If there are any Googlers around here: I'm a medical researcher from Australia and we had really encouraging preliminary results with Glass in operating theatres. We'd love to continue the work but need to be able to buy/acquire about a dozen units. We've tried reaching out to Google via their Glass for Work page, but didn't get a reply.
I didn't find any when I looked. Just his position and the name of the university he was associated with. For someone asking a favor, I would imagine making contacting them easy is understood.
We like Hololens, but it's a harder sell to doctors. We had 75% of anaesthetists happy to use Glass, I don't think we'd get that with Hololens.
One of the fun things we found was that less experienced doctors were more likely to be happy to use Glass. Why? We're pretty sure this was actual confounded by age - these less experienced doctors were generally younger!
If anyone from the Glass team happens to read this:
A very good friend of mine has an uncorrectable problem that basically gives him double vision all the time. I got Glass for him as a gift, and it changed his life. Emails, text messages, directions, all over a single eye so it was clear. Thanks for pushing a much needed update so he can start using them again.
I have double vision due to an astigmatism that caused amblyopia. My optometrist said that the astigmatism is correctable with surgery or glasses, but I would need to train the eye with physical therapy to deal with the amblyopia which wasn't guaranteed to work since it wasn't detected early on in my childhood. I've never bothered since I'm so used to double vision it never bothers me. Have you had luck improving the double vision?
Yeah, I always got annoyed when the media kept referring to Glass as "AR", when in reality it was mostly just a quick way to get notifications and such without pulling your phone out of your pocket. If Glass counts as AR, so does my smartwatch.
"Notifications" is a bit of an under-sell for what a crappy text-screen that's by your eyeball can accomplish, when combined with a camera and microphone and bluetooth-paired to a phone.
Glass could (can?) do the Word Lens "translate what I'm looking at" thing better than a phone can—not in visual fidelity, but in fluency of use. It can also just let you read a book on the bus without holding your arm in front of your face. Neither of those are strictly AR, but nor are they things you could accomplish with a pager.
When I tried it I found the main problem was the voice recognition was just awful. Think 90s awful. Very surprising considering Android's voice recognition is now near flawless, even when I mumble.
I mean it was pretty clear before trying them that they would be more annoying to wear than their worth, but if the voice recognition was good I could see at least some people using them.
I tried Glass but returned it after a few weeks. It failed for me because it didn't provide enough value for the hassle it added. The main pain points for me were that it wasn't particularly comfortable, had poor battery life, didn't offer enough useful features (at the time at least), and that a large amount of people I met in a day wanted thought they should ask about it, want to try it, etc.
"a large amount of people I met in a day wanted thought they should ask about it, want to try it, etc." it used to be like that with mobile phones :) I think as an early adopter you need to accept that bit with good humour!
> The blurry screen was always kind of off to the side and annoying when wearing it.
That sounds better than the alternative, actually—I can only imagine how distracting it would be if there was text that was clear and crisp floating in my field of vision even when I was trying to look at something else.
I tried GG when I was working for Google at some event where the team came to your building and let interested people try it. I was quite enthusiastic about it before trying it, but actually using it for 5 minutes really turned me off. I think that this might be because I don't normally wear glasses. I found looking slightly askew to focus on the presented info was awkward for me (eg, maybe it was natural to somebody who wears bifocals). I also found the weight a bit unnatural.
To me, Android Wear was a much better fit for what I wanted from GG. Eg, notifications, navigations, music controls, email/text without having to pull out (and unlock) my phone. (and I hadn't worn a watch for 15-20 years before getting my first Android Wear device).
GG would become so much more popular if it would aim at certain niches first, like security, technicians, doctors and public servants (partially the way Segway did) - it should invest in showcase apps that cater for those niches and build up market from there.
A classic argument about which is better, consumer or enterprise. I struggle with this one myself. I naturally gravitate to finding enterprise niches and targeting specific use cases. But that comes at the expense of being perpetually in "accidental stealth mode" because the tech press generally cares only about consumer applications. Google traditionally is better at large scale consumer apps (and getting the PR that goes with it). So it was not a surprise that they didn't target the enterprise first with Glass. They like making flashy large-scale "bets". Which makes sense since they're an ad company and are constantly looking for ways to expand that platform in the biggest way possible.
Last month a few eviction notices were served in my building. The guy who was delivering them was wearing GG, presumably to legally document that the notices were served.
Yet none of those same people have an issue with taking their phone out of their pocket constantly and glancing at it which has... a camera on the front! But I could see the issue of never knowing whether or not the glass camera is recording and whether that recording is going to wind up on youtube.
The difference with a phone is generally people pull it out, do something, then put it away. You'd get a similar reaction from onlookers if you kept your phone front and center your entire day.
True, but Google Glass is more like camera pointed directly at you. If somebody kept pointing smartphone camera at me constantly, I'd sure get annoyed.
The last two responses in this thread - industry applications (operating theatre) and medical use (double vision) - are the things Google should have focused on all along.
A tiny floating screen in the corner of your eye is most useful when:
1. You can't readily access the screens that are in your pocket or desk.
2. You need to look at a screen and the world around you at the same time. The screen may possibly overlay on the world around you.
I think that was the plan of the original team all along, but then Brin happened. It was him that orchestrated the whole stunt at IO to unveil it, driving the hype through the roof in the process.
"I don't have to leave my area to go look at the computer every time I need to look up something," Is a little more than just a bar code scanner.
Considering how important some seemingly minor assembly problems have been this is probably a lot more valuable than you might think as it reduces people guessing vs. going to the effort to look something up.
I'm more interested in the potential for the glasses seeing things and taking action without the user being involved.
That could do.... a lot. Good and bad.
A worker in a store/warehouse/wherever could effectively do inventory while doing other work...slowly, but constantly, and without disruption.
Ad companies could pay you to run software that will track all the brands that you see. If you think anonymizing data isn't enough now, imagine when there are even more potentially identifying variables.
Not just you. I think it's a societal reaction to being annoyed.
I actually liked the idea of tailored ads, originally. I wasn't rushing to give them my details, but I figured I was bombarded by ads anyway (this was back when google was the new crazy people thinking they could topple AltaVista, X10 pop-under ads were everywhere, and populating your /etc/hosts with false entries was your only adblocker) so it'd be nice to have those ads have a chance to be interesting.
But they didn't do what I wanted, or they barely did it. Instead they warred with the content I was trying to read, and they could go all out.
It's even a painful circle:
- a site has good content, but needs to pay costs, so they put up ads
- the ad companies get some results, but want more, so they make pushier, flashier, more animated ads
- Perhaps people find the content not worth this visual abuse, so they move on. Meaning the site is making less from the ads, so they put in more ads out of necessity.
Rinse, lather, repeat. (Though I really have no idea if that third step happens. It may just be the first two)
Perhaps if/when we have a real micropayments solution this can break, but currently any content that is paid for by ads tends to have only one-way incentives - be it the ads on TV, the radio DJs that have to rave about crap products, or whatever, we the audience can't _effectively_ vote with our dollars AGAINST the ads, so they have practically no limit to how pushy they get. (The ads in movie theaters aren't there to cover "free" content, but I've heard the margins in running a theatre are very thin, and you're still sort of a captive audience)
I wonder if that's because ad companies are inherently dystopic, or because ad companies are paying huge amounts of money to be constantly in everyone's head, and thus come easily to mind when thinking of possible futures (or indeed, anything else).
Having it always looking in the direction your head is facing is an advantage of the head mounted form factor even if it doesn't depend on the eyepiece display.
Not needing a hand to look at the output is an advantage of the eyepiece.
So, yeah, the glasses do make a difference over a smartphone in this use case.
Most safety equipment is designed for glasses and also works with google glass. Further, you want nothing strapped to you when dealing with heavy machinery not even a watch which means you would need to keep it in a pocket and use your hands to manipulate it.
PS: Even rings have cost many people their fingers.
Nice! I really like Google Glass, the only issue I have with it is the reduced battery life. I wish there were a supported way to replace the battery. Or is there?
I didn't replace the battery, but back when I used mine regularly I bought an external battery specifically made for it.
The company that made it still has its website up, but there doesn't appear to be a way to order. So they may be out of stock. But you could always try to contact them, I suppose.
In a similar vein, I guess you could always get an USB battery pack and a thin USB cable that's long enough to reach to your pocket. I don't think it's ideal, but it might be better than nothing.
With prevalence of smart phones and security cameras I think that ship has sailed long time ago. Only argument you could make is "but now the cameras are out all the time and they can just record me!", but reality is that you are not that important. No one is going to film you, because no one cares. It's same reason why we don't take "gang stalking victims" seriously, you are just delusional.
I actually commented in the previous discussion about this update. (This post is technically a dupe.)
But my assumption is that someone at Google still uses their Explorer Edition, and fixed some pet peeves of their own to support newer Android phones better, maybe they added the keyboard input because they needed it, etc. And then just decided to go ahead and get it released to everyone because the work was already done anyways.
At Google you just don't get something released to the public, let alone to people that paid for a device which an update could brick, on a whim. Even if someone outside the Glass team did all the code changes, they would need someone on the inside with enough permissions to actually sign and push out the OTA images.
I suspect this is a backport of work that was done to support the new Glass for Work program.
(I used to work at Google, on teams other than Glass, although I know former members.)
My comment perhaps could've clarified that there was likely some bureaucracy involved in release. I wouldn't even be surprised if my hypothetical Explorer Edition user was a member of the original (or current) Glass team. But likely that it was more of a 20% thing than their job.
But I am dubious this has to do with Glass for Work, because Enterprise Edition has been out a long time, and surely has had updates long before now. It's unlikely that Enterprise Edition is still built on the archaic platform Explorer Edition is built on (Android 4.x on an OMAP processor that was already old when Glass was first released). And there is little to no reason I can fathom for Google to expend Glass for Work resources on backporting fixes to a device that's been abandoned for over three years.
It's been used in medical fields for quite some time. Technology exists outside of the consumer space but I guess the popular press likes to ignore that.
A bit of historical context. Glass unofficially supported Bluetooth keyboards up to version XE11 (that is, November 2013). Version XE12 contained one major bug which, while it didn't break keyboards themselves, did break most of the non-Glass Android apps you'd want to use a keyboard to control. Version XE16 was a four-month rewrite, which replaced the Bluetooth stack with one that couldn't handle keyboards (and bricked a lot of devices and broke a lot of other things.) At that point something went very very wrong with Google's internal politics, and despite there being both internal and external demand, work to repair keyboard support was blocked in favor of fixing crash-bugs. Combined with Glass being closed-source, an overly-aggressive auto-updater that made it hard to stay on XE11 or XE12, increased memory usage that exceeded what the existing units had, and poor communications from Google, this caused the Glass community to turn on Google and become hostile.
Three years later, version XE23 adds support for Bluetooth keyboards, and makes it more official (so you don't need an awkward procedure involving sideloading parts of cell-phone Android).
So I interpret this a sort of three-years-later apology. For which, thank you, it's overdue but is a nice gesture. Source code would also be nice, as would a public post-mortem of what the whole mess looked like from Google's end.
I'll have to dust off my glasses and install this. I never got the hang of it because the screen is about 1/2 cm too high for me so I have to uncomfortably force my eye to look straight up. No matter how I tried to position it on my head I always had that issue...
There was also the whole thing about people thinking you're an ass for wearing one. And they are very rare in New Hampshire where I am so they stick out like a sore thumb.
> If it's too high, try widening the nose pads a bit. That's what usually sets the height of glasses on your face.
Thank you for the advice.
Trust me, I have. Many times and many ways. It helps (a lot) but it is still too high. What does fix it is raising the arms it up so they aren't directly on my ears. But there is no way to keep it in that position.
Odd. The screen must be a noticeable bit in front of the nosepads then, to use them as a pivot that lowers the screen.
Can't wear them further down your nose (re-bending the ear hooks if necessary)?
I realize you've probably tried it (sorry!), so feel free to ignore my suggestions, but it's triggered one of those "there must be a solution!" quirks I have.
It was going for $1,500 at the time, making it a particularly expensive thing to have bought as a conversation piece. The price was a serious flaw in Google's rollout strategy, perhaps more than anything else. They were trying to do a small alpha/beta, while also marketing the product as "cool" and exclusive at the same time.
The product was very very very MVP and alpha-like, but came at a finished-product price tag. I have to imagine that this strategy reaulted in a very small and non-representative test cohort of wealthy tech geeks in the Bay Area. Many of them no doubt purchased Glass as an in-crowd signal, with little serious intention of dogfooding the product or developing for it.
Hardware at that pricetag can't just be soft-launched like software. When you charge $1,500 for a device in basically v0.1, you're setting people up for disappointment.
It's reasonable and expected for early stage hardware to be much more expensive than a later mass produced piece; both on the cost side and on the demand side.
If you release a v0.1 bleeding edge device, your per-unit costs are huge, and you also target it at people who really need or want it's specific functionality, and thus aren't price sensitive.
For any class of such technology the price comes down only when the tech is tested and mass produced. If anything, they should have sold it at $3000 or $5000 to get more feedback from its use as a small alpha/beta in practical niche domains where it's really needed, not as a consumer device used as a fashion item instead of testing its practical application.
Glass was never always-on recording. Yes, you could wink to take a photo and not use your hands, and yes by touching it multiple times you could start recording and even have more than 10s.
But they were never a "life recorder", just like I assume Spectacles aren't. Still Spectacles are not getting creep-accusations and hate, as far as I can see.
There are life recorders though. They've also not gotten the hate Glass got.
Yeah, mine suddenly started working again. It got stuck in a weird loop a few months ago. I don't think I have an update but I think they fixed an oauth bug.
People are incorrectly complaining about google when they should really be complaining about the OEMs. You can blame google for that business model but generally they aren't deciding when Android phones get updates.
This is incorrect. People are often complaining about the OEMs, when you really should be blaming Google. Google designed the way the OS handles updates, and it also sets the terms that OEMs have to agree to in order to sell Android devices with Google Play Services included.
Google controls the entire table here. But they want you to blame all of the different OEMs rather than looking at the real culprit in the middle of all of them.
Samsung has Tizen sitting in the wings if Google gets too pushy. HTC would not hesitate to make a deal with Microsoft. LG owns WebOS, and is actively using it in their smart TVs. Huawei, ZTE and such can just fall back on Chinese infrastructure.
The only ones that would be affected would perhaps be Sony, this new Nokia that's rising, and various white box manufacturers.
Google really do not have as much control as one would think.
Any OEM doing this except maybe Samsung would immediately go out of business. Feel free to let me know if you ever have a practical example of someone successfully leaving the Android monopoly ecosystem and not falling flat on their face.
Also, bear in mind, OEMs have no reason to object to Google controlling updates. They'd still be able to customize the experience with apps and themes. And they'd save boatloads of money as Google handled all the update testing and distribution.
Of course... Google doesn't want to pay for that, and that's why they leave it on OEMs.
No one is forcing you to buy or use one and if someone uses one out on the street, then by definition you have no privacy in a public setting. Just because it's stupid doesn't mean it's subject to different rules than rest of people filming in public.
I don't think it's that much of an issue if each person has a video record of stuff they've seen. I mean, we already have this in a squishy lossy human way.
Where I do think it's an issue is when every person's viewpoint is piped back to the Borg mothership.
I think it's suicidally bad for this to become the default norm for human interaction. Among strangers it's a horrible idea, and among loved ones, a thousand times worse.
If social interaction has begun to feel rigid and sterile already, this sort of thing represents a deep freeze beyond anything we've ever experienced.
Everything points to confession and contrition now. Emotions become bottled and pressurized. Stiff behavior modification leaves no release valves.
Go ahead and experiment with this, if you don't believe me. I'll check out, without hesitation. I'll take my business elsewhere, anywhere.
Our pilot study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26992465