Google unveils Google Glass – augmented reality glasses.
What is Google Glass?
Google’s Project Glass is Google’s attempt to make wearable computing mainstream, and it’s effectively a smart pair of glasses with an integrated heads-up display and a battery hidden inside the frame. Wearable computing is not a new idea, but Google’s enormous bank account and can-do attitude means that Project Glass could well be the first product to do significant numbers.
How does Google Glass work?
First of all – let’s not confuse Google Glass and Google Goggles. Google Goggles is software, an app that can search the web based on photos and scans. Google Glass is hardware and according to well-informed Google blogger Seth Weintraub, Google’s Project Glass glasses will probably use a transparent LCD or AMOLED display to put information in front of your eyeballs. It’s location-aware thanks to a camera and GPS, and you can scroll and click on information by tilting your head, something that is apparently quite easy to master. Google Glasses will also use voice input and output.
What are the Google Glass specifications?
The New York Times says that the glasses will run Android, will include a small screen in front of your eye and will have motion sensors, GPS and either 3G or 4G data connections. Weintraub says that the device is designed to be a stand-alone device rather than an Android phone peripheral: while Project Glass can connect to a smartphone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth 4.0, “it communicates directly with the cloud”. There is also a front-facing camera and a flash, although it’s not a multi-megapixel monster, and the most recent prototype’s screen isn’t transparent.
What will we be able to do with Google Glass?
According to Google’s own video, you’ll be a super-being with the ability to have tiny people talking to you in the corner of your eye, to find your way around using satellite navigation (sat-nav), to know when the subway’s closed, to take and share photographs and to learn how to play the ukelele in a day.
Watch the Google Glass – One Day video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4
