7 ms·

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten.

by gcb 14y ago

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

antidaily 14y ago
Agreed. Meanwhile, they've ruined Picasa with G+.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  As well as Reader.
- toemetoch 14y ago
  Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.
  - jes5199 14y ago
    really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially. But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      The only complaint I have about G+ photos is that it emphasizes albums instead of individual photos. If I want to share a single image, I have to create an album for it, and then have that album-containing-a-single-picture hanging around forever. I find it much easier to "scp photo.png jrock.us:/var/www/jrock.us" and host it myself.
    - toemetoch 14y ago
      Yes. In the early weeks of G+ it was really weird. I had mainly people from flickr in my circles, they were very easy to find because they actively pointed at each other. Posts like "if you're into this kind of photography you should add these people" - this was before you could share circles. They also posted how-tos on using picasa images in posts and such. They really jumped on it. One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa. I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.
stesch 14y ago
Yes, Apple will bring out a cool version in 2020.
- shrub 14y ago
  iEyes?
  - StevenRayOrr 14y ago
    iBalls? Oh god. Why did I even say that? Someone kill me now.
    - fady 14y ago
      i feel like i'm on reddit :P
- Splines 14y ago
  How do you make wearing a headpiece cool? I wear glasses and imagine some teeny tiny thing embedded in one of the arms. What could 20/20 people do that would be socially acceptable? Maybe a bluetooth headset looking thing?
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Celebrities.
  - ImprovedSilence 14y ago
    ->"How do you make wearing a headpiece cool?" Beautiful women wearing your product?
  - kemiller 14y ago
    You already have kids wearing fake glasses for style. I think the trick here is just to make the fancy glasses look like normal ones.
  - aeosynth 14y ago
    Contact lenses
fuzzythinker 14y ago
You are thinking of today's Glass. In 2-3 iterations, the camera will be so small and embedded in the frame that it won't be noticeable.
- grandalf 14y ago
  A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone? For every frame (such as in a video) the amount of work involved to reduce boredom increases. Raw video of people's lives is utterly, unimaginably boring, even if the person is a celebrity. Still photos work b/c they capture a whole moment, with just enough detail to inspire the imagination and to ground the imaginings in reality. My personal favorites are the slightly grainy and oversaturated images taken by the camera in the blackberry I had about 5 years ago. Still photos bring out the best parts of the human experience, while raw video makes everyone as boring as the worst video blogger.
  - toemetoch 14y ago
    It's not the device, it's the applications people will crave. Think about these apps for your glasses: - adBlocker to remove ads from your view - first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture. - architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed. - ... You're suffering from a serious lack of realism if you discard them based on the camera quality. The iPhone drove R&D for cameras we have now, same will happen for these gizmos. Edit: The only real opposition I see is another wave of reports on the impact of having a non-stop wireless RF device next to your skull.
    - planetguy 14y ago
      adBlocker to remove ads from your view I hate ads, but not quite enough to go round blocking portions of my vision just to avoid seeing 'em. I envisage myself getting run over by an advertising-covered bus. first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture Sounds fun, but niche. Laser Tag isn't a big industry. architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed That's more the sort of application I'd envisage. Or how about this? Imagine a store you'd walk into, get issued a pair of glasses, then you could walk around, look at things, and have information about 'em magically appear? How cool would that be? Answer: awesomely cool... the first time. In year one, that store would be the coolest thing on the planet. But the fiftieth time you go in there.... meh.
dannyr 14y ago
There are a lot of products that started as totally uncool, used by hippies/yuppies & eventually became mainstream. PC. Twitter. I won't be surprised if cellphone was too. Google Glass is a prototype. Product will evolve. I bet decades ago, people would not have thought that PCs would fit inside a manila folder.
swalsh 14y ago
Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities. In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later. It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad space, and if facebook ever decides to make their own ad network (such as Google's ad sense) competition will be fierce. Google glass is a really good way to increase their competitive advantage, and cement their position in the advertising arena. Additionally, of the companies that would be interested in making a product like google glass (facebook, microsoft, IBM etc) Google probably has the best mix of engineers to do it. I've always said that Google is an AI company first. Well a huge part of AI is machine vision, and a large part of successfully monetizing google glass is machine vision. Additionally, with street view, and other aggressive initiatives Google is in one of the best positions to actually understand what and where the world you are looking at. Finally, while google has proven in the past they are weak as a hardware company (nexus 1) they have demonstrated they are capable of bringing a consumer product to the mass market... though perhaps maybe not enough to make it anything less then a wild card. Finally the last point is one of consumer adoption. The newton pad was not successful in part because the hardware was premature. But I would speculate it was also in part because consumers weren't at the point of understanding the value. The hardware in Google glass is unknown at this point, and potentially could under-deliver... and that will cause it to be a newton.. but for the reasons i said above I think Google is capable of delivering a quality product. However consumer readiness will not be an issue. 1 billion people are already on Facebook. Social interaction through technology is accepted today more then ever before. Using smartphones in public is not only accepted, its normal. Years ago using a PDA might have made you look like a yuppie, but today no one would notice.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. I think one of the biggest issues with the Newton was timing. We are a different people now than then. The timing is right. If they don't mess it up with weird looking hardware, then it will probably be a success.
jrockway 14y ago
Did you mean: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.?
temphn 14y ago
This is a good comment. Google Glass is technologically amazing, but the demo video was incredibly distracting. You only want augmented reality when you want it. You don't want random notifications and messages from other people cropping up and making you walk into a lamppost. On the other hand, if they can lick the distraction problem or even make the tool something that improves focus (say by reminding you unobtrusively of what you need to get done that day) it could be very cool in subsequent iterations. I don't think the product manager is thinking about minomizing distraction though.

by gcb 14y ago

antidaily 14y ago

Agreed. Meanwhile, they've ruined Picasa with G+.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago
As well as Reader.
toemetoch 14y ago
Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.
- jes5199 14y ago
  really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially. But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    The only complaint I have about G+ photos is that it emphasizes albums instead of individual photos. If I want to share a single image, I have to create an album for it, and then have that album-containing-a-single-picture hanging around forever. I find it much easier to "scp photo.png jrock.us:/var/www/jrock.us" and host it myself.
  - toemetoch 14y ago
    Yes. In the early weeks of G+ it was really weird. I had mainly people from flickr in my circles, they were very easy to find because they actively pointed at each other. Posts like "if you're into this kind of photography you should add these people" - this was before you could share circles. They also posted how-tos on using picasa images in posts and such. They really jumped on it. One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa. I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.

stesch 14y ago

Yes, Apple will bring out a cool version in 2020.

shrub 14y ago
iEyes?
- StevenRayOrr 14y ago
  iBalls? Oh god. Why did I even say that? Someone kill me now.
  - fady 14y ago
    i feel like i'm on reddit :P
Splines 14y ago
How do you make wearing a headpiece cool? I wear glasses and imagine some teeny tiny thing embedded in one of the arms. What could 20/20 people do that would be socially acceptable? Maybe a bluetooth headset looking thing?
- saraid216 14y ago
  Celebrities.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  ->"How do you make wearing a headpiece cool?" Beautiful women wearing your product?
- kemiller 14y ago
  You already have kids wearing fake glasses for style. I think the trick here is just to make the fancy glasses look like normal ones.
- aeosynth 14y ago
  Contact lenses

fuzzythinker 14y ago

You are thinking of today's Glass. In 2-3 iterations, the camera will be so small and embedded in the frame that it won't be noticeable.

grandalf 14y ago
A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone? For every frame (such as in a video) the amount of work involved to reduce boredom increases. Raw video of people's lives is utterly, unimaginably boring, even if the person is a celebrity. Still photos work b/c they capture a whole moment, with just enough detail to inspire the imagination and to ground the imaginings in reality. My personal favorites are the slightly grainy and oversaturated images taken by the camera in the blackberry I had about 5 years ago. Still photos bring out the best parts of the human experience, while raw video makes everyone as boring as the worst video blogger.
- toemetoch 14y ago
  It's not the device, it's the applications people will crave. Think about these apps for your glasses: - adBlocker to remove ads from your view - first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture. - architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed. - ... You're suffering from a serious lack of realism if you discard them based on the camera quality. The iPhone drove R&D for cameras we have now, same will happen for these gizmos. Edit: The only real opposition I see is another wave of reports on the impact of having a non-stop wireless RF device next to your skull.
  - planetguy 14y ago
    adBlocker to remove ads from your view I hate ads, but not quite enough to go round blocking portions of my vision just to avoid seeing 'em. I envisage myself getting run over by an advertising-covered bus. first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture Sounds fun, but niche. Laser Tag isn't a big industry. architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed That's more the sort of application I'd envisage. Or how about this? Imagine a store you'd walk into, get issued a pair of glasses, then you could walk around, look at things, and have information about 'em magically appear? How cool would that be? Answer: awesomely cool... the first time. In year one, that store would be the coolest thing on the planet. But the fiftieth time you go in there.... meh.

dannyr 14y ago

There are a lot of products that started as totally uncool, used by hippies/yuppies & eventually became mainstream. PC. Twitter. I won't be surprised if cellphone was too. Google Glass is a prototype. Product will evolve. I bet decades ago, people would not have thought that PCs would fit inside a manila folder.

swalsh 14y ago

Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities. In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later. It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad space, and if facebook ever decides to make their own ad network (such as Google's ad sense) competition will be fierce. Google glass is a really good way to increase their competitive advantage, and cement their position in the advertising arena. Additionally, of the companies that would be interested in making a product like google glass (facebook, microsoft, IBM etc) Google probably has the best mix of engineers to do it. I've always said that Google is an AI company first. Well a huge part of AI is machine vision, and a large part of successfully monetizing google glass is machine vision. Additionally, with street view, and other aggressive initiatives Google is in one of the best positions to actually understand what and where the world you are looking at. Finally, while google has proven in the past they are weak as a hardware company (nexus 1) they have demonstrated they are capable of bringing a consumer product to the mass market... though perhaps maybe not enough to make it anything less then a wild card. Finally the last point is one of consumer adoption. The newton pad was not successful in part because the hardware was premature. But I would speculate it was also in part because consumers weren't at the point of understanding the value. The hardware in Google glass is unknown at this point, and potentially could under-deliver... and that will cause it to be a newton.. but for the reasons i said above I think Google is capable of delivering a quality product. However consumer readiness will not be an issue. 1 billion people are already on Facebook. Social interaction through technology is accepted today more then ever before. Using smartphones in public is not only accepted, its normal. Years ago using a PDA might have made you look like a yuppie, but today no one would notice.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago
I was thinking the same thing. I think one of the biggest issues with the Newton was timing. We are a different people now than then. The timing is right. If they don't mess it up with weird looking hardware, then it will probably be a success.

jrockway 14y ago

Did you mean: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.?

temphn 14y ago

This is a good comment. Google Glass is technologically amazing, but the demo video was incredibly distracting. You only want augmented reality when you want it. You don't want random notifications and messages from other people cropping up and making you walk into a lamppost. On the other hand, if they can lick the distraction problem or even make the tool something that improves focus (say by reminding you unobtrusively of what you need to get done that day) it could be very cool in subsequent iterations. I don't think the product manager is thinking about minomizing distraction though.