>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.
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.
In 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.
Gopro'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
The 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?
Are 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.
I'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.
It 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.
Seems 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.
I 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.
My 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.
Hm 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.
Google 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.
Most 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.
Exactly. 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.
It 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?
Your comments are tone-deaf - most of the world doesn't care about creativity when taking photos. Photos of kids, dogs, people etc... Most of the photos I see on the web are NOT creative at all. They are utilitarian.
What'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?
Instagram-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.
Perhaps 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.
Target 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.
I'm a parent and I would love a camera like this. I'm actually upset that it doesn't have a microphone. I'd have it on all the time at home to capture all of the moments with my kids, my parents, etc.
It's also probably very good for going out with your friends. It's always a pain in the arse to take out your camera/phone, interrupt whatever people are doing and have them pose for pictures. If this captures good pictures, it would be so much better.
Re privacy, I don't know if you check every line of source code in every app you've got installed on your PC/devices. If you don't, they could be capturing all the data they can and sending it over to big brother.
Even 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.
You 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.
Could 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.
I'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?
Sounds 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.
A tiny, passive camera where the indicator faces upwards (not facing where the camera is pointed at) with the ability to record 3hrs seems like it would be used as a spy camera. At least with GoPro the camera has a display that tells you it's running.
You forgot the part where you can train it to only record when your estranged spouse has visitation with your kids, based on facial recognition...
> ... uses machine learning to key in on certain people and pets of your choosing and only capture them, so you don’t miss out on adorable moments. Clips is designed to be clipped anywhere, however, including around the house.
You wouldn't just have it out all the time. It's basically a robotic stand-in for the owner taking their phone out and snapping photos. If you're not in a situation where that would make sense, the same would apply to using this thing.
Some 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).
Looks 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.
Honestly, 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.
If 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.
>the phrase before the "so" does not imply the phrase that comes after, meaning the sentence still is not factual.
This seems highly pedantic, unnecessarily so in fact. Sure if you take "so" to mean "implies" then your statement is reasonable, but "so" doesn't solely mean "implies".
The point seems to be that you're in control of the photos, and they aren't being sent off to a secret google dark site to mine for data about your toddler. Do you disagree with that, or just have further grammatical quibbles?
I'm not saying Google IS collecting everything the camera sees, I'm saying they COULD. This statement is meant to give the reader a sense that the device is safe from privacy concerns because it physically can't be accessed remotely, which is not accurate.
Can they? Bluetooth video isn't a thing (no really, it's not supported by the spec, I just looked). Whereas sending a boolean "my screen is blocked" is.
Edit: apparently it is a thing but not really, like very low bandwidth.
Say someone compromised a clip and a nearby cell phone.
Can we be sure that the compromised clip isn't uploading images to the phone? Not the little video clips supported by the standard device, images created by additional software.
Of course this is pedantic, but is also a useful way of analyzing what internet of shit products might end up doing (that is, reasoning about the capabilities in addition to the advertised features).
This Clip networks with your phone which presumably sends that to Google servers for AI purposes which also presumably means for data storage so that better models can be trained.
Listen, this statement clearly is made to address privacy concerns, and it does so in an irresponsibly misleading way.
You've made a lot of assumptions and came to a conclusion based on it. Does it send that data to Google for processing? Or does it happen locally on device. That's a big difference.
That's not what is used here. In any case, the device itself does not send what it captures to any remote server. Its recordings are accessed locally and copied to your phone selectively when you decide to, and -then- the recording would only be uploaded/backed up if your phone is configured to do so (just like using the Camera app on the phone itself).
As 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.
For 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.
There 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.
I 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.
As 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.
We 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.
i'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.
The 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
Does 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?"
If 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.
98 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] thread>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.
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.
In addition, the movie has already reminded me of Google...
A post privacy future.
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
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20644764/prevent-google-...
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.
Link for the curious: http://getnarrative.com
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
It's also probably very good for going out with your friends. It's always a pain in the arse to take out your camera/phone, interrupt whatever people are doing and have them pose for pictures. If this captures good pictures, it would be so much better.
Re privacy, I don't know if you check every line of source code in every app you've got installed on your PC/devices. If you don't, they could be capturing all the data they can and sending it over to big brother.
I'm excited what the second one will be.
Whenever it showed shots from the camera POV in the promo video, it looked like the pictures would be pretty low res.
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.
I did feel the creepy vibe, but I've learned a long time ago that I'm more sensitive to that than others.
> ... uses machine learning to key in on certain people and pets of your choosing and only capture them, so you don’t miss out on adorable moments. Clips is designed to be clipped anywhere, however, including around the house.
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.
> 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.)
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.
Bluetooth is not normally considered a network connection.
(I work at Google, but have nothing to do with Clips)
>the phrase before the "so" does not imply the phrase that comes after, meaning the sentence still is not factual.
This seems highly pedantic, unnecessarily so in fact. Sure if you take "so" to mean "implies" then your statement is reasonable, but "so" doesn't solely mean "implies".
The point seems to be that you're in control of the photos, and they aren't being sent off to a secret google dark site to mine for data about your toddler. Do you disagree with that, or just have further grammatical quibbles?
Edit: apparently it is a thing but not really, like very low bandwidth.
Can we be sure that the compromised clip isn't uploading images to the phone? Not the little video clips supported by the standard device, images created by additional software.
Of course this is pedantic, but is also a useful way of analyzing what internet of shit products might end up doing (that is, reasoning about the capabilities in addition to the advertised features).
Listen, this statement clearly is made to address privacy concerns, and it does so in an irresponsibly misleading way.
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-p...
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.
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.
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.
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.