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Managed to sideload Ustream onto my Glass and was kind of surprised to see it working. Anyway, here’s me sort of dumbstruck at my desk. ENJOY!! >_ – Captured Live on Ustream at www.ustream.tv/channel/thepetetv
Yesterday morning my wife and i were on our way to midtown for the day where we had various errands/meetings etc, together and on our own to do/have. As always when I go out, I was wearing Glass. On the way to the subway, a random stranger stopped us… and asked where the nearest subway station was.
Over the following afternoon of wearing it to Starbucks, Subway (the fast food place), and several other places with LOADS of humans, not one of them approached me about Glass.
Just before going home, I stopped off at Trader Joe’s and had my Glass hanging around my neck by one of those strings designed for glasses. As the very energetic and hip cashier lady scanned my items, she pointed at my chest and said something I didn’t understand.
“Sorry?” I said.
“That’s cool. Jack!” she said, pointing to my chest–right where my Glass was hanging.
“Huh?” I think I muttered. She then clarified: “Your shirt. Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas.”
I looked down at my t-shirt and slid Glass out of the way so she could see that it wasn’t Jack Skelington from the well-known Tim Burton movie, but in fact, Skully-Chan, a character of my own creation (t-shirts and other goods available at helloskullychan.com).
“She’s a little dead girl who doesn’t let that stop her from being cute,” I explained.
The cashier smiled warmly and said “that’s really cool!” …and nothing else.
She had looked past Glass at my t-shirt. I’m flattered, but still a little surprised.
I think Glass should be equipped with a level. Or a live feed of what the camera lens sees. You know, which ever is easier.
About twenty minutes later, I stood on the Uptown A train subway platform at 14th Street and 8th Avenue. While waiting for my train, I was trying to take level photos of the tracks and the platform opposite me (does anyone else have trouble taking shots with Glass that don’t look crooked? Maybe I’m just not as level-headed as I like to think? Ha!). I had my earbuds in and was focused on taking a good photo. Suddenly I saw two middle-aged white guys pass in front of me and then out of view. Then, the second one I saw backed, back into view, smiled and says something I couldn’t hear because of my loud music. I pulled an earbud out. “Sorry?”
“How is it?” he asked smiling wide as his companion joined him just as widely.
“This?” I asked, pointing to the Glass on my face.
“Yeah. that’s the Google one, right?”
FINALLY, someone had approached me and asked me about Glass. This is the first time it’s happened. I’ve had Glass since June 26. When my wife and I were on a pier on the Hudson River packed with people, waiting for 4th of July fireworks to start, a stranger asked me if my sunglasses had a camera built into them. But when I told him what they were, he seemed only vaguely familiar with Glass.
I don’t crave attention or anything, but I am a little envious of my fellow Glassmates when they describe the bright smiles and wide eyes of people who approach them about Glass. I was a little disappointed that the guy on the subway platform didn’t ask to try them on. I suppose I should just be glad he approached me at all. He did seem genuinely excited about Glass and that was neat to experience. But why has it only been this one guy after five weeks of New Yorkers being unimpressed?
Maybe he’s new to the city?
Of all the words Glass could have caught, it was this one. I don’t even remember saying it.
Of course, there are quite a few things that Glass needs but a lockscreen is definitely one of them. Sure, Mike DiGiovanni coded one and has made the code available (get the code here) but he hasn’t made an APK of it available yet. While I do know how to sideload APKs onto Glass (I learned how to do it here, at the Applied GlassWare blog), I haven’t educated myself enough to know how to compile code into an APK (that’s the file extension for an Android app, in case you were wondering).
In fact, I think one of the biggest flaws of Glass is the placement of it’s touchpad. I have no idea where else it would fit, but then, the least Google could do is provide us with a lockscreen so we don’t accidentally Google swear words. It’s just that the touchpad is RIGHT where I instinctively want to hold Glass. You know, like where anyone would hold a normal pair of glasses.
I think there is another way to handle this (literally and figuratively) interacting with Glass. The thing that annoys me the most is that I keep having to touch the damn thing. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go too in depth again. I will say that it’s odd that I am wearing a computer on my face and to actually see any content, I have to tap the touchpad. I might as well just wake my smart phone, right? So what’s the missing link, here?
I shouldn’t have to touch Glass to make it go.
No, I’m not talking about shaking my head around to wake Glass up and see content (actually, I can do this already, if I do it RIGHT after content is delivered). The whole head-shaking thing seems dumb to me. No, I’m thinking of something like this guy Pranav Mistry came up with back in 2009. He used to be a grad student at MIT and he devised such a brilliant piece of tech that he gave a TED talk on it. Here it is if you want to watch it (or scroll past it if you want):
I think the problem is that Google, themselves, weren’t pushing their ideas far enough. Because here is this kid who, years before Glass would grace anyone’s face, had come up with an inexpensive rig that could do some pretty amazing things–without requiring the user to touch anything at all.
This “SixthSense” device did not need a touch-interface in order for it to work. The damn thing worked by seeing little markers on the user’s finger-tips. Of course, Glass has a hi-res camera and is likely capable of recognizing hand gestures with a better level of accuracy than Mistry’s gear from 2009, hopefully rendering the markers on the user’s finger tips unnecessary.
The point is that using Glass to watch for gestures and motions we could then see as many amazing uses for Glass as Mistry demonstrates his rig being capable of. Draw a square around a newspaper article and Glass will save it for you to read later. Draw a rectangle around a UPC code and Glass will scan it and match it to the product and give you the cheapest price available both nearby and online.
With the right software, you could even use sign language to tell Glass to do things.
And that’s the real trick would be coding that Glassware that would be able to recognize patterns in both static objects and in motions. So hand gestures and hand motions would both be able to trigger events with Glass.
But for now, we still have to make the effort to actually TOUCH stuff. What a PAIN…and how far we’ve come!
I took this on my Google Glass on 08/01/2013 at 01:36PM.
I took this on my Google Glass on 08/01/2013 at 01:11PM.
