When Caesar’s Palace announced earlier this month that it was banning Google Glass from its casino floor, few people were less surprised than Colin Jones.

A veteran card counter, Jones has been banned from dozens of casinos for using probability and his brain to play games like blackjack. And it was pretty obvious to him why casinos were freaking out about Glass: It could change everything.

“Casinos are paranoid about people finding any way to get an advantage over the house,” he said.

In case you haven’t been to a casino in a while, here’s the reality of how things work: They aren’t there to be your friend. Despite the rosy advertising, the nature of casinos means that when you win, the house loses. And the house doesn’t like to lose.

This is why casinos aren’t crazy about card counters, who use statistics to beat the house at its own game. For casinos, gambling is about chance — weighted in the house’s favor, naturally — and using anything beyond it is just duplicity.

“Casinos love to lump cheaters and card counters in the same sentence,” Jones said, who is not shy about expressing his distaste for the casino industry.

Colin Jones often has to visit casinos in disguise to throw off dealers.

This is why it’s not particularly surprising that casinos are already taking such a stand against Glass, even though just about no one owns a Glass device yet. Devices like Glass could one day make it far, far easier to count cards, and Jones wants to make that reality possible by developing a card counting app for Glass.

Still, for all the hype about the device, Glass isn’t the first gadget casinos have banned over the years. The iPhone faced similar backlash from casinos after its introduction, and dedicated card counting devices like this hidden computer are even considered illegal in states like — go figure — Nevada. Also frowned upon are apps like Jones’ own BlackJack Trainer Pro, which teaches card counting techniques.

In short, the banning of Glass is nothing new. But what is new here is the just how much Glass will expand the card counter’s tool box — even outside of Las Vegas.

Imagine, for example, being able to see in first-person a player’s hand and advise them on the best possible move. This, of course, would be considered cheating if you did it in a casino, but it could be a very powerful training tool for people who want to remotely teach others how to count cards. (“Skype training is a logistical nightmare,” Jones said.)

More, consider an app that would let card counters know in real time which casinos had the best games going — or which ones had dealers who were best avoided. It’s like a crowdsourced Yelp for card counters.

“The way I see it is we want to use every technology at our disposal to help counters train and help the card counting community work together. We want to stay at the forefront of that,” Jones said.

All of this sounds really interesting, but it’s clear that it’s going to be a while before any of it actually exists. Jones confesses that he hasn’t used Glass yet — though he is talking to developers about creating an app.

Also, the real potential for card counters and wearable computing won’t be realized until we’re using something like Google Contacts, Jones says. Right now, Glass is just too conspicuous, and it’s going to be a long time until that’s not the case. Still, a card counter can dream, can’t he?

“Casinos have cameras on every player at every time. Imagine when players have the same advantage that casinos have,” Jones said.

Luke Wroblewski (pictured above, right) knows that all too well. The product designer says he lost his Google Glass last night, which, according to Google, is a major first for the device.

“[It's] pretty nerve-racking. It’s an expensive and still-rare item  – plus I’ve been using them to develop Glassware. So [it's] not good on a number of fronts,” he told me via email.

Wroblewski, who wasn’t wearing the device when he lost it, said that it slipped out his bag as he went through airport security. “[I'll] put them in a zippered pocket next time,” he said.

While losing the device was bad enough, Wroblewski also had it linked up to a number of his accounts, which makes the whole situation that much more troublesome. Fortunately, it’s possible to remotely wipe Glass from the web — though Wroblewski says he’s holding out for the possibility of them still turning up. (Most people don’t think that’s going to happen, however)

So does Wroblewski consider it an honor being the first person to lose the $1,500 specs? “Not at all,” he says. “But I’m getting the word out in case it helps me get them back.”

It seems privacy issues related to Google Glass are drawing government attention. A committee in the U.S. Congressional Privacy Caucus sent a letter to Google chief executive Larry Page asking just how the company plans to protect both people wearing the device and the people it records.

The group was particularly interested in the idea that Google Glass can use facial recognition to deliver a wearer information about the people nearby. Mostly, the caucus wanted to know if this facial recognition can be turned off or opted out of by a specific person.

The committee also brought up Google’s past with privacy issues, including the recently settled case where Google collected data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks as a part of its Street View project. Google agreed to pay a $7 million fine as a result of that lawsuit, though it has obviously left the U.S. government wary of Google’s privacy protections.

The letter was signed by eight of the Privacy Caucus’ members, and was led by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).

As All Things D notes, Google Glass product director Steve Lee explained that privacy and “social implications … of Glass, of people wearing Glass, has been at the top of our mind.” He went on to explain that Google will likely not deviate from the current privacy policy it has set up — another concern of the Privacy Caucus.

Letter to Google from Congress privacy group regarding Google Glass privacy

via All Things D; Google Glass image via Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

In one of the last I/O sessions for today, the Google Glass team answered some of the community’s most urgent questions about the product, including when the next units are shipping and what apps should come next.

Next recipients

Steve Lee, Glass product director, told the audience that of the I/O attendees from last year, everyone who signed up for Glass has received a unit.

Next, the 8,000 people selected from the #ifihadglass hashtag contest will start getting their devices; that rollout should begin fairly soon.

We still don’t have a date for when Glass will be widely available to normal consumers, so no need to play a Best Buy overnight camp-out just yet.

Next apps

Still, the panel is excited about the apps the developers at I/O will likely go home and build for the devices. Currently, there are fewer than a dozen functioning Glass apps.

“I’d love to have a fitness application on Glass,” said Lee. “That way, I could have relevant information to my workout without ever having to stop my workout.”

Charles Mendis, Glass software engineering director, talked about the hassle of buying groceries with a couple small kids in tow, saying, “I’d love a way to pay easily at the cash register.”

Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer for Google Glass, said, “I’m really into karaoke. … If there was a way to sing karaoke in a way that you actually faced the audience, which is usually your drunk friends, that would be awesome. Please make it!”

New features

One developer asked the team when app developers might have access to voice triggers so end users can use voice as a control mechanism for apps other than the Glass device itself.

Mendis responded that more voice commands might be possible in the future. We expect more information will be available when Google releases its Glass Development Kit, which will give devs access to native hardware capabilities.

As for the hardware itself, Olsson got a couple questions about Glass’s colors — currently a limited palette of black, gray, white, orange, and blue.

“We’ve developed five colors based on personalities and also what people look good in,” she said. “We started to see how important color was, how nonintuitive it was and how people develop an attachment to a specific color. … Colors are much more important than you would ever imagine. I want to keep on doing cool colors.”

Normal people

Throughout Google I/O, it’s been a surreal experience to walk through huge crowds of people, a third of whom look like Robocop Lite. It’s also been an interesting exercise in basic manners — knowing when not to take a picture or when to ignore a notification, for example.

“The social etiquette of using Glass has been on the top of our minds,” said Lee, “not just the people who wear them, but the people around them.

“The display is up above the person’s eye. We learned that very early on. Some of the early prototypes actually covered your eyes, and we discovered that a lot of human interaction has to do with eye contact.”

Lee, who is from Idaho, is hopeful about Glass’s chances in the wider market of consumers.

“They are very optimistic and intrigued about Glass,” he said. “There’s already interest, so there’s a real opportunity for Glass to become mainstream.”

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Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer for Google Glass, showed off a couple pieces of Google history as well as its near future today at Google I/O when she modeled two prototypes.

First, she showed off a huge, clunky early model typical of earlier prototypes of the device:

“I will never forget the first day on the team,” she said. “I walked into a room full of people wearing these crazy things on their heads. … It’s kind of heavy. How do you go from something like this to what we’re all wearing today?”

Three guiding principles in making that gradual evolution, she said, were lightness, simplicity, and scalability.

“We are obsessed with weight” Olsson said. “We care about every single gram.”

She said they also strive to make Glass modular so it can be used in other cases, such as prescription Glass units, which she showed the audience:

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Voiding your warranty, apparently, is as simple as running five short commands. To run those, however, you need a higher-resolution way of communicating with your Google Glass device than the touch-sensitive screen on your specs.

“Fortunately, this is an Android device, and like most Android devices, it has a Bluetooth chip,” Google engineer P.Y. Laligand said today at the chat on hacking Glass.

Source: Google

Glass is just Android, underneath.

So he simply turned on Bluetooth, paired an external keyboard, opened up a terminal window, and typed five commands in ADB, or Android Debug Bridge:

1. $ adb reboot bootloader: (Allows you to access the bootloader)
2. $ fastboot oem unlock: (Removes security precautions, erases user data, and … voids your warranty.)
3. $ fastboot flash boot boot.img: (Replaces the boot image)
4. $ fastboot reboot: (Reboots back into a normal state)
5. $ adb root: (Finally, you have root access and access to all the data partitions)

These are not steps to be taken lightly, according to Google engineer Hyunyoung Song.

“Even though there are recovery methods, there is a chance that you could get stuck in a state from which it’s not easy for your device to be recovered,” she said. “And Google will not support you.”

Google Glass owners who have taken the lives of their $1,500 Google Glass Explorer Edition devices in their hands and bravely gone where few dare, however, have done some exceptionally cool things. One has installed standard Ubuntu Linux on Glass and now programs on Glass using Emacs, a text editor. Another has created an avatar that mimics your head motion, bobbing around just as you do while talking and gesturing.

Source: Google

Danger, Will Robinson! Voiding warranty now!

And Google — while not supporting you if you brick your device — encourages developers to play around in root mode, hacking new apps and experiences which can be then brought into the Google Glass ecosystem.

“Now you’re in root mode,” Song said. “Play around and go nuts with whatever you want to do.”

For the faint of heart, there will be a safety net at some point. Google will be releasing the standard Glass system images, which can be used to recover bricked devices.

Probably.

Image credit: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

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At the Google I/O developer conference today, Mary Lou Jepsen bemoaned the lack of hardware innovation in the tech world.

“There’s no more silicon in Silicon Valley. It’s all iPhone apps.

“For the devices we use … the funding models are completely screwed up,” she said. “Angel funding isn’t sufficient for hardware.”

And that’s at least part of why she’s working on a hush-hush hardware project for Google X.

Google X is the division of Google that produced Google Glass. It’s run by Google cofounder Sergei Brin and operates as a skunkworks within the company — a sort of magic factory where ideas are shoot-for-the-moon big and projects are shrouded in secrecy.

Jepsen said she’s not too comfortable with “the sharp elbows and politics of larger companies.” But we’ve heard that Google X operates a bit more like a startup within Google. Her coworkers at X include Android founder Andy Rubin and former Google Maps chief Jeff Huber.

“Google X is the hardware division of Google,” Jepsen said. And while she couldn’t say too much about the hardware followup to Glass, she gave the I/O audience a few clues.

“For me, it all came together in displays,” she said. “How do we get data to all the people of the world, not just the rich people?”

That sentiment alone echoes Google CEO Larry Page’s keynote yesterday, a speech that was all about creating global opportunity and equality through technology. For Jepsen, that principle is the backbone of a huge part of her career, One Laptop Per Child.

Jepsen founded OLPC, designing the first the $100 laptop in the process. “It was just me for the first 18 months, then we grew to the massive size of four,” she said.

Her next move was Pixel Qi, a display company that uses existing manufacturing lines to make screens with vastly lower power consumption needs and increased readability in sunlight.

When it comes to making hardware, she said, “There’s not much competition, so there’s an advantage.” Unfortunately, the competition that does exist is more likely to come in gargantuan form — giants like Samsung and Sony. Her advice: “Don’t do something small.”

She also told the entrepreneur-heavy audience, “VCs don’t have the core competence to fund or even do due diligence on hardware. … You have to be creative to fund it.” While Google’s warchest funds the new projects for Google X, she suggested looking to the more forward-thinking superangels and hackerspaces for resources and funds.

One interesting difference in Jepsen’s entire hardware experience and the modus operandi for Google X/Google Glass is the country of origin for devices. Google Glass is made in the United States; so was Google’s other homebrewed hardware project, the Nexus Q.

Jepsen, on the other hand, has a huge amount of expertise in Asian manufacturing. In fact, she actually moved to Asia and learned Chinese as part of her founder experience for OLPC.

“These days, the manufacturing is controlled by a small number of countries, primarily Taiwan and South Korea,” she said. “You need to figure out how to deal with cultures, but it’s freed me for the last decade .. Basically, all I have to do is get a whole bunch of people to say yes. They say no 99 percent of the time.”

Image credit: Pixel Qi

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Timothy Jordan, developer advocate for Glass, takes a small stage in a large anteroom at Moscone West.

“[Glass] is a moonshot about our relationship to technology … technology that’s there when you need it and out of the way when you don’t.”

He’s selling the device, but in this crowd, there’s no need.

Currently, there’s only one way to develop apps for Glass, which Google calls “Glassware”: Using Google’s Mirror API. (Although Google itself is hosting a session on hacking Glass later today — called, appropriately enough, Voiding Your Warranty.) A more full-fledged software development kit (SDK) called the Glass Development Kit is coming, Google says, but hasn’t said when.

That means it’s relatively easy to Glassware now, but until the SDK arrives, it’s challenging to make them look good and work well with users’ expectations.

At this, the very first session for the Google Glass track at I/O, the session room seating a couple hundred developers had filled to capacity a half hour before the session started. Five minutes later, the overflow room (again seating a couple hundred devs) was also full. A hundred or so devs milled around in the hallway outside, queuing for no apparent reason and obviously miffed.

I can’t stress enough how fascinated these people are with Glass. For something that’s still a buggy, crash-prone prototype, it’s inspiring imaginations enough that I can see a nascent ecosystem growing around it long before the first consumer devices ship.

Jordan’s job for today is to guide those imaginations in the best directions. He has to explain the Glass platform and teach web and mobile developers how to design for a tiny screen with new ratios and new paradigms for user-device interaction. He’s not just teaching old dogs new tricks; he’s teaching dogs how to do Shamu’s Sea World routine.

Jordan runs through a Glass demo — how to turn it on, how to take and share a picture. As other writers have mentioned, nothing about the user experience is particularly (or even remotely) intuitive. But once (and if) you get the hang of it, Glass becomes remarkably interesting very quickly. It’s then that you realize the wonderful possibilities of technology that is literally in your face but still somehow out of the way.

So far, Google’s Mirror API is the only way to build Glassware. With the Mirror API, which we’ll talk about more later today, the developer’s service never communicates directly with Glass devices. Instead, the service “talks to” Google services, which sync with the Glass device in question. Devs can use location and subscriptions to make their services more interesting. All this happens with three common technologies: REST, JSON, and OAuth.

There’s no native API yet for accessing the hardware or working offline, but Jordan says this tool, called the Glass Development Kit, is coming soon. The company is soliciting developer wishlists for the GDK now.

Beyond the tech side, there’s the graphic design, UI, and UX. The screen size is more limited than any other modern screen, so what is presented on the display must be drop-dead simple — a photo, a video, some text, or the simplest HTML you can imagine (Google has made a few handy templates to get you started).

What you see on the Google Glass display are called “cards.” They’re more TV-shaped than phone or computer screen-shaped, but even though they’re parked right next to your eyeball, they’re a lot smaller than you might think, and designers have to work carefully to make the most of the tiny screen. Cards can be bundled, threaded, paginated. Jordan calls this ability “super powerful but tricky.”

And while Jordan doesn’t mention it aloud, we’re noticing a trend with the Glass card examples: Most of the cards contain some kind of prompt — otherwise, how will your users know what to do next? They’ve never worked with anything like this before, and they don’t know where to tap or swipe or what to say. There’s no norm yet, so you have to leave a visual breadcrumb trail throughout the entire UI. Jordan does say each prompt or menu item should be just a few characters long, with only a handful of menu items on a single card.

The technology of building for Glass is the easy part. Designing for a totally new interface is the hard part.

“We’re always thinking at Google, what’s good for the user?” says Jordan. “Really understand the design and experience of Glass,” he says, encouraging devs to do whatever they need to do to demo a Glass unit if they don’t already have one.

“The user experience is about design. It’s about making an excellent service for the user… the paradigms and patterns,” he continues. “The essential thing you must do is test Glass and use it in your daily life.” Over and over, Jordan tells the audience they need to test on Glass.

Designing for a device you know and use is Rule Zero of Glass development. The next rule is to not “get in the way.” Then, Jordan says, make sure all content is timely. Finally, he says, “Avoid the unexpected. This is particularly important on Glass … They’re wearing your service. Be honest about the intention of your application, and give them preferences to get notifications at certain times or to know what they’re going to get when they sign up.”

Facebook, Twitter, Path, Evernote, Tumblr, Elle, the New York Times, and CNN already have Glass apps out, and Jordan points to them as great examples of how to start. And of course, he recommends using Google’s own services, like Google+ and Hangouts, on Glass.

Glassware product design is the only big challenge facing developers who want to make apps for Glass. The tech is simple. The users, while few, are low-hanging fruit, willing to test just about anything you throw their way. But as hungry and fascinated as the developers at Moscone West are today, I’m sure they’ll find truly imaginative ways to work around and with Glass’s challenging interface in short order.

Image credit: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat, Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

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[Disclosure: Stained Glass Labs founder Redg Snodgrass is a consultant for VentureBeat's MobileBeat event. -Ed.]

Google Glass is a controversial device. Some say it is the future of computing, others find it creepy, and no one knows what its true impact will be.

Stained Glass Labs debuted today to support exploration and development of Glass technology. SGL is a group of entrepreneurs, mentors, and early adopters who are forming an incubator program for companies working with wearable computing. The community includes mentors from across the startup sector, including entrepreneurs, angel investors, VCs, and employees from major tech companies. SGL will accept 10 startups into the program, which involves a three-month bootcamp as well as tools, connections, and support to create Glass-based products for the mainstream.

“There is a lot of apprehension and negativity surrounding Glass, but it’s a lot like how people reacted when the iPhone first came out,” said founder Redg Snodgrass in an interview. “Any time you do something new, there is a level of discomfort with it, but Glass is pushing human evolution forward. It is a more natural fit for humanity than a smartphone because its integrated into our human environment. You can look up and engage with other people, and it’s a better way to interact with data in real life.”

By forming a supportive community around Glass, Stained Glass Labs hopes to make wearable computing more accessible to people who aren’t “dorks or doctors.” The device itself is still in the early stages. During her review, VentureBeat writer Jolie O’Dell described it as “nonintuitive and buggy” and without many apps or features. While O’Dell sees it as a distraction from reality, Snodgrass believes it will make people more attuned to it.

“There are no experts yet,” he said. “No one has the answers, and Stained Glass Labs is not like a traditional incubator where we teach you because we know all the answers. Initially its more about a community where everyone can bounce around ideas.”

The name for Stained Glass Labs was inspired by the ancient Romans. Stained glass was considered a luxury of the wealthy rather than an art form until it became popular in churches and accessible to the common people. Artists and craftsmen began experimenting with the medium, and it flourished. Stained Glass Labs hopes the same will happen with Glass.

“Many in our community have spent grandiose efforts to dismiss, denigrate, and deny the urge of promise that is wearable glass technology,” the group said in a statement. “We as a group have stepped up to say that it is inevitable humanity will integrate with technology for the betterment or detriment of society.  We have decided to push Glass to be about this “betterment.”

Startups are already working on applications and products that involve wearable computing. There are wide possibilities for the health care industry, field workers, and multiple news apps have already come out. Snodgrass, however, said that he is most interested in the social possibilities of the technology. Stained Glass Labs isn’t limited to Google and there are other wearable computing devices out there like the Memento camera and a Motorola hands-free computer, but Glass is the main focus at the moment.

Before founding Stained Glass Labs, Snodgrass cofounded Skout, “the first dating app in the App Store,” and Taploid. Cofounder Kyle Ellicott is the cofounder and president of Heavy Cloud Media Group and the creative director at TechZulu.

Photo Credit: Dylan Tweney

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This column originally appeared on LinkedIn. 

Google Glass is one of the most polarizing user-interface inventions to come along in decades.

We’ll have a chance to see just how polarizing this week when thousands of developers crowd into the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Google I/O, the tech giant’s sixth annual developer conference. Since Glass just started shipping to its earliest adopters, Google I/O will probably have the highest concentration of Google Glass wearers anywhere to date. That means we’ll have plenty of opportunity to watch people struggle with its interface — and to watch bystanders’ reactions. Expect lots of photos of Glass-wearing nerds to pop up in your usual media streams.

On the one hand, Google Glass users look like the Borg, creeping us out as they stare into a digital middle distance that no one else can see. It also raises troubling privacy implications, since it can be used to take photos and video almost surreptitiously.

On the other hand, the device is undoubtedly a harbinger of technologies to come that are even more integrated into our bodies.

The question now is: How do we make the most of this invention without making ourselves look like complete dorks?

Some take a hard-line approach. Bars and restaurants have banned the device. Casinos have said Google Glass is not welcome (due to its potential to help gamblers count cards, no doubt). Other establishments will follow.

Ryan Singel has suggested that lasers could seek out and blind Google Glass cameras using the same technologies currently being investigated for mosquito eradication. (Seriously!)

And many of us will content ourselves with simply making fun of people wearing Google Glass, just as we mock people for wearing Bluetooth headsets.

But let’s not let the dork factor blind us to the real-world possibilities. Google Glass, or something very like it, will have a revolutionary effect in many areas of life.

Among the most promising uses are those that fit into work environments where the addition of data can provide real, meaningful benefits.

Google Glass makes a lot of sense in health care, for instance. Doctors and nurses could use Google Glass to look up prescription details, access patient health records, see reminders about their next appointments, and even get better at recognizing patients’ faces.

What’s more, Glass would have a real benefit in the sanitary environment of a hospital because it could enable health care providers to do all this without having to touch a keyboard or a screen with their hands (or even, god forbid, paper).

For paraplegics and quadriplegics, Glass could be a stunningly useful way to get information and interact with it, as investor John Doerr noted last month when unveiling Kleiner Perkins’ Google Glass-focused investment fund. Its combination of a heads-up display and voice-control mean that it’s potentially ideal for people unable to use hands to control their computing devices. While it might seem creepy to take a picture just by winking, that is exactly the control gesture needed by people who don’t have hands.

For journalists, Google Glass could be an amazing note-taking and content-generating device that lets them shoot videos and photos as they cover a scene in real time. I’m a fan of the Livescribe pen, which lets me capture audio at the same time I’m jotting notes. Whenever I use it to interview someone, I always ask permission to record the audio. The same technique could work with Glass, and I’m looking forward to trying it. Right now, Glass only records 10-second video snippets and only has about 12GB of usable storage, but it shouldn’t be too hard to make an app that records longer audio or compressed video clips, as Jason Perlow noted on ZDNet.

For game designers, Glass presents tempting opportunities to overlay the real world with imaginary video game elements, as Google itself is already doing via Niantic Labs, its experimental augmented-reality project.

Even for tourists, Glass might have some intriguing possibilities: Imagine walking through a neighborhood in Paris, using an app like Findery to view geotagged notes about historical events that happened in a place, interesting architectural details you might have missed, or recommendations for good places to get a pastry and a café au lait.

Just keep in mind that these are special-purpose uses. And just because Glass is useful doesn’t mean I have to enjoy talking with you while you’re wearing it.

Eventually, our attitudes toward Glass and other always-on devices may shift. It’s not uncommon now to see a table full of people at a restaurant, all of whom are busy tapping away at their phones at the same time as they talk to each other. While many people might find that rude, it’s clearly acceptable to a growing circle, whereas five years ago it would have been unheard of.

Similarly, Google Glass might become more socially acceptable as it becomes more ubiquitous.

But that day isn’t here yet. So wear Google Glass all you want at work, or while you’re playing the goggle-eyed tourist or the obnoxious journalist. But please remove the damned thing when you’re talking to me.

Photo: Jolie O’Dell, VentureBeat

Google is kicking of its Google I/O developer conference today to much anticipation. The company’s shares hit $900 and continued to to climb this morning, a first for Google.

The stock price hit a high of $911.45 around 10:06 a.m. Eastern time this morning and is trading around $906 at the time of this post. That’s up over 2 percent from its opening price of $894. Google has yet to break $900 a share until today, though it has continued to rise steadily in price over the past month.

Google is holding its famed developer conference this week with a three-hour long keynote starting at noon Eastern time. While we’ve heard rumors for weeks about what Google might talk about, investors are seemingly anticipating good things. There hasn’t been much speculation about a big hardware product, release, however.

Investors may be reacting to a new music streaming service that some rumors say may show up at the show, if not the overall fanfare. Reports indicate that Google recently signed two major music partnerships — one with Sony Music Group and another with Universal Music Group — that may give Google the boost it needs to launch a product similar to Spotify. With Spotify, customers can listen to the songs and bands of their choosing on a subscription basis, as opposed to an online radio company like Pandora, where customers can only choose a theme or genre of music to listen to.

Google has also been releasing its Google Glass headwear into the market in the weeks leading up to Google I/O, causing speculation that we’ll hear more about the product in Google’s keynote.

GOOG data by YCharts

Google I/O image via Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

While there’s a lot of talk about how Google Glass could one day find use in hospitals, hackers are creating that future today.

A group of programmers has created an app for Glass that doctors could use to pull up patient files just by looking at their faces. The app, dubbed MedRefGlass, is still in its early stages, but it showcases a potential future for Glass that’s not just interesting but also extremely useful.

“Some people I talked to said hospitals are full of very busy people, often with their hands full, working with a lot of information — so Google Glass making it wearable is especially looked forward to there,” Lance Nanek, one of MedRefGlass creators, said on his blog.

In addition to face recognition, MedRefGlass also enables doctors to create patient folders by voice, take photos, and add voice notes.  The future of hospitals, it seems, is (mostly) hands-free.

Watch the video below to get a better idea of how the app works.

Photo: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

Most of us wouldn’t be excited about the prospect of a camera mounted on the side of our face.

But then again, most of us aren’t doctors.

Google Glass uses augmented reality and voice activation to project data into our field of vision. And while the technology is still in its early (and annoying) stages, it holds a lot of promise in the medical field.

One obvious use includes looking up drug data. Doctors could easily perform a search for a drug or disease using Glass’s voice-recognition commands: “OK, Glass, Google ‘What’s the correct dose of Temazepam?’” Likewise, the gadget could also document a patient visit, such as storing a photo of a skin rash or an audio recording of a conversation.

Indeed, Google Glass may be the butt of jokes for consumers, but it represents some exciting possibilities for health care. As Arun Matthews, the chief medical information officer at Texas Tech University and a full-fledged Glass enthusiast, puts it: “I dream about technology being seamless and invisible, but constantly present, anticipating my needs with point-of-care decision support — but getting out of the way so that physicians can be physicians.”

What ideas are entrepreneurs already cooking up?

A screenshot from Augmedix’s promo video.

It’s still early days for the technology — Google only recently began shipping the gadget to a carefully selected group of people, and it won’t sell the device until the end of the year. But already developers are buzzing with ideas, and many of them are related to health care.

Ian Shakil [top, left] is one of the first entrepreneurs developing a Google Glass app for doctors. Shakil hit on the idea for his startup, Augmedix, while working at wearable electronics company MC10 and trying Glass for the first time.

“I had an epiphany moment and committed to drop everything,” he said.

To buy him some time to test the merits of the idea, Shakil applied for funding from Upstart, a startup that asks wealthy backers to fund individuals rather than projects. With the $55,000 he raised, Shakil incorporated the company and began to experiment with Google Glass at hospitals.

The first app is still in development — so Shakil wouldn’t reveal much at this stage — but he did tell me both patients and doctors were open to wearing Glass in a clinical setting. “We see all kinds of applications for health care providers,” he explained.

Shakil has a point — physicians are already avidly discussing potential applications on LinkedIn forums. Some of their most plausible medical scenarios include:

•  Video sharing and storage: Physicians could record medical visits and store them for future reference or share the footage with other doctors. 
• A diagnostic reference: If Glass is integrated with an electronic medical record (EMR), it could provide a real-time feed of the patient’s vital signs.
• A textbook alternative: Rather than referring to a medical textbook, physicians can perform a search on the fly with their Google Glass.
• Emergency room/war zone care: As storied venture capitalist Marc Andreessen proposed in a recent interview, consider ”dealing with wounded patients and right there in their field of vision, if they’re trying to do any kind of procedure, they’ll have step-by-step instructions walking them through it.” In a trauma situation, doctors need to keep their hands free.
• Helping medical students learn: As suggested by one blogger, a surgeon might live stream a live — and potentially rare — surgery to residents and students.
• Preventing medical errors: With an electronic medical record integration, a nurse can scan the medication to confirm whether it’s  the correct drug dose and right patient.

Is Google Glass the future of connected health?

The “quantified self” movement — the idea that tracking your own health can help you live longer and better — is gathering steam. A small but growing segment of the population is hooked on fitness apps and trackers like FitBit One, Jawbone Up, and Nike+ FuelBand.

For them, Google Glass is the logical next step. Beyond tracking your daily movement with apps like FitBit, you could potentially track your social interactions and analyze how that affects your mood. Healthy eaters — or those looking to improve their diets — could get a real-time feed of nutritional information when they shop, which would help them make better food choices.

“Google Glass has the potential to fundamentally change the way we track and gamify health,” VentureBeat guest author Chris Hollidale recently wrote. Hollidale argues that tracking your steps via today’s current suite of fitness tracking devices isn’t enough and that Glass provides more meaningful metrics.

An unintended benefit of the widespread adoption of health and fitness tracking devices is that patients routinely use devices in the doctor’s office. They frequently show their primary care provider how much they exercise daily and how well they eat by referring to a FitBit, for instance. Likewise, doctors will often use a medical app on a tablet or smartphone device as a research tool.

Dr. Roni Zeiger, former chief health strategist at Google

“I used to be worried that patients would be concerned that I didn’t know everything — but now I look something up whenever I see patients in the exam room,” said Dr. Roni Zeiger, a practicing physician and Google’s former health chief.

Zeiger sees immediate value in Glass to improve the quality of care. “It would be great to more fluidly pull up relevant information,” he said.

For example, he recently saw a patient at an urgent care center with a skin problem and realized that “no workflow currently exists to take and store an image for a doctor to see.” Zeiger had to describe the rash in writing and draw a doodle so he could track the patient’s progress — a practice that could be replaced by Glass.

When will we see Glass at the doctor’s office?

Before committing to fund the next wave of Google Glass apps, investors need to see evidence of traction.

Only time will tell whether hospitals and health practitioners will invest $1,500 into purchasing Glass when most doctors already have a smartphone or tablet device. As the price of Glass falls over time (and the technology improves to justify the added cost), developers writing Glass apps may find success more easily.

Meanwhile, developers will need to tackle compliance and regulatory issues as well as deal with potential patient privacy concerns.

“Industry giants will not be willing to gamble on such a venture until there is either a huge public outcry or the government mandates this level of innovation as the front-end standard for electronic health records,” said Matthews. “I’d say we’re looking at at least five years.”

Obstacles aside, Silicon Valley’s venture firms will be looking for investment opportunities in the near future. Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins recently formed a partnership known as the “Glass Collective” to help fund the development of apps.

“I used to work at a neurobiology lab, and scientists are excited about being able to interact with their experiments without having to remove layers of gloves,” said Google Ventures’ Bill Maris in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

And Maris is just one of the investors who is intrigued by health-specific applications.

“We are excited about the possibilities,” said Missy Krasner, an entrepreneur in residence at Morgenthaler Ventures and a former cofounder of Google Health.

However, Krasner pointed out another obstacle: Physicians may be reluctant to record sessions due to increased risk of medical liability.

On a fundamental level, there’s another risk: Google Glass developers would be basing their fledgling businesses on the intellectual property of another company. If Google decides to discontinue Glass (not wholly out of the realm of possibility — just ask anyone whose company relied on Google Reader), then anything those developers invested in Glass-based apps would be a bust.

“My feeling is that it’s futuristic and forward thinking — but a little early,” Krasner explained.

Would you feel comfortable if your physician examined you while wearing Google Glass? Or would you record your own doctor’s visit using Glass? Please let us know in the comments section below. 

As a Google Glass owner, I can immediately see how it will be incredibly useful for so many kinds of people. Doctors, mechanical engineers, any sort of field worker.

But for us layfolk, the device only serves to make us look awfully nerdy, to make us economic targets, to make us less aware of the world around us, and to leave us more disconnected than ever from the real people we encounter every day.

I signed up for Glass the first day of Google I/O last year. The device was (and is) a gift to my now-husband. He loves it.

But even he, the tech-obsessed gadget fiend, admits it’s difficult to wear. The first time he set foot outside the house with it on, he immediately stepped in dog shit because he wasn’t paying attention to the world outside the screen. And he adamantly refuses to wear it on public transportation for fear of being mugged.

In its current form, Glass doesn’t have too many apps or features, and it’s incredibly non-intuitive and buggy — just as you’d exect from a developer prototype. Right now, it can’t do much aside from take really bad pictures and perform Google searches based on your poorly interpreted shouting.

But give it a few months. Soon, it’ll be streaming Netflix queues, taking brilliant long-form blog post dictation, and offering up a wealth of casual social games, a portal into an endless labyrinth of distraction.

In the tech press, we’ll probably be reporting on each app that pops onto the Glass landscape, gushing over the capabilities of the device as they grow with each new day. We’ll report on the novelty use cases, like the first guy who writes a play or a novel using Google Glass, or the girl who shoots a feature film using the device.

Occasionally, we’ll write about someone who runs off the road while wearing Glass, or some university that bans Glass in the classroom, or a babysitter who lets a kid get hurt because she’s playing with her Glass.

And some overzealous Emily Post type (probably at an old-timey print rag) will write a much-mocked op-ed about the slight but growing disconnection between people. The rudeness, amplified from the current norm of iPhones and earbuds, with distraction now appearing right before your eyes in addition to your fingers and ears.

But the cumulative effects won’t amount to a societal change in how we consume information or deal with life away from our desktop screens. It’ll just be the same kind of impact smartphones have had — all the good and bad — but slightly accelerated and accentuated.

On the other hand, for myriad kinds of workers, I can see Glass being an extraordinarily helpful, hands-free tool. Imagine working on an airplane engine and having the manual right in front of you or using it to photograph and catalog new species during a deep-sea diving expedition. Even the first coalition of Glass app investors see its greatest potential in professional use cases, not consumer applications.

It’s up to us as individuals to make moral decisions about the technology we use. For me, I consider technology a tool, a means to an end. Too often, my peers tend to get wrapped up in the joy of tech in and of itself, as an end and a goal to be celebrated rather than a tool to be carefully used.

In my moral universe, Google Glass for consumers can only serve to distract us, not truly help us any more, better, or faster than the other tools we already use. For example, you already have Google Maps to guide you around your city with turn-by-turn audio navigation. That tool doesn’t get any better when it’s smack-dab against your eyeball. Neither does your email or your Instagram feed or your Facebook account.

Glass is a game-changer, sure, but in the worst possible way.

From the first moment I saw it, Glass reminded me of a Star Trek episode called “The Game.” The plot was pretty simple: Everyone aboard the Enterprise got hooked on a Glass-like visor running a casual puzzle game — one that addicts its players. This sci-fi is within spitting distance of our current reality. But the unfortunate plot twist was that hostile aliens were able to infiltrate the ship because no one was damn paying attention to the world around them anymore.

Thus, Google Glass. If you’re using it recreationally, not professionally to complete a task, don’t kid yourself — it’s not enhancing your life. It’s robbing you of the joy of actually experiencing your life. You’ll realize it the first time you step in dog shit or have your girlfriend get mad at you for not listening to her or lose your kid in a store.

This post was supposed to be my big, hands-on review. Instead, all I have to offer is this: Unless your employer tells you otherwise, don’t even think about getting Google Glass. And train yourself to rely less on your smartphone, while you’re at it. We can wait for something better, more useful, and more human-friendly to come along.

Much like Gmail’s five year-long beta period, expect Google Glass to be a “work in progress” for some time.

Google today released the first major update for Google Glass after it finally began rolling out to early adopters, Phandroid reports. The “XE5″ update includes a bunch of notification updates, as well as some useful features like easier searching from anywhere in the Glass interface and better battery charge estimation.

It’s surprising that Google is only now getting around to adding some of the new features like crash reporting and international dialing. That goes to show that, despite looking like something from the future, Glass is still very much in its early stages.

Expect plenty more updates like this as Google learns more about how people are actually using Glass. Everyone participating in the Google Glass Explorer program are basically guinea pigs before Glass makes its way to the general public.

The new features in the update include:

• Change to sync policy: require power + wifi for background uploads
• Crash reporting
• Incoming G+ notifications (direct shares, comments, +mentions), including ability to comment and +1
• Incoming Hangout notifications
• Transcription of queries & messages is now wicked-fast
• Long-press to search from anywhere in the UI (no longer just from off)
• International number dialing + SMS
• Hop animation on disallowed swipes in the UI
• New On-Head Detection calibration flow
• Show device Serial Number on Device Info card
• More reliable estimation of battery charge remaining
• New recipient-list mosaic

Photo: Project Glass/Google+

West Virginia legislators, led by Gary G. Howell (R), hoped to ban motorists from using Google Glass while driving in March. And as it has been revealed that Glass wearers could take a picture just by winking, pundits talk about Google Glass creeping them out, bars that no Glass-wearing geek would enter start banning Google’s wearable computer, and Las Vegas casinos have declared the device persona non grata. Pit bosses, apparently, have cold sweats about poker games being recorded and transmitted and players getting relayed instructions via Glass’ built-in bone subduction speakers.

Really, you wouldn’t have thought a proposal to Borg the entire human species would have met with such resistance.

Seriously, however, almost any individual thing Glass does now has been possible in the past.

Source: Steve Mann

Steve Mann’s computer-assisted vision system.

Memoto, the camera that hangs around your neck and takes a picture every 30 seconds, blew through its Kickstarter campaign goal by a factor of 10. It’s tiny, unobtrusive, and has no on-off switch — a voyeur’s delight in public bathrooms, pools, and who knows where else. Head-mounted cameras are nothing new.

Motorola Solutions — the part of Motorola that Google doesn’t own — demoed its wearable computing and head-mounted mobile computer to our own Dean Takahashi last year. And glasses with cameras are available from multiple manufacturers.

It’s probably the full-meal-deal package that Glass presents that is the problem — and the fact that it houses all of its startling capability in probably the first somewhat attractive device which someone not on the Star Trek convention scene might actually wear.

We’ve already seen the panic and anger that always-potentially-on technology can cause when Steve Mann, who wears a computer vision system, was assaulted in a Paris McDonald’s for failing to take the device off, even though it is permanently attached to his head. Glass promises to ignite that same fear, worry, and concern over privacy, multiplied by millions of potential wearers.

“Welcome to a world through Glass,” Google says in its introduction to what Glass does. “Record what you see. Hands-free. Even share what you see. Live.”

There’s no doubt that Glass is awesome, cool, and empowering, but every power that an individual gains is a power that might infringe on others … and a power that governments tend to want to control.

“This is just the beginning,” Los Angeles privacy lawyer Timothy Toohey told the NY Times. “Google Glass is going to cause quite a brawl.”

photo credit: Dunechaser via photopin cc

Google Glass is supposed to make us feel connected, but it’s undeniably awkward to have a conversation with a camera mounted to the side of your face.

Google’s futuristic eyewear was the butt of a joke on Saturday Night Live this weekend — a response to the “first look” reviews on almost every tech blog.

On Saturday’s episode, the writers of Weekend Update invited fictional tech blogger Randall Meeks and his new Google Glass to an interview with Seth Meyers. The conversation gets super uncomfortable when Meeks begins yelling at his Glass and is outed for watching some adult material.

Check out the video below for Sunday laughs (and while you’re at it, the Tumblr “White men wearing Google glass“). Note that due to NBC restrictions, you may not be able to stream it if you’re based outside of the U.S.

Workers are suffering. These newsroom-style workspaces that startups seem to love are really hindering the privacy needed to surf Reddit and watch YouTube videos. Thankfully, a mobile app developer has found the answer to our problems: Reddit on Google Glass.

“With no compelling reason to use while at the office or work, [Google Glass] sits tucked away inside the desk drawer,” said Malcolm Nguyen, a mobile developer for One Republic Title Company, said in a post on Google+. “That’s all about to change, because now you can get pictures of cats and memes and _gonewild beamed directly to your face without anyone suspecting a thing.”

Nguyen is part of Explorers, a group of individuals that Google’s picked to purchase Glass for $1,500 prior to its release to the broader market. These adventurous people are supposed to hack, play with, record on, and otherwise use Glass for any manner of crazy things. While some have taken it skydiving or even hopped in the shower with it, Nguyen’s app will likely encourage people to sit on their butts for hours at a time with it.

Of course, when Reddit’s involved, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Nguyen lists the features as including the option to upvote and downvote a post, share external content to Reddit, view and reply to threaded comments, and have comments read aloud to you. Your font page will also be digested into the top 25 hits, updated every hour.

So, for those few of you who have a pair, go secretly enjoy your Reddit. Good luck trying not to bust out laughing in the middle of a meeting when you see something like this, though.

hat tip Mashable; Google Glass Reddit image via Malcolm Nguyen

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

“Creepy” is a word that often gets thrown around when we’re talking about Google Glass, somewhat rightfully, and somewhat not. Creepy, however, is mostly an emotional appeal; like Justice Potter Stewart’s views on pornography, while it’s tough to describe what “creepy” is, most of  know it when we see it. And right now, Glass is pretty creepy (and, no, Robert Scoble isn’t helping.)

But does Glass have to be creepy? Judging from the basics of how Google is advertising it — as a camera that you have strapped to you face all day, recording everything and everyone — I’d say the creepiness is unavoidable. It’s going to be a long time before people don’t automatically flinch when someone wearing Glass looks their way. And that’s going to have major effects on how fast the technology is adopted and accepted.

But while Glass seems doomed to the world of the creepy, augmented reality glasses themselves don’t have to be. This is clear judging from devices like Epson’s Moverio BT-100, a pair of augmented reality glasses that’s targeting a very different audience than Google’s catch-all Glass experiment. While Epson actually announced the device years ago, the company is trying to get its specs back into the conversation now that Glass is getting big.

Eric Mizufuka, Moverio’s product head, sums it up the Glass situation well: “Glass has been around for over a year, but Google is still struggling to say what they want to do with it. Right now it’s just photos and video,” he said.

Moverio, on the other hand, was designed with its killer app in mind: workforce training. Because the specs function as true augmented reality displays, developers can create overlays for things like car repair and thermostat installation  – basically anything that would benefit from the use of a hands-free walkthrough.

Here’s another example: Say you are a hapless plumber trying and failing to repair someone’s toilet. Rather than give up — or, worse, do a crummy job — you flip on your augmented reality specs and someone sitting at a distant computer uses  overlays to take you through the repair process step by step. It sounds farfetched, but it’s the very sort of thing companies like Scope Technologies are working on. (It’s also completely opposite of the thing that Google seems to be concerned with.)

This video gives you a good idea of how such a system would look. It’s pretty  neat.

Of course the tough thing to ignore here is that Moverio is ugly, bulky, and not all the type of thing people would want to walk around with all day. These realities would be a kiss of death if  Moverio were a consumer device, but it’s not a consumer device. This, Mizufuka argues, gives the device a bit more wiggle room in the aesthetics department.

“For a lot of enterprise applications, if a technology provides a return-on-investment, style isn’t as important. I think that’s one of the real struggles with going real heavy after the consumer market,” he said.

The same goes for the creep factor: In the commercial marketplace, people are going to be less worried about being photographed or recorded and more concerned with getting their jobs done.

The takeaway here, again, is this: Augmented reality is more than just Google Glass, even though it’s Glass that’s dominating our current discussions — and fears — of what augmented reality can be. There’s a whole world outside of Glass, and more companies than just Google are looking at it.

Chris Hollindale is cofounder and CTO of seed-funded stealth startup Hasty.

If you’ve ever tried out a Nike+ FuelBand, a Jawbone UP, or apps like RunKeeper or Strava for runners and cyclists, the chances are that you’ve seen the powerful effects that gamification can have.

Gamification is an effective mechanism that taps into our naturally competitive instinct to help change our behavior. And in the case of health and fitness apps, this change of behavior means real lifestyle changes, enabling us to be fitter and healthier.

But is this gamification being applied to the right health metrics? Could it be applied to areas that have even more of a positive health impact?

In the health and fitness space, the best examples of gamification are those employed by the likes of Nike+, Jawbone and FitBit’s tracking devices. Statistical and anecdotal evidence shows how effective the gamification is here – FitBit reports that its users take 43 percent more steps. But is tracking your steps  – which is ultimately what these devices do — actually all that good for you?

I’d argue that there are many more important metrics when it comes to living better and healthier, and this is where the future of health gamification will lie.

An interesting possibility is applying gamification to real health metrics. Services like WellnessFX now allow consumers to evaluate all manner of data points about themselves, from nutrient levels to cholesterol and testosterone. Being able to measure and improve these core health metrics is a huge leap, and I can see exciting applications of gamification applying here in the future. It could be that you’re able to create and compete with your own personal wellness score based on a variety of health metrics.

Or … even try to beat your mate’s level of testosterone – the ultimate “who’s the bigger man?” competition.

Of the metrics that people currently track, the one that has the most overall impact is food. Gamification has the potential to have a huge impact on the way we eat and the choices we make when it comes to food, and this can make a monumental impact in terms of our collective health.

If I earned a badge for eating well during the day, or was competing with a friend to see who could stick to a diet the longest, I would be way more incentivized to persevere and eat well. The problem standing in the way is that currently, tracking is hard: it’s simply not automatic enough.

But if that were to be resolved, the applications of gamification to food tracking become really interesting. Fooducate is a good example of gamification already being applied to food – by scanning barcodes, it grades the groceries that you buy to encourage you to eat better.

And Google Glass has the potential to fundamentally change the way we track and gamify health.

Imagine being able to track and gamify your statistics for any sport – like what your shot accuracy was in your latest tennis game – or having Google Glass automatically read the stats off your bike machine at the gym. And how about creating a proper augmented reality experience for exercise – extending the idea created by the Zombies, Run! smartphone app, your morning run could be turned into all manner of videogame-style scenarios, from escaping zombie hoards to chasing down one of your friends.

And its tracking applications will go way beyond physical health – it could even be used to track and gamify the number of words you spoke during the day, or the number of social interactions you had.

There are many opportunities for new applications of gamification in these areas. As a final thought, suppose Google Glass could record all the food you ate, the portion sizes and how much food you left on your plate. Suddenly, you’d have cracked the food-tracking problem and you’d have a massive opportunity to gamify and fix our increasing battle with preventable, diet-related health problems.

Photo credit: Chris Chabot/Google

While Google Glass may seem like a step towards a crazy science-fiction future, for some reason it lacks a fairly basic security feature: a lock screen.

That left the door open for Roundarch Isobar’s Mike DiGiovanni to develop a lock screen of his own, which he calls Bullletproof. Whenever Glass detects that it’s been removed from your face, the app presents a screen that can be unlocked with your own combination of gestures on Glass’s touchpad.

It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but it’s certainly necessary for a $1,500 computer that you wear on your face. Without Bulletproof, anyone could grab your Glass unit and send whatever images and messages they want to your friends and Google+ page.

The bigger question: How the heck did Google release a next-generation device without basic security protection? I’d argue that Glass is even more vulnerable to theft than your smartphone, since it’s typically resting on your face unattached, instead of being hidden in your pocket or purse. Glass also can’t be folded down like a typical pair of Glasses, which means it’s a fairly big target if you leave it on your desk.

If  your expensive Glass headset does get stolen though, you can always track it and wipe it remotely from the MyGlass website. Still, that doesn’t help if someone surreptitiously nabs your Glass unit to send malicious messages.

Update: A Google spokesperson sent along the following statement around Glass’s security:

We recognize the importance of building device-specific protections, and we’re experimenting with solutions as we work to make Glass more broadly available.

Via: Slashgear; Photo of Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass: Chris Chabot/Google

Google has just posted the kernel source for Glass. This is just the GPL-licensed Linux code, not the Apache-licensed Android code, for the company’s mysterious visor-like hardware project.

This code joins a small but growing body of sample projects, client libraries, APIs, and assets available to help developers build better Glass apps.

Google Glass is still a prealpha product prototype that’s not yet suitable for the mass market. Early units are shipping first to tech early adopters and, vastly more importantly, actual developers who will be building the apps that make Glass useful and interesting. The kernel source and other code is being made available precisely for these folks to do their best (or worst) on Glass.

Here’s a look at Glass’s UI of timeline cards and visual overlays:

The company was delighted, for example, when a hacker managed to root Glass over the weekend.

Ultimately, Google wants developers to build unique new experiences for Glass, not just more consumer-focused picture-sharing apps. When we talked to a group of Google-linked investors, they said they particularly wanted to see apps for science and healthcare.

Specs for Glass include a 5 megapixel camera, 16GB flash memory storage, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a micro USB port.

An exploration of other Glass code shows, among other tidbits, possible Xbox integrations.

Image credit: Project Glass/Google+

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The first time I started hearing people talking with hands-free devices on their cellphones, I thought the population of local crazies in San Francisco had increased. When I started seeing Bluetooth headsets in people’s ears, I fretted about the coming of the Borg.

Enter Google Glass.

Stylish it’s not. But creepy? Sunday at my local Ikea (a scary place in its own right!), I saw someone using Google Glass in public for the first time. The slim, thirtysomething man was sitting in a children’s chair, and I assume he was looking at something that Google Glass was showing him. But I couldn’t tell. From my vantage point, he looked like he was staring off into space, looking at some undefined “middle distance” while the rest of us merely existed in the real world.

Oh, and he was ignoring his kid, too, who was begging for him to play with her.

At least he didn’t take the damned thing into the shower. (Seriously, Robert Scoble, did we really need to see your naked shoulders?)

I have no idea if Google Glass is going to be useful, or if it’s going to be a transformational piece of technology that changes how we interact with information and the world. But right now, seeing someone using it is like watching a creepshow.

And I just want out.

Tom Cheredar/VentureBeat. Original image: AMC/The Walking Dead

If you were wondering if Google Glass survived a full shower, here’s some photographic proof courtesy of tech industry cheerleader Robert Scoble.

“You thought I was kidding when I said I would never take them off,” Scoble wrote on his Google+ page this afternoon. “Yes, they survive being wet. I had them full on soaked in my shower this morning. +Google Glass still works.”

Good luck scrubbing this image from your mind. But hey, at least we know Glass can survive a heavy downpour and amateur porn shower scenes.

Scoble has written extensively about his experience with Glass, and not surprisingly, he’s fully on board with Google’s latest gadget. That’s not saying much, though, as he has a reputation for jumping on every new technology trend with the enthusiasm of a schoolchild.

Google Glass may only be in the hands of a few people, but some of these folk have already found a way to crack it.

Jay Freeman, a hacker who goes by “Saurik”, says he tested a known exploit in Android 4.0 that he used to get root access to Glass. The move could, in theory, allow Glass owners to circumvent any restrictions Google has installed in the device.

Freeman, however, is not alone. Liam McLoughin, a hacker known for getting Chrome OS on netbooks and the Macbook Air, says he’s also rooted Glass.

Glass developer Stephen Lau says that the hacker cracking is all a part of the plan.

But while McLoughin and Freeman are patting themselves on back, Glass developer Stephen Lau — whom you may recognize from those early Glass promo shots — says that the hackers’ feat is a tad less impressive than it seems.

“Not to bring anybody down … but seriously … we intentionally left the device unlocked so you guys could hack it and do crazy fun shit with it. I mean, FFS, you paid $1,500 for it … go to town on it.  Show me something cool,” Lau wrote on Google Plus.

While none of this means very much to the vast majority of us who haven’t even touched Glass, it’s clear that all of this could lead to developers doing some interesting things with Google’s controversial new device a time goes on.

Photo: Flickr/Maxbraun

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement for the most exciting new Google product in perhaps … ever.

Of course, he is 57 years old, was born in the 1950s, and was the CEO of a boring enterprise software company, Novell, before joining the much more au courant Google.

But it’s not just that he’s an old fuddy-duddy. He’s right.

A Google Glass future in which we all have smart devices perched on our noses, in which we’re all viewing digital streams of content while simultaneously navigating the physical world, then touching our eyewear and speaking to it, is very, very odd.

An alternative, of course, is gesture control, and Leap Motion, which was recently integrated into Google Earth, and has announced its intentions of bringing embedded gesture control not just to PCs but also to “watches, smartphones, and glasses.” But while waving and motioning to your headgear may be less disruptive in social settings — and more realistic in busy, noisy environments — it’s also going to make for fairly odd behavior.

In the future, we’ll all have Tourrette’s syndrome.

That’s something Schmidt is recognizing, saying that there are clearly places where Google Glass would be inappropriate. The locker room, for example, and other places where there’s an expectation of privacy.

But it does mean that our current cultural go-to move in unfamiliar social settings — head down, checking your smartphone — will need some updating for a future in which everyone carries smart video cameras on their heads that are always connected to the Internet.

Another problem with the augmented-reality devices?

“If you like eye contact, I’m sorry, you lost,” Schmidt said.

Sounds like a paradise for geeks. For others, I’m not so sure. Perhaps talking to an iWatch will be less weird. At least, thanks to Dick Tracy, we have some cultural precedent for that.

Photo credit: Jolie O’Dell/Flickr, Chris Chabot/Google

If Google is trying to make Glass as creepy as possible, it’s sure doing a good job.

According to code found in the MyGlass companion app by Reddit user fodawim, Google Glass could allow users to take photos just by winking.

Which should, of course, horrify you.

Google Glass is stepping up the creep factor.

While the prevalence of smartphones nowadays means that you’re only seconds away from having your photo taken and thrown on the web, Glass takes that a step further: Creeps wouldn’t even have to take their phone out to photograph you — they can just wink at you (with all the salacious undertones that said winking implies).

That ease of photo taking makes me wonder whether Glass will come with a built-in shutter sound to notify people when it’s snapping photos. Unwanted photography is such a significant issue for smartphone owners in countries like South Korea that  handset makers are forced to equip their devices with shutter sounds that users can’t turn off. And I fully expect Glass will be greeted with a similar feature — at least for the sake of non-Glass owners of the world.

Alongside the photograph-by-winking functionality, Glass could also let users zoom in on webpages by doing a smartphone-like pinch motion and put Glass to sleep by turning their heads in a certain direction.

Photo: Flickr/mariachily

Gaming on Android devices isn’t quite on the same level as iOS. The Apple products still tend to get more games, and Apple provides deeper support with its Game Center software that manages friends and multiplayer gaming.

Google is finally catching up in that last respect, according to code buried in the MyGlass Android app that ties the company’s new Google Glass wearable computers to Android phones and tablets. The code, first discovered by Android Police, supports real-time/turn-based multiplayer, invitations, in-game chat, lobbies, leaderboards, and achievements.

That’s the type of functionality that a console like the Xbox 360 provides with its Xbox Live service. Gamers love to play against friends, but right now every Android developer is stuck building their own multiplayer network or licensing some software from a third-party vendor such as Gree. A standardized gaming environment could go a long way toward improving the lives — and games — of Android players.

Google hasn’t made any official announcements about this new service. It apparently goofed up and shipped the entire suite of Google Play service in the MyGlass app. That includes support for Google Wallet, panoramic pictures, and app search — Glass doesn’t support any of those common Android functions. Similarly, Glass doesn’t play games, so it’s weird that the MyGlass APK (which is the executable file type for the Android OS) includes a “games” folder.

Inside that folder, Android Police found code that can handle synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer, in-game chat, and all of the other features gamers desire in a connected network.

Google has never mentioned anything about a universal games service like this before, but its big Google IO event is coming up in about a month. The fact that the code is complete enough to get accidentally packed in with MyGlass suggests we’ll hear more about it at that San Francisco gathering on May 15.

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While it might be extremely amusing to loan your brand-spankin’-new Google Glass eye wear to Grandma for the entire day, it’s ill-advised by Google.

Google Glass’ terms of service actually has a clause that threatens to deactivate the wearable computing device should you transfer, resell, or loan it out to a friend with out Google’s explicit authorization. The clause may seem a bit harsh for a device that you actually own (especially considering the high $1,500 pricetag), but Google is being very choosy about who it gives the eyewear to the first place. The company previously rescinded a slew of invitations to its Google Glass explorer program after finding out some of the entrants were breaking the rules.

The device is also not expected to be released to consumers until late 2013, meaning the company is still testing and altering things behind the scenes, which is much harder to do if you can’t control who’s actually using it. Google Glass does many of the same things you do with your smartphone, such as snapping pictures, recording video, displaying augmented reality user interfaces, and communicating with others. (Check out the full specs here.)

While I’m not a fan of any company who tries to police the devices it sells after its sent to consumers, I sort of understand where Google is coming from on this one. Without the threat of deactivation, early adopters and developers could easily throw the device on eBay to make them several thousands of dollars. In fact, Wired is actually reporting an instance of a Google Glass owner actually doing this very thing — starting the eBay auction at $5,000 and closing at over $9,000. And the people who would buy those devices would be getting a broken experience, not to mention one less app or service since the original owner of the device abandoned it.

Photo credit: Project Glass/Google+

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google has announced the specifications for Google Glass, its upcoming heads-up display. Here they are:

• A display that’s comparable to a “25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.”
• 5 megapixel camera
• 720 video recording
• Bone conduction audio
• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth (not clear if this is 4.0, but that seems likely, as it’s low power)
• 16GB flash memory storage; 12GB usable (and synced with Google’s cloud storage services)
• Battery will last one full day of “typical use” — less if you’re doing video recording or Google+ Hangouts.
• Micro USB port. A cable and charger are included, and the support page warns you to use the included charger, so it’s probably a nonstandard current.
• Adjustable nosepads, with two sizes of extra pads.

The site says Glass will be compatible with “any Bluetooth-capable phone,” but a companion app, called MyGlass, will require Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher in order to enable GPS and SMS message delivery.

Notably missing from the specs:

• Exact display resolution details
• Cellular network connectivity
• Processor specs
• Warranty details

The company made the announcement through the somewhat sideways means of a support forum answer.

In addition, Google announced details of the Mirror API for coding apps that work with Google Glass (hat tip: Engadget) and let early wannabe beta testers know that the first 2,000 units of Google Glass will be shipping soon.

Photo: Stock image from Google Glass website.