TheGlassLog: My Most Favorite Thing About Glass Right Now

You’re lookin’ at it! And so am I–sort of…

So many people out there seem to think that Glass is supposed to be some perfect device. After all these months of it being in the hands of thousands of people (many of whom are writing on the web about their experiences) the media and some non-media types on the Internets are still expecting to be “blown away” by Glass. Simply, Glass won’t blow you away unless you are reeeeally easily impressed. I’m not and (You can read my initial impressions of Google Glass, good and bad, as well). It’s definitely easy enough to see the potential of the form factor, but the ONLY thing Glass does really well right now is take photos and video. Google would have you believe that it also allows you to share them with ease, but really, it only allows you to share them with people you know on Google+ with ease. Sharing with everyone else is kind of a pain in the ass.

So, what is the camera my favorite thing about Glass right now?

Pretty much.

The camera on Google Glass is super convenient and it’s almost exactly in line with my eye level. One of the first things I noticed about videos shot with Glass (before I had mine) was how much it felt like I was inside someone else’s head. I watched the video Engadget’s Tim Stevens shot as he boarded an NYC subway train and felt mild vertigo. I’m not afraid of heights, but seeing something so familiar to me as an NYC subway train but from higher up, was surprisingly jarring. After I shot a video with Glass at Fort Tryon Park, I showed it to my wife (who is shorter than me) and found that she kept talking to the screen, telling me to be careful to not hit tree branches that she felt the camera/my head was dangerously close to. Later on in the footage, when I was passing through a subway station tunnel on my way home from the park, she chortled nervously and said “It looks like you’re about to hit your head!”

So, it’s a surreal experience watching someone else’s Glass video, I think.

But it’s also about the still photographs you can take. I haven’t experimented with printing them out, but just based on my experience looking at them on my iPad Mini, I’m pretty impressed with the photographs Glass can take. From what I’ve read, Glass actually does the HDR thing and the results are noticeably better than what I get with the cameras on my other mobile devices.

The sun sets behind New Jersey in this photo I took on the Hudson River, on July 4, 2013 with Google Glass. Glass handles this somewhat complicated shot quite well.

Now, I seem to find only articles about Glass that have been written by people that didn’t bother to get a Glass-owner to fact-check their articles. I read one just this morning by a person who seemed to think the only way to take a photo with Glass was to use a voice command. I think the claim was that Google was making it hard to take photos without being noticed. The reality is that you can take a photo or a video by simply pressing a hardware button above the touchpad on the side of Glass. Short press it for a photo and long-press it for a video. If you do it right, it looks like you’ve adjusted your glasses rather than snapped a photo with Glass. I read one fellow Glassmate’s opinion that doing it made him feel like Cyclops from the X-Men, but instead of letting loose an optic blast, he’s just snap a photo.

Of course, when you do take a photo or evens start recording video, there is an audible chirp sound on the bone-conducting tech “speaker” but it’s so soft that if a car drives by or if you’re on the subway, no one else can hear it. So, it actually is a pretty good device for taking secret photos and videos, though, to be honest, an iDevice is better at it. It’s pretty easy to make it look like you’re just holding up your iPhone to better focus on what is on the display, when you’re actually lining up the perfect shot of that drunk guy across the subway train from you. I often see people on the subway (and elsewhere) holding their phones in a way that looks, to me, like they’re trying to get a photo or video. Are they? Who knows? Regardless, the Glass is much less subtle because it’s on your face.

When is a Camera not a camera?

The really funny thing is that the camera has much more going for it than simply recording the events that occur in front of it. Sure, it’s getting a lot of the focus (HA!) right now from critics of Glass who say it will be the way people’s privacy is invaded, but the reality of the camera on Glass is that it should be used for so much more than just taking photos and shooting video.

However, I will elaborate on this in a later post. So, please stay tuned to thepete.com for more posts in TheGlassLog! Thanks so much for reading!

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