We know Glass comes with some snap-on shades, which is no doubt great when casually vlogging in the sun. If you’re heading down a mountain, though, you’re going to need something a little more like Recon Jet. You may know Recon Instruments from its line of technolicious HUD ski goggles, but Jet sees the firm leap into more casual (yet no less useful) eyewear. Inside you’ll find a dual-core processor, WiFi, GPS, Ant+, Bluetooth and an HD camera, plus all the sensors you could want (altimeter, thermometer, accelerometer etc). Recon Jet comes with its own open platform (which typically has been based on Android), and will have some existing native apps (video streaming, Facebook integration, etc.) on display at Google I/O this week. Comparison with Mountain View’s own product will be inevitable, but we’re guessing that Recon hopes you’ll leave Glass on your desk, while popping Jet on for the weekend.
Sony’s subtitle glasses have been a long time coming. The US rollout began more than a year ago, but the gradual launch has left hard-of-hearing Americans with few modern closed captioning options at the movies. They’ll have a much easier time of it as of this month, as Regal will be providing the glasses to nearly 6,000 theaters before May is over. While the wide-scale deployment is coming later than the original first quarter target, it should be a welcome upgrade for viewers who’ve had to either deal with clunkier subtitle systems or stay at home. The Sony solution still won’t be ubiquitous, especially when it sells for $1,750 per pair, but there’s now a better chance that at least one captioning-friendly theater will be within reach.
In a growing list of various locales that Google Glass has already been banned before its public release, casinos are starting to add on to that list. Caesers Palace in Las Vegas is the first major casino to prohibit Google Glass from being worn on the gambling floor to prevent cheating during casino games.
Caesars Palace says that they won’t allow anyone gambling to use Google Glass, but it seems that casino officials will let you at least wear it when simply wondering around, as long as you’re not recording — casinos usually frown on taking pictures or video, even if you’re not gambling. Casinos see recording devices as a means to get an unfair advantage at the tables.
Recently, within the last few months, establishments have been popping up saying that they will not allow Google Glass inside their facilities, including a bar in Seattle, as well as movie theaters and other places where taking photos and recording videos is already prohibited. Lawmakers are even wanting to ban Google Glass while driving, saying that the spectacles can be a distraction while behind the wheel.
Of course, this isn’t surprising by any means. Many luddites believe that Google Glass is an invasion of privacy, allowing Glass users to secretly take photos and record video, but in a world where it’s increasingly more difficult to keep your privacy while out in public, is this really anything new? Does Google Glass offer anything that we haven’t already seen in surveillance equipment and such?
There are many features of Google Glass that require an Android handset, namely GPS navigation and text messaging. However, according to a Google employee, Google Glass will be able to do all this with an iPhone as well. It’s said that Google Glass will soon be able to function independently, regardless of of the device that it’s paired to.
This means that users won’t necessarily have to have an Android device in order to use Google Glass, and it’s possible that they’ll soon be able to function without needing the My Glass companion app. We already know that iOS doesn’t take Google Glass lightly, and while the pair of glasses will at least work with the iPhone, users can’t get turn-by-turn directions or use text messaging.
However, that’s expected to change, most likely with the retail version of Google Glass, where it’ll act independently instead of relying on your smartphone for a lot of its functions. Currently, Google Glass uses your Android smartphone’s GPS and data connections to get many of the features working.
Taking into account what the Google representative said, it seems Google Glass will soon be fully functional on its own, and while you’ll still be able to pair it with your smartphone, it shouldn’t matter what smartphone you’re using. However, it’s possible that a companion app will always exist on Android that will give Android users a bit of an advantage over iPhone users, but we’ll see.
As a new platform rises, so too does a Reddit interface come with it – this being the way of things. With Google Glass sitting in front of the eye of the user and appearing in every moment of a user’s life, it exists as the perfect starting point for the community that calls itself The Front Pace of the Internet. This app was developed by Glass Explorer and futuristic developer of the future Malcolm Nguyen and goes by the name Reddit Timeline.
Like Reddit’s existence on each other mobile and desktop platform its represented on, this app home will likely be one of many for Google Glass. Reddit does not have any truly official apps on any platform at the moment, relying instead of miniaturized versions of itself within the webpage in a web browser to tend to those without love for the numerous third party apps on the market. As a technology-friendly population of users makes up the bulk of Reddit, apps developed by the environment itself appear to have come naturally.
Nguyen’s app Reddit Timeline is a rather rudimentary portal into Reddit through Google Glass in which the top 25 stories posted to Reddit are shown in brief. The user is is able to see these posts in text form and with image previews, not including videos at the moment but pushing for comments and up or downvotes on the whole.
NOTE: For clarification – this isn’t the first 3rd party app developed for Glass. Instead the title is meant to imply that it is the first 3rd party Reddit app developed for Glass – no worries!
This app also allows you to have comments read aloud via Glass and is certainly not something you’re going to want to download if you ever plan on taking Glass off your head again. As Google Glass is said at the moment to only be able to stay powered up for 3.5 hours on average, we’ll have to stay close to a wall charger for the time being. Watch out for not safe for your work environment posts right up in your eyeball!
Google released an official how-to video for its upcoming, game-changing product, Google Glass. The video shows users how to get started with Google Glass, and how navigate around their new gadget. The interface is similar to Google Now, with all of the important information you need being available to you within just one swipe. Google Glass won’t be available to consumers until sometime early next year, but that won’t stop Google from increasing the hype of its product.
In the video, the main emphasis is on Google Glass’s touch pad. There you can swipe left to see future events, such as lunch dates, flights, weather, and more. Swiping right will let you see past events, like your friend’s status updates and picture uploads. By tapping on the touch pad, you can view more information on a card. You can swipe down to return to your timeline. To share photos, just scroll to a photo and tap your touch pad. Your friends list will then pop up, where you can navigate and choose which friend to share your photo with.
More news regarding Google Glass will be released in the coming weeks before the Google I/O event being held from May 15th to May 17th. There Google will talk up developers and show off even more features for Glass. Consumers will have to wait a little less than a year before they can purchase Google Glass, but on the bright side, by then there should be a huge list of apps available for the device thanks to developers. Be sure to check in with SlashGear May 15th – May 17th, where we’ll be covering Google I/O live.
The Epson Moverio BT-100 is a pair of augmented reality glasses that, in the wake of the future success of Google Glass and the Occulus Rift, keeps itself unique with its own combination of abilities. This week SlashGear had a chat with Eric Mizufuka, Product Manager of New Markets at Epson and Scott Montgomerie, CEO and lead developer of Scope Technologies about the newest use of this still very developer-stage pair of futuristic glasses: augmented reality industrial product training.
As Eric Mizufuka explained this week, the Moverio BT-100 is “a wearable display – smartglasses – with a shade that’s removable.” What you’re seeing with these glasses is an image that can get as large as an 80-inch display depending on what you’re using them for, and they’re able to work with apps such as the one presenting 3D device augmented reality training that Scope AR is showing off this year.
At it’s base, this device is powered by an Android control unit – it’s able to run and launch Android apps just like a smartphone would, so to speak. This product in its current form was launched over a year ago, and according to Mizufuka, the unit was and is “seen originally as more of a developer platform so developers could take the lead on creating apps that would eventually shape the device.”
Epson’s Moverio BT-100 glasses are not yet consumer market ready – they’re not yet in a place where they’re meant for the consumer market, instead concentrating on developer efforts to create “that one killer app” to start the machine that is the succssful launch of the platform.
As for how they fit into the augmented reality or “smart” glasses universe thats coming to light here in 2013, Mizufuka suggests that there’s a four-point set of categories that each unit in this new market fall into, each pair of said glasses working with two.
While the Epson Moverio BT-100 unit falls into the binocular and transparent category, Occulus Rift is a binocular, non-tranparent device. Google Glass, on the other hand, is a monocular tranparent device.
Epson’s product makes its way in the market with features that are, as Mizufuka suggests, rather unique. “[Moverio BT-100] is unique in that you can see 3D, and unique in that it’s in the center of your field of view so you can overlay 3D images over real objects.” This is what the company calls Real Augmented Reality.
“Glass is a beautiful product and it’s miniturized very well, but you still have some consumer kickback saying it’s too geeky.”
Mizufuka let SlashGear know that they’d be creating the final consumer units as a product that people will want to use, one that they intend to be able to be worn by everyone. “Glass is a beautiful product and it’s miniturized very well, but you still have some consumer kickback saying it’s too geeky.”
CEO and lead developer of Scope Technologies Scott Montgomerie let us know that as soon as they discovered Epson’s augmented reality glasses, they knew they had to collaborate. Their need for such a solution for their idea to overlay machine parts in 3D for users training in the industrial market seemed like a perfect fit. “Industrial Augmented Reality for machinery, overlaying 3D images over real machines seemed impracticle at first – until the idea of augmented reality glasses, like Moverio BT-100, came up.”
Mounting a camera on top of the optics they’d already had, they created the device you see demonstrated here:
Montgomerie continued: “Our strategy is in the near term to focus on these verticle market applications. I think the consumer is just getting comfortable now with wearable displays, as soon as we’re able to find that killer app in the market, we’ll be there.” Sound like the right path to take to you? Epson’s Mizufuka let it be known that the final consumer product would be both affordable and made for the mass market – and we’re hoping for more soon!
Probably the first question on many developers’ minds when first hearing about Google Glass was whether the specs could be rooted or not. We now know they run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and it turns out, several developers have chimed in to say that a root for Google Glass is possible, and it’s way easier than many people probably expected.
Hacker Liam McLoughlin and Cydia founder Jay Freeman have both rooted Google Glass, McLoughlin saying that it was “easy” to do, elaborating that the “reboot-bootloader gives you fastboot OEM unlock. There is fun to be had here.” Freeman, on the other hand, also rooted his pair, but left out any details on the process.
McLoughlin says that Google Glass has a “debug mode” option that appears to enable ADB access. This was able to give developers the chance to root the glasses, and it seems we’re now off to the races. It’s still early in the rooting process, so we’re not sure what all the fun things we’ll get to do with Google Glass with a full root, but we’re guessing there will be a lot of cool stuff to come out.
It was particularly interesting to see Freeman tinker around with a pair of Google Glasses, considering his main tasks are involved around iOS. Then again, we could see jailbreak apps make their way into Cydia that will add full compatibility to Google Glass, since the specs won’t come with it by default.
We’ve heard a little about the specs behind Google Glass, but today more information has been revealed that lists off more of what’s packing on the inside. Jay Lee, just one developer lucky enough to get his hands on a pair of Google Glasses, has revealed that they’re running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with a dual-core OMAP 4430 CPU, and 1GB of RAM.
It’s important to note that Lee wasn’t able to get all the information we wanted, specifically the exact clock speed of the processor and he’s not 100% sure about the glasses having 1GB of RAM, since 682MB of RAM are free, which leads him to believe that the rest is being taken up by the hardware.
To compare, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus runs on the OMAP 4460 CPU, which is just a step up from the Google Glass offering, which says that the pair of glasses are running on last-gen hardware, but they’re still comparable to even some of today’s mid-range devices. And this is the first time we’ve seen this type of hardware squeezed into a glasses format.
Previously, we heard that Google Glass had 16GB of storage built in, as well as a 5MP camera, which we’re guessing could be the same lens that’s in the Galaxy Nexus, but we can’t be certain. We could here official specs at Google I/O coming up in a few weeks, as well as more information on the specs, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled until then.
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