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Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD).[2] The product (Google Glass Explorer Edition) will be available to United States Google I/O developers for $1,500, shipping early in 2013. [1]
The intended purpose of Project Glass products would be the hands free displaying of information currently available to most smartphone users,[3] and allowing for interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands,[4] in a manner which has been compared to the iPhone feature Siri.[5] The operating systemsoftware used in the glasses will be Google's Android.[6]
Project Glass is part of the Google X Lab at the company,[7] which has worked on other futuristic technologies, such as a self-driving car. The project was announced on Google+ by Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer who has also worked on putting displays into contact lenses; Steve Lee, a project manager and "geolocation specialist"; and Sebastian Thrun, who developed Udacity as well as worked on the self-driving car project.[8] Google has patented the design of Project Glass.[9]Project Glass: what you need to know
When Google unveiled Project Glass, the tech world instantly fell into two camps. Camp one was excited: we're living in the sci-fi future! Camp two, though, wasn't so happy. It's vapourware! some said, while others worried that Google just wanted to plaster ads on the entire world.

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.
project glass

What will I be able to do with Google Glasses?

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 sat-nav, to know when the subway's closed, to take and share photographs and to learn the ukelele in a day.

1. GOOGLE NEEDS TO AVOID "THE SEGWAY PROBLEM"

There’s a reason that video glasses haven’t taken off yet (and by that, I don’t mean augmented reality glasses like Google’s, but something more like Vuzix). And, for lack of a better term, we’ll call it The Segway Problem. Technology can be a symbol of your future-forwardness, or it can be the exact opposite: a sign of the future’s ridiculousness. The Segway flopped in part for its cost and in part for the fact that humanity isn’t quite that lazy, but there was a deeper, visceral reaction to the core of the product that signified a silly future rather than an inspiring one. So far, the actual glasses Google is showing off aren’t inspiring. To succeed, Google will need to sell us on either the stylishness, or the invisibility, of video glasses. And may we suggest copying the iPod in this approach? Make the technology as obscured on the user as possible, except for one trademark calling card (in the iPod’s case, white earbuds).

2. GOOGLE NEEDS TO NAVIGATE "THE ALWAYS ON PROBLEM"

As inspiring as moments in Google’s concept video may be--and the photo-taking moment is an aha moment if I’ve ever seen one--it’s also stuffed with notification, none of which is fundamentally different from what we could be checking on our cell phones less intrusively. The functions that Google blocks will be as integral to the platform’s success as those that are enabled. Finding the perfect level of obtrusiveness within an omnipresent Internet connection could be the largest challenge of human-device interaction the electronics industry has ever encountered. And as Google is paving new ground, they’re working outside their comfort zone: Google has no data to mine for how much notification is too much notification. If ever there’s been a product ripe for Google Labs field testing, it’s Project Glass.

3. GOOGLE NEEDS TO FIND A KILLER USE-CASE

People in the Valley used to talk all the time about finding "killer apps"--that is, the one, defining use of a technology that’ll spark its mass adoption. And no wonder: With technologies such as augmented reality and Project Glass, the possibilites seem to outstrip the actual need. As I suggested before, these glasses aren’t yet doing anything our phones can’t. So why do they need to be glasses?
A good counter-example is the iPad. Lots of people dismissed it when it first came out, saying, "Sure, it’s cool, but what does anyone need another computer for?" Well, it turns out, people didn’t need another computer so much as they wanted one--a computer that would make surfing the web from your bed or couch a lot less clunky and more fun. With Project Glass, I’m not sure that they have that use-case yet--that is, the perfect scenario where this just makes sense in people’s lives. There might be some set of features and interactions that makes it so, but these haven’t quite appeared just yet.





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