By Liam Murphy
Unless you've been living in a cave and blindfolded, you will no doubt have heard of a small company working out of Mountain View, California, named Google. Named after a googol (or 10100 for you non-math geeks among us), Google's business is the Internet. Whether you are searching online, watching media, using productivity tools, or managing websites, there's a good chance Google will be involved somewhere. And after their recent years taking over the smartphone market with their Android operating system, they have now announced Project Glass, a wearable computer built into a pair of glasses.
Unless you've been living in a cave and blindfolded, you will no doubt have heard of a small company working out of Mountain View, California, named Google. Named after a googol (or 10100 for you non-math geeks among us), Google's business is the Internet. Whether you are searching online, watching media, using productivity tools, or managing websites, there's a good chance Google will be involved somewhere. And after their recent years taking over the smartphone market with their Android operating system, they have now announced Project Glass, a wearable computer built into a pair of glasses.
Developed by their in-house “X Labs”, Glass was announced in April last year and made its first major appearance in the wild during Google's annual I/O conference in June, which featured skydivers, abseilers, and mountain bikers all using a prototype version to live stream an exhilarating descent to deliver the device to the speaker on stage. But while the demonstration was impressive, it failed to tell us what Glass could do besides video streaming. Thankfully, Google posted a new video online last month to tell us.
So just what can Glass do? As Google have already shown, the glasses can live stream video via Google's Hangout service, and with live streaming comes 720p video recording, as well as photo taking. Along with the multimedia functions, Google have integrated their Now service to enable the user to search for images and general queries, ask questions, translate speech, give directions, display weather information and flight information, and send messages (though whether these are text messages or through Google+ has not been clarified). The glasses can be controlled by either voice or a trackpad at the side of the device, and the current tester version can receive GPS signals via a built-in chip and connects to the internet via Wi-Fi or through a bluetooth connection to a iPhone or Android device. Glass also has a clip-on sunglasses accessory, and although it is currently unavailable in the tester version, Google has said that the consumer product will allow for prescription lenses to be used.
So just what can Glass do? As Google have already shown, the glasses can live stream video via Google's Hangout service, and with live streaming comes 720p video recording, as well as photo taking. Along with the multimedia functions, Google have integrated their Now service to enable the user to search for images and general queries, ask questions, translate speech, give directions, display weather information and flight information, and send messages (though whether these are text messages or through Google+ has not been clarified). The glasses can be controlled by either voice or a trackpad at the side of the device, and the current tester version can receive GPS signals via a built-in chip and connects to the internet via Wi-Fi or through a bluetooth connection to a iPhone or Android device. Glass also has a clip-on sunglasses accessory, and although it is currently unavailable in the tester version, Google has said that the consumer product will allow for prescription lenses to be used.
Along with the new video, Google also announced their Explorer scheme, which invited members of the public to test Glass. The selection process has now closed and as of when this was written, there seems to be no information on who have been selected, but with a $1500 price tag placed on the Explorer Edition devices and with information from the testers being sent back to Google, the testers clearly have a lot of responsibility on the shoulders, especially with some critics heralding the Glass as the next step in mobile technology since the first iPhone.
We don't have a release date for the consumer edition yet, or a price tag, but with an announcement expected during Google's I/O conference in May, we may be looking through Glass very soon.
UPDATE: On Wednesday March 27th, Google started to announce the testers of the Explorer Edition of Glass. There will be 8000 testers in total, and when writing this update on Easter Sunday, the invites were still being sent out!
We don't have a release date for the consumer edition yet, or a price tag, but with an announcement expected during Google's I/O conference in May, we may be looking through Glass very soon.
UPDATE: On Wednesday March 27th, Google started to announce the testers of the Explorer Edition of Glass. There will be 8000 testers in total, and when writing this update on Easter Sunday, the invites were still being sent out!
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