Image recognition, body composition calculations, physical strength calculations based on those, power stance rating, combine into power level? Sounds like a good app.
Well, except they are Swedish ethnographers so they care about you taking pictures of your baby while you spend a year taking care of him or her (and auto-send cute pictures to the grand-parents) and not US ambulance chasers suing the life out of everyone, or gun-totting libertarian testing Sheriff's patience, but cultural idiosyncrasies apart, the idea’s roughly the same. :)
Google Glass is already dusted. It occupies the very centre of an 'uncanny valley' when it comes to wearable computing. It's simply too creepy to have people walking around with a HUD and and camera next to one eye. And coming from Google no less.
Should have positioned it more as something you wear for outdoor sports, or for specific activities (I know they tried a bit)... but as an everyday computing/sensor device it fails the cultural/social challenge.
If a personal HUD was so great, why do they need to bundle an outfacing camera to the device at the same time?
A personal HUD with sufficient utility might gain acceptance by people not wearing the device. Coupled to an eye mounted 'recording other people without their consent' device and Google's servers though?
(And yes, my tone is indicative of a luddite stance in this particular instance)
A personal HUD with no way to be context sensitive (ie no camera) is dead in the water. I'm biased because Im working in this space. but, I believe context aware augmented reality is the killer app for wearables. Honestly, the people wearing Glass aren't recording you, Google isn't recording you; if you're worried about privacy concerns it's the last thing on the list of things to be terrified about (just an anecdote, my little sister spends an inordinate amount of time subtly snap chatting images of the people around her with her iphone so, odds are your dystopian future of you describe already exists). So long as we are given root access and the option to use our own servers and software, the hardware advances are not the problem. Acting like a Luddite will not protect your privacy.
The utility proposition of a HUD has always included data display relevant to what is in the field of vision; that's why HUDs are traditionally tied to sensor systems, whether its Glass and its camera or a jet fighter HUD and the targeting radar.
We had the same complaints about cell phones, especially with handsfree headsets. It was simply too creepy to have people walking around with a small box mushed against their ear ... or worse, just walking along chattering into the air with nobody around.
Well, we still have the same complaints, we just find it so useful we've accepted the "cell phone zombification" of society.
HUDs will be the same, and like Bluetooth-enabled earpieces will gradually disappear into barely-visible devices.
Earbuds, no.
But wearing glass is much more visible -- more of an asserted statement. It's currently more like wearing over-ear headphones in public. Which is done by only a vanishing minority.
As glass becomes smaller, I'd imagine the pushback will abate. But until it seamlessly disappears into frames, people are going to react poorly to what is being perceived as a clearly-worn borderline-spy-camera. [1]
[1] Spy camera in the sense that there isn't much of a physical cue that someone's taking a picture or not. The light is hardly as visible as holding a camera or phone up to your face.
People only walks with small boxes mushed against their ear when they get a call. The rest of the time it's on their pocket. Not so much with something like Google glasses.
Glasses suck. I wear them since I was a child and I don't like them. I'm planning to get laser eye surgery done just to get rid of glasses. I would be very surprised if suddenly lots of people with good sight are fine with wearing glasses all the time.
What Glass needs is understanding the need to keep the feet on the ground and realizing that scifi oriented marketing can only go so far. As exciting as "look and feel as a borg" may sound in PR releases, it's useless long term on doing real practical things. Sell it as the more mundane souped up camera it actually is and it could do a lot better.
How about labeling players with their names at a soccer/football game? I'm not that much of a fan, but watching live soccer games is fun and unfortunately I can't recognize the players by their shirt number or field position like die-hard fans can. And this takes away some fun from being on that stadium.
Or how about labeling points of interests when walking around in a foreign city? Speaking of which, Google Maps's walk directions could be interesting on Glass.
Also, I have a bad memory so related to what you've said - I tend to forget names, so it would be awesome if the HUD showed me the name of the person I'm talking with. I wouldn't need much, just their first name.
Basically it doesn't have to be an all creepy all invasive thing. With enough time and polish this could be useful and for tasks that don't intrude on people's privacy. With a red led signaling whether the camera is recording or not it would also take away the fear of talking with somebody wearing glasses. And after all, those glasses aren't the only way you can sneakily record somebody.
Face recognition would be the killer app. I would hand over a month's salary to get a device that simply converted from face to name.
Nothing else, it doesn't have to bring up their facebook profile, twitter feed or anything else. It could even rely simply on entries I've entered myself, knowing someone before they've introduced themselves would be creepy. But just something so that when people remember me I don't stand like a dick because I can't recognise their face would be nice.
Bingo. Killer app: face recognition. Add license plate recognition to that (per another current threagood money for a system that would, unintrusively, pop up an info bubble over everyone's head (name, summary of interactions, relationships, last social media posts, etc). Considering the data mining potential, I'd expect Google et al to provide the hardware & services for free or darned near it.
Add license plate recognition to that (per another current thread). Cars correlate real close with their owners.
Google currently has policies against doing any kind of cross-referencing with audio or visual data, which means that face recognition is a no go currently [1], even though they're in a good place to provide it because of a) the large repositories of photos on Google+ and b) their acquisition of PittPatt (a facial recognition company) in 2011. They're holding off because of the privacy concerns.
Honestly, I'm glad they're concerned about privacy, and hope that it stays that way. I'm not sure that the privacy concerns will ever go away, and worry that there may be a time when leaving you house could lead to being harassed by random strangers because of something written on an online profile.
Facial recognition tech isn't that specific. It could recognize people from your own personal network, but it's not like fingerprints. You'd need some secondary information to help it narrow down the search-space. For example, if it could tie it to anybody whose phone has GPS-indicated they're in your area, then you could do facial recognition since you've got a much smaller search-space (locals and your personal Plus network)
From comments here, reactions and the obvious fact that none of the killer apps listed use the eye-level camera, I have to assume that putting that tiny hole next to the eye was a big mistake. People go used to cameras pinholes (because those go in your pocket) even their webcam (because they control it) but that one… doesn’t see to go.
Narrative (formerly Memoto) develops a similar pinhole: a clip-on camera meant to be worn all day long. It offers a lot of the benefits that people list (record keeping for legal or personal archives); they might need a button to snap, but they face none of the backlash Google has, while they record a lot more. Their product is much easier to ignore, because it doesn’t sit on your face.
Google could rapidly solve that by adding in the angle of Glass a collapsible pane, a tiny plastic shield that would swipe away & reveal, then back in front of & hide the pinhole; it could even act as a button for most of the camera action.
the "always on" camera is very unnerving for anyone on the other side of the glass. a physical barrier is the only way to make this work in the real world for now.
Field Trip languished on my phone, but the immediacy of the contextual information on Glass transforms the experience. It is surprisingly delightful to get "little gifts" of information as you are walking through a city. Walking by a nondescript restaurant in an unfamiliar neighborhood, learning from Glass that it has received great reviews, and having an amazing meal there feels like the future.
So does the Google Now style "you should leave for the party now", "here are the directions", "would you like to share the pictures", though that's less improved by being wearable, rather than smartphone based.
Quick Service Restaurants.
Delivery. - Google Coordinate?
Pick and Pack Fulfillment Facilities.
The immediate need and future for wearables is in the service and manufacturing industries where humans are still required but need to be more efficient.
Being able to see the status of every order, take a pic of every order as it heads out for QA, being able to see the customer placing the order at the drive thru or maybe through an app on their phone in the parking lot or driving up, etc.
People don't have an immediate need for wearables in their casual, everyday life. But they do have a need for those in the service industry to continue to create better, more efficient experiences. And then you have manufacturing and fulfillment facilities where people already carry around small computers and thermal printers for identifying and noting batches and statuses on the floor.
A chording keyboard and ssh (I use Emacs anyway). This needs a good battery and enough screen quality for readable 80+ character without headaches.
Then I could go walking with a backpack filled with coffee and lunch... It might be hard to combine a readable screen with a not too high risk for getting my hit by cars.
(Possibly two chording keyboards if they leave the hands usable when strapped on?)
Combine Glass with the Thalmic Myo https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo/ - an armband which detects muscle contractions, so you can just twiddle your fingers in the air (or make other hand/arm gestures) to type.
Hmm... sexy! I'd be happy to be able to buy a couple of Twiddler 3s, as areoevan mentioned, depending on ability to drink coffee without too much fiddling.
But the main problem I see is to follow a page or two of code/text at the same time as the external world. You probably would have to use "Steve Mann style" opaque glasses and projecting camera output on them, with intelligence for when more world interaction is needed.
(Sorry for being late, I was off for a language lesson.)
I'm not sure how realistic this would be but... my friends in lab research are chomping at the bit for something like this to eventually become a reality:
It's far from a "killer app" but it does solve a problem I've had (you don't need a second screen pointing towards the presenter at a conference, and you don't need a device in your hand to progress your slides during a talk)
Most of the apps released so far have been of the "because I can" genre. There's not a compelling reason to use them on Glass rather than your smartphone.
A have wished I had Google Glass a few times when my infant child was doing something cute. It ruins the moment to go get a camera, or to fiddle with a smartphone. By the time you go get the camera, the baby has stopped doing the interesting thing, and is now wondering what you are doing. I once bought a camera based exclusively on 'time to first photo' (circa 2006) because of this issue.
Another app that I expect to see would be some sort of Robocop/Terminator display for law enforcement. I have been to the SHOT Show(1) in Las Vegas, and the number of toys available to LEO is surprisingly large. Things like guns that shoot around corners (uses camera), to small tank like things. Google glass combined with a camera on a weapon would be something likely to develop.
I think once someone like Oakley can integrate Glass into their eyewear make it less obvious that will change some things too. As it stands I have no particular desire for this piece of technology.
Google Glass is basically same thing as 90s VR. Good (and obvious) idea that can't be properly done on today's tech. My expectation is a capability to process your surroundings in near-real time and have a low-latency mobile connection.
Which is useful the first few times someone is in a new area. Which doesn't describe enough people often enough to normalize wearing a computer on your face. Particularly when we all have pocket computers which can do much the same thing, without the extra expense, social stigma or the assumption that a person is physically located in the area being browsed.
(Sure, you could use google glass to peruse yelp reviews for the street outside while you sit in a lobby, but you gain almost none of the sci-fi AR experience)
The apps that justify HUDs are situations where you could benefit from augmented reality apps/guides/references but your hands are likely otherwise occupied.
e.g. mechanics, building inspectors, surgeons, etc.
Again, how many joggers or cyclists are interested in spot-data during a run?
EDIT: to clarify: it's not just "hands busy, can't type". It's "hands busy, can't type, but would benefit from concurrent computing enough to justify the cost of a dedicated face-computer"
And in-car HUDs have been available for years and people don't seem to care. Putting GPS instructions up there might get more attention [1], but at the point that Glass is merely beaming data to a remote display, it loses any advantages of its form factor.
The API could be re-used but good luck getting car manufacturers to decide on a standard for such things, let alone a standard from an outside party.
[1] though suffering from the same problem of "browsing a street full of business": how often do most people really need GPS, that marginally-improved GPS access is worth a non-trivial cost?
A voice-interface and heads-up GUI to normal existing jogger/cyclists audio information - location, velocity, music control, messages, etc. would be fine. But that's not a $1000 device featureset.
It doesn't need 1 "killer app" it needs a bunch of small modular apps, that take away all of my annoyances. If I had a google glass I would write all of these myself. I wish I could get one. If anyone is reading, I'll swap you a kidney for one (haha I'm not kidding)
I have a reminder system that I would like to extend and make public, maybe I could integrate it with google glass.
When I am leaving my house, at 8:15am, it throws up the outside weather and any train delays. If it's raining or cold it suggests I grab the umbrella.
While I'm talking to the station, it quickly lists my todo items for the day, so I can muse on them.
Then onto interesting news articles and summaries (I use a trained nltk "filtering" system to decide what I find interesting)
Glass needs to have several todo lists that I can talk to. I often think of ideas on the fly, I just wanna blurt them out with a voice command and have them on the list, dont want to reach for my phone and write it out.
when I meet someone at the hacker news meetups I wanna say "glass meet john" and it will take their photo and write their name. Later after hacker news meetup I can review the people again as a quick slideshow to help me remember their names.
I want a flashcard system, so that I can learn new things when I have some downtime. Waiting in the lift, I'll do 5 flashcards on organic chemistry I'm learning.
I want an opt-in proximity app, where I can say to it "Glass: next time I'm near John, remind me to tell him about the doohickey". When john is within <n> meters of me, it will prompt me. Location sharing is opt-in and can be taken offline easily.
I want to be able to query it for basic knowledge (what's the speed of light?), nothing too complicated just a wolfram alpha API to start off with.
Edit:
These are all productivity ideas, there needs to be some creative stuff in there too. I think the first one is a meditation app ... 20 mins spare on the train I'd like to meditate with music and scenes of nature. Maybe 3-4 different scene packs (forest, beach, etc)
Also a dribbble app -- I'm not a designer, but often seek inspiration from looking through the galleries of others ("When one's imagination cannot provide an answer, one must seek out a higher imagination") all of this can be done on the gallery app, and give me time to think ...
this can turn all of those downtime moments into either productivity or relaxation!
I'm sure I'd think of other things once I started using it!
49 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadWell, except they are Swedish ethnographers so they care about you taking pictures of your baby while you spend a year taking care of him or her (and auto-send cute pictures to the grand-parents) and not US ambulance chasers suing the life out of everyone, or gun-totting libertarian testing Sheriff's patience, but cultural idiosyncrasies apart, the idea’s roughly the same. :)
Google Glass is already dusted. It occupies the very centre of an 'uncanny valley' when it comes to wearable computing. It's simply too creepy to have people walking around with a HUD and and camera next to one eye. And coming from Google no less.
Should have positioned it more as something you wear for outdoor sports, or for specific activities (I know they tried a bit)... but as an everyday computing/sensor device it fails the cultural/social challenge.
Personally I find the applications for a HUD to be endless, given enough time and polish.
A personal HUD with sufficient utility might gain acceptance by people not wearing the device. Coupled to an eye mounted 'recording other people without their consent' device and Google's servers though?
(And yes, my tone is indicative of a luddite stance in this particular instance)
Well, we still have the same complaints, we just find it so useful we've accepted the "cell phone zombification" of society.
HUDs will be the same, and like Bluetooth-enabled earpieces will gradually disappear into barely-visible devices.
As glass becomes smaller, I'd imagine the pushback will abate. But until it seamlessly disappears into frames, people are going to react poorly to what is being perceived as a clearly-worn borderline-spy-camera. [1]
[1] Spy camera in the sense that there isn't much of a physical cue that someone's taking a picture or not. The light is hardly as visible as holding a camera or phone up to your face.
Glasses suck. I wear them since I was a child and I don't like them. I'm planning to get laser eye surgery done just to get rid of glasses. I would be very surprised if suddenly lots of people with good sight are fine with wearing glasses all the time.
How about labeling players with their names at a soccer/football game? I'm not that much of a fan, but watching live soccer games is fun and unfortunately I can't recognize the players by their shirt number or field position like die-hard fans can. And this takes away some fun from being on that stadium.
Or how about labeling points of interests when walking around in a foreign city? Speaking of which, Google Maps's walk directions could be interesting on Glass.
Also, I have a bad memory so related to what you've said - I tend to forget names, so it would be awesome if the HUD showed me the name of the person I'm talking with. I wouldn't need much, just their first name.
Basically it doesn't have to be an all creepy all invasive thing. With enough time and polish this could be useful and for tasks that don't intrude on people's privacy. With a red led signaling whether the camera is recording or not it would also take away the fear of talking with somebody wearing glasses. And after all, those glasses aren't the only way you can sneakily record somebody.
Nothing else, it doesn't have to bring up their facebook profile, twitter feed or anything else. It could even rely simply on entries I've entered myself, knowing someone before they've introduced themselves would be creepy. But just something so that when people remember me I don't stand like a dick because I can't recognise their face would be nice.
Add license plate recognition to that (per another current thread). Cars correlate real close with their owners.
Honestly, I'm glad they're concerned about privacy, and hope that it stays that way. I'm not sure that the privacy concerns will ever go away, and worry that there may be a time when leaving you house could lead to being harassed by random strangers because of something written on an online profile.
[1]https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/fAe5vo4Z...
Narrative (formerly Memoto) develops a similar pinhole: a clip-on camera meant to be worn all day long. It offers a lot of the benefits that people list (record keeping for legal or personal archives); they might need a button to snap, but they face none of the backlash Google has, while they record a lot more. Their product is much easier to ignore, because it doesn’t sit on your face.
Google could rapidly solve that by adding in the angle of Glass a collapsible pane, a tiny plastic shield that would swipe away & reveal, then back in front of & hide the pinhole; it could even act as a button for most of the camera action.
http://livingbetweenwednesdays.com/wp-content/uploads/image/...
So does the Google Now style "you should leave for the party now", "here are the directions", "would you like to share the pictures", though that's less improved by being wearable, rather than smartphone based.
The immediate need and future for wearables is in the service and manufacturing industries where humans are still required but need to be more efficient.
Being able to see the status of every order, take a pic of every order as it heads out for QA, being able to see the customer placing the order at the drive thru or maybe through an app on their phone in the parking lot or driving up, etc.
People don't have an immediate need for wearables in their casual, everyday life. But they do have a need for those in the service industry to continue to create better, more efficient experiences. And then you have manufacturing and fulfillment facilities where people already carry around small computers and thermal printers for identifying and noting batches and statuses on the floor.
A chording keyboard and ssh (I use Emacs anyway). This needs a good battery and enough screen quality for readable 80+ character without headaches.
Then I could go walking with a backpack filled with coffee and lunch... It might be hard to combine a readable screen with a not too high risk for getting my hit by cars.
(Possibly two chording keyboards if they leave the hands usable when strapped on?)
But the main problem I see is to follow a page or two of code/text at the same time as the external world. You probably would have to use "Steve Mann style" opaque glasses and projecting camera output on them, with intelligence for when more world interaction is needed.
(Sorry for being late, I was off for a language lesson.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orXws08ODiQ
It's far from a "killer app" but it does solve a problem I've had (you don't need a second screen pointing towards the presenter at a conference, and you don't need a device in your hand to progress your slides during a talk)
https://github.com/yeldarby/glass-presentation-remote
Most of the apps released so far have been of the "because I can" genre. There's not a compelling reason to use them on Glass rather than your smartphone.
Another app that I expect to see would be some sort of Robocop/Terminator display for law enforcement. I have been to the SHOT Show(1) in Las Vegas, and the number of toys available to LEO is surprisingly large. Things like guns that shoot around corners (uses camera), to small tank like things. Google glass combined with a camera on a weapon would be something likely to develop.
I think once someone like Oakley can integrate Glass into their eyewear make it less obvious that will change some things too. As it stands I have no particular desire for this piece of technology.
(1) Shooting Hunting Outdoors Trade show http://www.shotshow.org/
I want to look around a bustling city street and drink from the fire-hose of information of everything The Internet knows about this area.
(Sure, you could use google glass to peruse yelp reviews for the street outside while you sit in a lobby, but you gain almost none of the sci-fi AR experience)
The apps that justify HUDs are situations where you could benefit from augmented reality apps/guides/references but your hands are likely otherwise occupied.
e.g. mechanics, building inspectors, surgeons, etc.
Also, the Glass API could easily be reused in a car - keep the software, but use a windshield-mounted GPS-style screen/camera instead of the hardware.
EDIT: to clarify: it's not just "hands busy, can't type". It's "hands busy, can't type, but would benefit from concurrent computing enough to justify the cost of a dedicated face-computer"
And in-car HUDs have been available for years and people don't seem to care. Putting GPS instructions up there might get more attention [1], but at the point that Glass is merely beaming data to a remote display, it loses any advantages of its form factor.
The API could be re-used but good luck getting car manufacturers to decide on a standard for such things, let alone a standard from an outside party.
[1] though suffering from the same problem of "browsing a street full of business": how often do most people really need GPS, that marginally-improved GPS access is worth a non-trivial cost?
I have a reminder system that I would like to extend and make public, maybe I could integrate it with google glass.
When I am leaving my house, at 8:15am, it throws up the outside weather and any train delays. If it's raining or cold it suggests I grab the umbrella.
While I'm talking to the station, it quickly lists my todo items for the day, so I can muse on them.
Then onto interesting news articles and summaries (I use a trained nltk "filtering" system to decide what I find interesting)
Glass needs to have several todo lists that I can talk to. I often think of ideas on the fly, I just wanna blurt them out with a voice command and have them on the list, dont want to reach for my phone and write it out.
when I meet someone at the hacker news meetups I wanna say "glass meet john" and it will take their photo and write their name. Later after hacker news meetup I can review the people again as a quick slideshow to help me remember their names.
I want a flashcard system, so that I can learn new things when I have some downtime. Waiting in the lift, I'll do 5 flashcards on organic chemistry I'm learning.
I want an opt-in proximity app, where I can say to it "Glass: next time I'm near John, remind me to tell him about the doohickey". When john is within <n> meters of me, it will prompt me. Location sharing is opt-in and can be taken offline easily.
I want to be able to query it for basic knowledge (what's the speed of light?), nothing too complicated just a wolfram alpha API to start off with.
Edit: These are all productivity ideas, there needs to be some creative stuff in there too. I think the first one is a meditation app ... 20 mins spare on the train I'd like to meditate with music and scenes of nature. Maybe 3-4 different scene packs (forest, beach, etc)
Also a dribbble app -- I'm not a designer, but often seek inspiration from looking through the galleries of others ("When one's imagination cannot provide an answer, one must seek out a higher imagination") all of this can be done on the gallery app, and give me time to think ...
this can turn all of those downtime moments into either productivity or relaxation!
I'm sure I'd think of other things once I started using it!