Not Even Investors Know What Google Glass Is For 496
bdking writes "Google says it plans to ship its Google Glass Explorer Edition by the end of April to developers and consumers who paid $1,500 to test the computer-enabled eyewear, with vague plans for a general release (at a lower price) by year's end. But what will you really be able to do with Google Glass, beyond having information presented before your eyes? Even investors who are set to spend millions funding apps development for Google Glass have no clue. Is Google Glass being overhyped as a 'transformational' device?" I bet every real estate agent in the world would like one of these hooked up to a database of houses for sale, so they could instantly scan all the relevant information.
Head mounted smart phone (Score:3, Informative)
This is nothing more than a head mounted smartphone, with less features.
It'll probably take a bit of time in the hands of some crazy members of the public before we see any really innovative things out of this.
Personally, I don't see the big deal, its really just a head mounted smarth phone. Just a slightly different form factor, but due to its single display, a bad one unless you like headaches. But ... thats usually said a lot just before something groundbreaking happens :)
Re:If it really knew where it was... (Score:5, Informative)
Ok let me explain:
It is not a phone, it has (or shouldnt or will evolve to) no comunications capabilities beyond connecting to your already existing phone. It is a display, a voice gatherer and an api for your phone.
Its posibilities, if my assumptions are right, are endless and i do think that, done right, it could be a game changer. However, I also think nobody copies shit better than apple. If this works, you can be sure the iEyeEye (ay ay ay), will be simpler, stupider and more loved.
WE ALREADY KNOW HOW TO WORK THE MIRROR API. (Score:3, Informative)
This is absolute bullshit. If anyone who approved this fucking article knew what they were talking about, they would know that Google held a Glass developer conference wherein they explain the capabilities of Glass, guidelines, and API abilities.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/4186182/google-explains-how-to-create-glass-services [theverge.com]
Fucking idiots. The entire Mirror API is explained in that video. Developers(or anyone) who have done a simple Google search know how the hell to develop for Glass right now, why doesn't the author of this /. post?
Re:If it really knew where it was... (Score:3, Informative)
Then buy a Cadillac, several models have a HUD with turn by turn directions, speed, current audio selection, and optionally IR.
Re:If it really knew where it was... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what kind of an idiot you are, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that our visual system does not support texting and driving. As in, you know, the central vision is the only thing with decent resolution -- the only thing that in fact support conscious processing of imagery that has meanings that have to be decoded. That's why you constantly relocate your central vision while you read. If it has meaning that has to be picked up, the central vision must get to it. So, in order to look at a cell phone you're moving the central vision smack onto the cellphone's display. The cellphone's display is likely to be in a location where the peripheral vision -- the realtime, absent-of-meaning parallel-processing vision of ours -- will not be targeted at the windows and windshield. Thus you make yourself effectively blind for the purposes of driving. That's why texting and driving is so bad -- when you text, you're a blind person driving the car. It's that easy. Things are perhaps a bit more acceptable if you have a tactile keyboard on your phone and know how to use it without looking at the phone *at all*, but you're still redirecting your conscious attention to processing of the text you're writing, and that's bad in and of itself as I'll explain in the last two paragraphs.
As for talking on the cellphone while driving: well, most people, in the U.S. at least, have to hold their cell in their head, or support it with the shoulder, etc. Again it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you're altering your posture sufficiently so that your external field of view becomes crippled, and you're unable to execute head saccades. Saccades are the fast motions of the eye that redirect the gaze to a new point of interest. When a saccade is large enough, it gets executed in tandem by your neck muscles and your eye muscles. If it's even larger, your entire body participates in the motion -- and it's pretty damn cool that all those stacked motion stages can still execute a saccade that ends up at most a couple of visual degrees away from the intended target. All this goes to hell when you have a cellphone to deal with -- either between your head and your shoulder, or between your head and your hand. Again -- you're making yourself partially blind in the areas of peripheral vision that would normally elicit a shift of visual attention.
Oh, so what about the hands-free sets? Again, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. You've got an extra thing on your head to worry about if you wear a headset. Any sort of an out-of-normal situation (slipping headset, change of settings, etc) will for a moment monopolize your conscious attention. If you're using the car hands-free set, those are the worst. The audio quality is worse, so more of your conscious attention needs to be redirected to what was an automated task: decoding the meaning of words. The worse the audio quality, the more conscious processing is required to deal with a task that in normal conditions is purely automatic once you're around age 5. I don't think I need to convince you that depriving yourself of serial conscious processing is good while driving. The conscious attention is a serial resource -- it can only do one thing at a time. Yes, arguably driving depends a lot on sub-conscious processing -- since this is the only kind of processing we have available that's fast and real time -- that's why you can't drive a bicycle just knowing the physics of it, your conscious processing is way too slow.
But, in spite of most driving being done by the hugely parallel sub-conscious processing, you do need to do some ahead-planning to cope with changing weather and road conditions. If you completely redirect your conscious attention at the phone conversation, you may end up rear-ending someone -- for a simple reason. The conscious processing is used to keep the driving model up-to-date so that your learned sub-conscious "reflexes" keep you driving at a correct speed, in the correct lane, at a correct distance from the car(s) ahead of you. Once there