help you creatively while actually flattening all the differences, nuances and creative glitches or imperfections down to a uniformed stylistic template? Seriously, I don't get it.
- cromwellian 9y agoMost people who take pictures of their kids don't want to be photographers, they don't want to think about composition, or lighting, they just want a good memory. Cameras have become more and more automated over the years. Auto focus, auto-exposure, auto-iso, burst mode hdr, portait lighting, and pretty soon, computational photography and AI on camera devices is going to just let you take a continuous burst of images, recognize the best compositions, and choose those. Some people will scream death of art and creativity, but true auteurs can still go manual mode if they want. Other people will be freed up to do other things while not having to worry about taking bad shots.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoExactly. I have small kids. I love taking pictures of my kids, but I hate having to choose between being in the moment and taking pictures. This thing is amazing to me. The only thing is that I would probably only use it if I expected there to be something capturable, like Christmas morning or a first day on the school bus or some special outing at a Playground or Disney or something. I'm not sure it's worth it for just those occasions. If something spontaneously adorable happens, it probably will be in a drawer and out of battery. But I'm sorely tempted. Hanging it on the Christmas tree might be amazing.
- VikingCoder 9y agoIt helps people. Sure, you can say it's tacky and flat, but that's a Selfie Stick, too. Maybe it'll be popular, maybe it won't. But I can imagine my grandma using this to take family photos. What's your solution for her? A phone stand and a timer that she has to quickly jump and move around? And then someone blinked, so she has to do it again?
- huangc10 9y agoWhat's the target market? All the marketing material on Google's site seemed to be aimed towards a family oriented theme. Have you ever thought, "oh, let's take a few photos while we make cookies in the POV of the kitchen table"...? Has anyone needed something that is "candid" but also "not candid" (because you placed the camera there...)? Maybe if they targeted sports, or security it'll make more sense?
- PascLeRasc 9y agoInstagram-savvy parents. My mom is one and she's friends with dozens in real life. She/they like trying to get creative shots but don't really care about DSLR-type specs.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> What's the target market? Parents. > All the marketing material on Google's site seemed to be aimed towards a family oriented theme. That's not accidental. > Have you ever thought, "oh, let's take a few photos while we make cookies in the POV of the kitchen table"...? Not that specifically, but, as a parent of a young child, I have thought “I wish I had a camera that I could basically place and forget” quite a lot. I'm skeptical about the AI choosing good shots to capture, but if it's even remotely good at that, I suspect it will do pretty well.
- e59d134d 9y agoPerhaps me and many people like me. There are so many times when something funny or great happens and I wish I had recorded it but taking out cellphone is too slow. A lot of fun stories while baking cookies and other mundane household chores when you have pets and kids. EDIT: I won't buy this at this price point, but definitely get it at $150.
- icantdrive55 9y agoTarget market Law enforcement? Then again it seems like cops like to wear cameras that are easily turned off. I wonder why? I can tell when my local police officers are about to do something not quite right; they slide that cover over the lens of their pricey, proprietary cams. And there's irritating people whom will think it's cute to photograph everyone. "Nice to meet you. I see your filming. Wonderful? There goes dinner?" Wait--if I was involved in a extreme sport, I might buy one? And let's not forget porn? Sorry, I just don't get this need to document everything. Then again it's probally just me. I never liked my photo taken.
- alkonaut 9y agoEven if the thing has zero hardware capability to communicate I can't overcome my gut feeling that the thing is an ad targeting data mining device. There is basically nothing google could say or write at this point about one of their devices that would make me think they respect my privacy.
- PascLeRasc 9y agoWait for an iFixit teardown or some other third party to verify that there isn't external communication hardware.
- icebraining 9y agoWell, and then teardown the mobile app used to see the photos.
- vim_wannabe 9y agoWell, at least they are now trying to point out products that weren't built for data mining. I'm excited what the second one will be.
- RandomTrees 9y ago> has USB C, Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth LE for connectivity
- brosky117 9y ago> interestingly Google doesn’t seem to be eager to provide info on how many megapixels the sensor has. Whenever it showed shots from the camera POV in the promo video, it looked like the pictures would be pretty low res.
- rand0mbits 9y ago12MP from what I've read
- patrickxb 9y agoWho keeps flour in a bag like that?
- rpowers 9y agoThis camera gives me the absolute creeps. If someone has this in their home I'd ask them to put it in a drawer.
- rakoo 9y agoWhen the video ended, I thought I just watched the introduction to a new Black Mirror episode. Really didn't feel at ease.
- rpowers 9y ago"Go Transparent w/ Google" should be their tag-line. The other commenter on this thread was right about the 'The Circle' comparison.
- djb_hackernews 9y agoYou may be alluding to it, but Black Mirror has an episode that features the fallout of such a technology already. I believe it was in the first season.
- Bedon292 9y agoCould you elaborate, what do you see wrong with it? To me it seems like a camcorder, which used to be used all the time. And now no different than any other smart phone camera. Or even just a GoPro sitting there recording whatever.
- icebraining 9y agoI'm not the parent poster, but I'd say it's the fact that it's so obviously designed for passive surveillance. Sure you can leave a camcorder or GoPro running, but this thing doesn't even have a screen. Not to mention it has "intelligence". Who knows when it's actually recording?
- TheCapn 9y agoSounds like their marketing was just a bit tone deaf. If it is the modern equivalent of the home camcorder then really what's so incredibly scary? I wouldn't have my camcorder out on the counter while a couple friends and I were enjoying a beer, and neither would I have the "Clips" out for that situation. Having my family all gathered in the same room ripping apart gifts on Christmas always had a camcorder, if we had Google Clips set up in the tree then we'd probably have more footage of my dad in those years than we do now because he was always behind the lens. Google just needs someone to spin the market appeal better. Passive surveillance is definitely a sore spot. Ease free family memories are way more of a positive spin.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoI watched two seconds of that video and thought SHORT $GPRO! checked out the price chart and people are beating me to it already though
- vyrotek 9y agoReminded me of similar but simpler product I saw on KS called FOMO https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1784759196/fomo-the-most-wearable-and-customizable-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1784759196/fomo-the-mos...
- verri 9y agoAlso the Polaroid Cube, MeCam, Narrative, etc. There seems to be no shortage of small consumer-oriented camera gadgets.
- skinnymuch 9y agoSome of those products are wildly different. Narrative and Cube are barely competing with one another. Cube is a mini GoPro. Narrative was an all day wearable device. There is a shortage of small, quality wearable devices (specifically cameras of course in this instance).
- legohead 9y agoEven more relevant: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bbutton/benjamin-button-the-worlds-1st-smart-camera-for-fa/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bbutton/benjamin-button... 1) Meant to take video of your family 2) Identifies 'moments' and cuts them up for you so you don't have to do all the video editing yourself.
- skinnymuch 9y agoBut this Benjamin Button is DOA right? It ever launched. Seems like it's cancelled and a vague saying that they'll be back.
- skinnymuch 9y agoLooks interesting. I'm weary of products actually launching. This is still pretty new so it'll be a while before we know if it comes out. I'd be interested in it though.
- excalibur 9y ago> It also doesn’t use any kind of network connection, so it’s not broadcasting the stuff it captures anywhere. > Plus, it’ll alert you when its lens is blocked via intelligent notifications to your phone. One of these statements is inaccurate. (Comment edited to be more easily demonstrable.)
- cyclonetiger 9y agoIt transfers files to your phone via Wifi. So technically it does have connection to the outside world.
- mgraczyk 9y agoIt's possible that by 'any kind of network connection' they meant cell and wifi, excluding Bluetooth or wifi directly to you phone.
- ehsankia 9y agoHonestly, it probably connects to wifi too. What they meant is that all the AI is done on the device and the photos themselves aren't sent out to Google (until you specifically tell it to from the app). Note that to view the photos, you have to use the app anyway, so it clearly can communicate with your phone and send photos. The point he was trying to make is that the photo selection is done on the device and not by Google servers. Obviously the device has network connection, it just doesn't use it for that specific usecase which is analyzing images, but it can use it for other stuff.
- joshuamorton 9y ago>It also doesn’t use any kind of network connection, Bluetooth is not normally considered a network connection. (I work at Google, but have nothing to do with Clips)
- excalibur 9y agoIf you stick to that (misleading) definition, then even if the part about not broadcasting the stuff it captures is accurate, the phrase before the "so" does not imply the phrase that comes after, meaning the sentence still is not factual.
- saikit 9y agoThe first thing I thought was that this was a civilian body cam. Coincidentally, the police in my current hometown are also trying out a Google product for their body cams. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-jersey-city-using-cell-phone-cameras-as-alternative-to-body-cams/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-jersey-city-using-cell-p...
- sharpercoder 9y ago15FPS? Why on earth make that design decision? Isn't 30FPS nowadays considered substandard?
- icebraining 9y agoProbably a tradeoff for keeping it small & light while maintaining a decent battery life.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoAs I understand it, it's not for videos. It's 15 photos per second, any of which might be the one you keep. But maybe I misunderstand that and someone can correct me.
- soared 9y agoFor all you wondering who the target market is or how people would trust google's camera in everyday life, think outside of the hn bubble. Wouldn't you're grandma or mom like to capture moments like these? They don't have to remember to take pictures, they don't need to sort through photos, etc.
- danvoell 9y agoThere is a lot of bashing in the comments. I kind of like this. I wonder how many people in the comments have multiple kids. After the first kid you kind of stop taking pictures because you don't have the hands and/or mental capacity. I could also see something like this working in a school. It's always interesting to know what your kids are working on. Our teacher took about 1500 pics last month. I don't see this as much different.
- rakoo 9y agoI really love the idea. I totally agree that sometimes you want a camera always filming everything to capture the instants, because when you take your phone out it's already too late and you can't really reenact it. That's a good thing. What I, and I believe others didn't like, is the text and the message, which is not even hidden at this point: Google sees and knows everything about you, your family, your favorite moments. I didn't even see how that was useful for the user -- I certainly want to categorize my Moments so I can easily find them again, but I'm not sure I want Google to _know_ about it. And yet that's exactly what it says.
- UnoriginalGuy 9y agoAs the article very clearly says, this camera is a self contained unit, nothing is sent back to Google. If you want to upload your photos to e.g. Google Photos you can, but you have to manually do that.
- jimduk 9y agoWe built a consumer product like this back in 2013 - Autographer. The hard bits were i) battery life, ii) taking good pictures when moving, iii) having a socially acceptable & nicely designed product that points in the right direction, iv) connectivity, v) wide FOV camera module vi) How to subselect & create the best picture/video experiences (intelligence & creativity) vii) Who/when/what it was really for. In 2017 v) is solved, i)/ii)/iv) are easier, google should be able to do vi) as well as anyone, let's see about vii). Anyway good luck to them and I'll be buying one.
- a3_nm 9y agoBattery life is 3 hours, and this seems ridiculously low for something that's designed to be left running without supervision.
- dharma1 9y agoi'd like to have a small wearable camera that's on all day, snapping away, even if it was 3fps, and have some kind of voice recognition/hands free operation. Could wipe the storage daily. Wide fov, fast lens and optical stabilisation would be nice. The Xiaomi Yi's (and other Chinese cameras using Ambarella/HiSilicon/Allwinner SoCs) are cheap and pretty scriptable, but a bit too big/obvious. Anyone know of a camera that would work? This Google one doesn't take pictures of everything, and is pretty expensive for what it is.
- skinnymuch 9y agoAutographer was a cool product. I was close to buying it. Too bad you guys went away a few years ago
- skinnymuch 9y agoThe battery life appears to be three hours. That's incredibly disappointing at such a price point. You'd think it should be $100 max if the battery can't even last half a day
- jconn 9y agoDoes anyone else think that this camera taking pictures based on who you spend the most time with could be really depressing? "How come there are no photos of my kids and a whole album of my boss with fancy filters added?"
- asp_hornet 9y agoit might help you rethink who you spend your time with before its too late to change it.
- bigzoo 9y agoIf I get one of these, I want not only the option for AI-powered clips, but for every second of video/audio to be stored, tagged, classified, and analyzed: 1) Spoken word Every spoken word is transcribed. Every word is tagged to the right person. All speech is automatically analyzed for intonation and emotion (perhaps, in part, by the AI analyzing facial expression). 2) Written word Every word that is read/seen by the camera (as in books, magazines, receipts, brochures, highway signs, TV commercials, license plates) is OCRed and stored. 3) People Every person is tagged (something like the way Google Photos does it). Since there is now audio for every frame/video, Google's machine-learning AI will make it super accurate. Facial expressions will be analyzed, along with vocal intonation, to tag person's emotions, mental state, etc. 4) Location Everything will be GPS-tagged. Great start, but so much more I'd like to see.