An example of a CNN card on Glass. Seems cool enough–and it is! No NYTimes-for-Glass-style disappointment here.
The CNN service* for Glass is actually pretty awesome. It leaves New York Times for Glass in the dust, actually. You enable it like any other Google-sanctioned service (just go to your myglass page) but when the content shows up, you get a nice bang for your buck.
But first things, first. Once you enable it and then authorize it, on the next page, another page on CNN’s server will appear to you. On it, is a list of categories.
This is what the categories page for CNN for Glass looks like. Not much granularity there, huh? I hope they add more categories, or better yet, let us enter our own tags/keywords to determine the kind of news we get. #fingerscrossed!
Select the kind of news you would like delivered to your eyeball. I left only “Top Stories” selected, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.
When CNN content is delivered to your Glass, you’ll see a card like the one at the top of this post. Tap the touchpad on the side of Glass and that will “open the book” and show you this:
The internal story card for a story delivered by the CNN for Glass service. Don’t worry, it gets way cooler.
Now, at this point, you may think this is just like the sucky New York Times for Glass service. It’s not–this is a description card for an actual video you can access by swiping forward on the touchpad. And this video is substantial. This is not some New-York-Times-for-Glass-style “tease,” this is a whole news story, as though you’d just turned on CNN to see it. Sure, it’s nothing like the giant, 20-minute news stories they cover on Democracy Now, but then, DN doesn’t have a Glass service yet. So, I’ll take what I can get!
I don’t have a screenshot of the dolphin story because, for some reason, when I play the video on Glass, it doesn’t show up under the “screencast” tab in the “MyGlass” app on my Android phone. I don’t know why this is. I suspect CNN doesn’t want there to be anyway to bootleg their stories. This is absurd since, 1) who would want to bootleg their often not-so-great stories? And 2) the video quality is pretty bad. It reminds me of the way old 3gp videos looked on my old MotoSLVR phone back in 2007.
But this brings up a good point. CNN is a terrible news organization. They have 24 hours to fill on TV and they fill it with mostly shallow reporting, fluff pieces and useless commentary that often does more harm than good when it comes to informing the public. With 24 hours available, you’d think they could fill it with plenty of deep, thought-provoking stories and reporting, but NOPE. Sadly, the content they deliver to Glass is just like the content they deliver to your TV.
Don’t get me wrong–during my first night with Glass, I had a video served from CNN that covered protests in Egypt that was an incredible experience. I often joke about how it felt like the Egyptian protest story was “breaking on my eyeball.” In all seriousness, though, watching this breaking news story from the other side of the planet gave me chills and prompted me to say while I was still watching it:
“This… this, right here, is the future.”
And it is! News coverage being served to each of us, personally, on a level more intimate than most people will ever experience with us. You’re not just inviting news reporters into your living room–you’re inviting them into your face.
And this is where CNN is letting us Glass Users down. For every one, truly important story I see on Glass, they serve up four or five really useless stories. The dolphin story above was really fascinating, but was it really a “top story” that I needed delivered to my eye? Not really.
Here are some more examples of news items that, I feel, really don’t belong in the categories they were included in, nor do I think anyone would really need them delivered through Glass:
Of all the important stories breaking in the US at any given moment, was this really one of them???
Whoopdie-shit! Why do I need this news ON MY FACE? I DO NOT KNOW. What’s really funny is that this story was the next story to show up on Glass after the one I included above, about the pet bear. Two stupid animal stories in a row? What the hell, CNN?!?
Ah, now TRULY, CNN, this IS a TOP STORY…in a way that I don’t understand.
I STAND CORRECTED. VERILY, THIS IS THE MOST TOP-EST OF THE TOP STORIES. Sigh… come on, CNN… really?
In Conclusion
I really love CNN for Glass. Having video delivered to me like this service does is brilliant. But even narrowing down my categories to just “Top Stories” doesn’t filter out all of the stupid stuff. CNN needs to get back on it’s game and start giving real news to people who are so serious about real news they wear a computer on their face. Sure, it’s nice to cover light stories every once in a while, but I don’t think anyone with Glass is really interested in receiving MOSTLY those kinds of stories in such an immediate fashion, as Glass does. I’m willing to bet that my fellow Glassmates are only interested in getting serious and breaking news stories delivered to their eyeball.
Why else would we be wearing Glass?
I hope CNN gives us either more control over the kind of news they serve to Glass or that they start to do a better job delivering us real news, across the board. I’d prefer the latter, but the former would be better than nothing.
Thanks so much for reading TheGlassLog at thepete.com! Please check back tomorrow for another post in TheGlassLog or subscribe to my blog’s rss feed or get my blog in your inbox!
*Please remember, I don’t refer to Glass “apps” but call them services, instead. Unless I am referring to what are called “native apps,” which are installed and run locally, on Glass, itself. I have not written about native apps, just yet. What Google is calling an “app” runs on a server someplace. I also refer to a “bookshelf” rather than calling it a “stream” when I refer to where you find all of your content on Glass. Read more here.
via thepete.com http://thepete.com/theglasslog-glassware-review-cnn-for-glass-super-service-kind-of-crappy-content/
No comments:
Post a Comment