Google Glass Hack Beams Grand Theft Auto GPS To Its HUD

Google Glass Hack Beams Grand Theft Auto GPS To Its HUD

If you’ve played as much Grand Theft Auto as we have, then you’re probably very familiar with the game’s mini-map that is prominently displayed at various corners of the screen, depending on which game you’re playing. The mini-map plays an important role in Grand Theft Auto as it helps guide players to their destination as well as informing them the location of enemies and police officers, but what if there was a way for the mini-map to be implemented onto Google Glass? It looks like an Android developer has done just that.

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  • Google Glass Hack Beams Grand Theft Auto GPS To Its HUD original content from Ubergizmo.

        



    Google Glass Glassware native apps off to sporty start with Thuuz

    Thuuz has released a Glassware version of its sports tracking app for fans who want to keep close tabs on their favorite teams while wearing Google Glass. This Glassware lets users set their favorite teams, subscribe to professional sports journalists and “super fans” who know their stuff, and get alerts when there’s an especially exciting […]

    The Latest Google Glass App We’d Actually Use: A Real-Life Color Picker

    So we get that it’s the perfect tool for capturing skydiving stunts, but as innovative as Google Glass seems, we’re only slowly starting to see other ways it can be useful to the average user. And of all companies, paint maker Sherwin-Williams has come up with a rather clever use for the enhanced specs: as a real-life version of Photoshop’s color-picking eye dropper tool.

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    Heads Up, Hands Free: A Bike Geek’s View Through Google Glass

    Heads Up, Hands Free: A Bike Geek’s View Through Google Glass

    An avid cyclist — and bike blogger — signs up to test Google Glass. He uses it in the shop. He uses it on the road and on the trails. He learns where not to use it. This is his …

        



    Google Glass XE10 Update Touted To Offer 3rd Party Glassware Apps

    Google Glass XE10 Update Touted To Offer 3rd Party Glassware AppsTo date, it has been rather challenging for third party developers to roll out apps for Google Glass, but it seems that things are set to change with the introduction of the upcoming Google Glass XE10 update. This particular Google Glass XE10 update will offer code jockeys the necessary tools required for a third party developer to begin writing third party Glassware apps for the Google Glass platform. With this update, developers would have the doors opened up to them so that they can access the sensors as well as features on Google Glass.

    If you are a developer yourself, you can certainly look forward to the update’s rollout sometime next month, where it should also pave the way for more interesting games in addition to more functional apps. There is still some feeling of consternation among certain quarters as to whether Google Glass is able to make a huge splash when it finally arrives, but I guess everyone will just have to wait for 2014 to come around before a more concrete view on the situation can be assessed, right? Not only that, the introduction of the Google Glass XE10 update will most probably make sure that more than an adequate number of apps will be available by the time the pair of smart glasses arrive.

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  • Google Glass XE10 Update Touted To Offer 3rd Party Glassware Apps original content from Ubergizmo.

        



    Microsoft May Pay Up To $200M For SF’s Secretive Osterhout Design Group In A Wearables Bet

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    Google may have glasses and Apple may be rumored to be making a smart watch. Now Microsoft may be effectively buying itself a wearables play by paying up to $200 million for a trove of assets and patents from San Francisco’s quiet Osterhout Design Group, a longtime U.S. military contractor.

    The deal is not yet closed but we’re hearing that term sheets are down. They are still negotiating on price and what will ultimately be included in the deal between Osterhout’s many patents, which number at more than 140, its staff and more. From what we understand, the price discussions are centering around what Microsoft will buy from ODG: whether it will include only patents, or whether it will also include existing contracts, and staff. Google, Samsung and LG apparently also expressed interest in the company, but Microsoft is the one that pursued it the most aggressively.

    ODG has been around since 1999, and as befitting its line of business working on military technology, has been very much under the radar. The only investor in the company listed on its Crunchbase profile is David Spector, a former partner at Sequoia who is now working on his own startup, meCommerce.

    We have reached out to ODG and Microsoft to comment for this story and will update if they respond.

    Strategic fit

    Microsoft is at a turning point as a business, where it is taking a bigger step into two key areas around hardware and enterprise services. This deal, originally championed by Xbox and Kinect head Don Mattrick before he left to be CEO at Zynga, is one that could help it in both of these areas.

    Osterhout has built a military contracting business over the last several years that has about $40 million to $50 million in contracts. The U.S. government is one of the company’s largest clients. Osterhout pitches its technology — which, for example, could be used in headgear that can help the wearer detect the direction of fast-moving objects, or those that are behind closed doors — not at consumers but at large enterprises and other organizations.

    Microsoft already has a huge government business.

    But what makes this potential acquisition so interesting is that it could be used in other areas, too, such as Microsoft’s consumer business, as exemplified by its Xbox operations. As you can see, in the recent reorganization that Microsoft laid out yesterday (right), Hardware (1) remains a key part of the company’s structure.

    Looking at the portfolio of what Osterhout, its eponymous founder Ralph Osterhout, and his teams over the years have developed, you have the very definition of “gadget,” running seamlessly along a spectrum that includes the soldier of the future at one end, and children’s toys at the other.

    “Very Robocop. Very Terminator,” is how a source described Osterhout’s wearables to us.

    From pens that can be turned into guns, darts and computers; through to one of the earliest touchscreen facial recognition and iris ID handhelds, it’s a range that in some ways feels straight out of a James Bond movie. No surprise, then, that Ralph Osterhout has also worked on props for that film series.

    All the same, in terms of what Osterhout is working on right now, it’s not exactly a Google Glass killer. In fact, the glasses the team was working on did use the Android OS.

    “This company doesn’t care about what Google is doing with Google Glass,” another source said. “That is not a big market now, and will take a long time to become one. This company cares about the stuff that matters.”

    Apart from that, in picking up the patents, Microsoft could beef up another part of its business, that of Licensing (number 2 in the above list). Osterhout’s patents cover “everything related to products like Google Glass”, we’ve been told — potentially setting the stage for what could become the next IP battlefield, with the military-focused ODG’s IP the latest weapon in Microsoft’s artillery.

    Gaming the system: Edward Thorp and the wearable computer that beat Vegas

    DNP The Unlikely Father of Wearable Computing

    “My name is Edward Thorp.”

    “My name is Edward Thorp.”

    My name is Edward Thorp.”

    It’s 1964 and Edward Thorp is on the television game show To Tell The Truth, sitting alongside two other well-dressed men also claiming to be Edward Thorp, a man so adept at card counting that he’d been barred from Las Vegas casinos. Thorp, the quiet man on the right, every bit the mathematics professor with black-rimmed glasses and close-cropped hair, is the real deal.

    Two years earlier, Thorp’s book, Beat the Dealer, was published, explaining the system for winning at blackjack he developed based on the mathematical theory of probability. The system worked so well that Las Vegas casinos actually changed the rules of blackjack to give the dealer an added advantage. Those changes would prove to be short-lived, but Thorp’s book would go on to become a massive bestseller, and remains a key guide to the game of blackjack to this day.

    That all this happened as the computer age was flourishing in the 1960s isn’t coincidental. While working to beat the house, Thorp was also working at one of the hotbeds of that revolution: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he had access to two things that would prove invaluable to his research. One was the room-filling IBM 704 computer, without which, he writes in Beat the Dealer, “the analysis on which this book is based would have been impossible.”

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    Metaio To Unveil First Hands-Free AR Car Manual on Google Glass At InsideAR 2013

    Metaio announced today that it has developed the first hands-free, marker-less augmented reality car manual on Google Glass, the prototype has been developed as a proof-of-concept of the capabilities of Metaio’s AR platform on wearable devices. The core technology and platform will both be updated to accommodate wearable devices from other manufacturers such as Epson and Vuzix.

    Up until now, AR technology has used point clouds or algorithms to recognize objects or images before overlaying the related content. Metaio’s platform uses 3D model frameworks of objects, making it easier for the camera to recognize objects and overlay content in dynamic environments, such as the outdoors or under variable lighting. Metaio calls it “edge-based tracking”, since the camera is essentially comparing a lite 3D model to the actual object. Edges are lined up and the augmented reality experience immediately starts. It can also track things like furniture, cars, toys, airplanes, product packaging, electronics and even entire buildings. This technology will be showcased at InsideAR 2013, Metaio’s annual tech conference which takes place between October 10 and October 11 in Munich, Germany. Attendees will be able to try out the demo on Google Glass and will also be able to experience many other wearable demos that feature hands-free AR.

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  • Metaio To Unveil First Hands-Free AR Car Manual on Google Glass At InsideAR 2013 original content from Ubergizmo.

        



    Google Glass seems to no longer require a tethering plan to share data with a smartphone–which, uh,

    Google Glass seems to no longer require a tethering plan to share data with a smartphone—which, uh, saves a tiny proportion of the cost of the device as it stands. Great!

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    PWRglass Enters Real World Testing

    PWRglass Enters Real World TestingWhile Google Glass has yet to be made available to the masses on a commercial scale, this does not mean that everyone else has forgotten about it. No sir, that is not the case at all, and it goes without saying that when Google Glass is finally made available to the masses, it is going to be highly desirable. The question is this, does it have enough clout to support a third party accessory manufacturer? Battery life being a bane of most modern day devices might prove to be incentive enough for future Glass owners to pony up a little bit of extra cash in order to purchase an extended battery for Google Glass, and this is where PWRglass comes in – moving away from the concept phase and testing out the extended battery for Glass in the real world.

    The folks behind PWRglass claim that PWRglass is capable of shooting two hours and 22 minutes of non-stop video when using PWRglass, which is a huge jump of over 100% when you compare it to 51 minutes without it. Recently, the PWRglass team paid a visit to Google’s Los Angeles base station in order to pick up another Glass, where the entire visit was recorded followed by a trip to the beach afterward, all the while wearing the PWRglass without missing a beat.

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  • PWRglass Enters Real World Testing original content from Ubergizmo.