How people might misuse Google Glass

A video has been posted online that echoes concerns about the introduction of Google Glass, the web giant’s augmented reality spectacles.

10:12AM GMT 08 Mar 2013

The video shows a man on a first date using a version Google Glass to find out information about the person he is talking to, take photos of her, and even watching sport when he is bored with the conversation.

Whilst the video is clearly a spoof, it chimes with worries about wearable technology that can shoot video, take pictures and broadcast whatever the user sees.

The glasses, which are due to go on sale towards the end of this year, contain a battery, a tiny computer, a camera and a wireless link.

They give the wearer a “heads up display” which they can activate using simple voice or finger commands.

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US blogger Mark Hurst, writing on Creativegood.com, says: “Anywhere you go in public – any store, any sidewalk, any bus or subway – you’re liable to be recorded.”

He continues: “Now add in facial recognition and the identity database that Google is building within Google Plus …[and] the speech-to-text software that Google already employs … any audio in a video could, technically speaking, be converted to text, tagged to the individual who spoke it, and made fully searchable within Google’s search index.”

Joshua Topolsky, an technology journalist who is one of the few to have tried out Google Glass, wrote on TheVerge.com about how he wore them as he was followed by a film crew into Starbucks. Staff asked the crew to stop filming, but he “kept the Glass's video recorder going, all the way through."

Google co-founder Sergey Brin clearly doesn’t share these concerns, instead predicting that the glasses will give people a new, more natural way of interacting with each other digitally.

Sergey Brin on the New York subway wearing Google Glass

He recently told the Technology, Education and Design (TED) conference in Los Angeles that using the glasses was preferable to walking around hunched over a smartphone.

“Is this the way you’re meant to interact with other people,” he asked. “It’s kind of emasculating. Is this what you’re meant to do with your body?”

Google's glasses make sound through skull vibrations!

Google's hotly anticipated new glasses- which will wearers to summon up maps and other useful data on a screen in the lens- will create sound by sending vibrations directly through the wearer's skull, it has been revealed.

The features are included in documents filed with American regulators, and show how the futuristic specs will use "bone conduction", which sends vibrations to the inner ear through the skull instead of speakers.

Though not a new kind of technology- Panasonic exhibited prototype bone conduction headphones at this year's Consumer Electronics Show- the process is yet to be widely adopted.

One of its advantage is that it allows listeners to hear the noise in the environment too.

The Federal Communication Commission this week approved the web giant's patent for Google Glass, including "integral vibrating element that provides audio to the user via contact with the user's head".

Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, is leading the development, and last month he was pictured testing Google Glass on the New York subway.

The glasses also boast Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a small screen that appears in the wearer's normal field of vision. A tiny, voice-operated computer inside Google Glass runs the Android mobile operating system.

It is planned that wearers will be able to summon up maps and other useful data from the web straight on to their lenses.

The first complete Google Glass hardware will be sent to developers who have paid $1,500 to help refine the technology.

Google has said it hopes to introduce Google Glass commercially in 2014.

Google Glass Graces the Runway at New York Fashion Week

September 9, 2012

 

A model wearing Google Glass backstage at Diane von Furstenberg’s show in Lincoln Center.

Google Glass and Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance at New York Fashion WeekSunday afternoon.

Models walked down the runway at Diane von Furstenberg’s Spring/Summer 2013 collection show wearing Glass, the upcoming headset/eyewear device that Google is developing. The augmented reality-enhanced glasses have many smartphone-like functions: users can take pictures, record video, receive messages and check calendars, among other things.

The bands of each pair were modified to complement the collection’s palette of corals, blues, whites and grays. It was the first time Glass had ever appeared on a runway.

Models recorded video using Google Glass, which will be compiled into a short film.

At least one model turned on Glass’s video-recording function to capture her view of the runway (see above). Furstenberg and other members of DVF’s team also donned glasses during show preparations. That footage will be released in a short film, “DVF through Glass,” on DVF’s Google+ page Thursday, a DVF spokesperson said.

At the show’s conclusion, a Glass-clad Fustenberg and Yvan Mispelaere, creative director of DVF, took a celebratory lap down the runway. Halfway down the left aisle, Furstenberg reached over to Sergey Brin, who was sitting front row. He joined Furstenberg and Mispelaere for the rest of the walk amid wide applause.

Updated Information I/O: Glass Hardware Specs from Patent:

Google Glass is likely to include a touch-pad, camera, microphone and see-through display all rolled into one to fit on the bridge of your nose.

A patent document submitted to the United States Patents and Trademarks Office gives a few hints about Google Glass' controls, specifications, features and design.

Google Glass is described as a "wearable computing device" in the document, comprising of a see-through display lens with a projector, a camera positioned on the extending side-arm and a touch-pad interface including a keypad.

Apart from the buttons and touch-pad, the glasses will also detect speech commands. Shout out a name of a friend, and it will open your contacts book. Start the engine of your car, and Glass could throw up GPS directions.

Controller

Even cooler is the mention of a "controller" which can determine the wearer's skin tone, hand shape and size based on an image of the wearer's hand.

The user interface for the glasses is located "outside of the field of view of the wearer", which means it is probably located near the temple of the user's head, along one of the arms of the glasses.

The patent, which names Google's David Petrou as the inventor, explains user interaction through an interface that "could be, for example, a touch pad, keypad, an arrangement of buttons, or any combination thereof".

For the sake of imagination, Google says it is considering using "coloured dots" for visual representations.

"Coloured dots may appear in response to physical contact or close proximity with the interface. Further, the dots may create an illusionary effect such that the wearer feels like that the interface is right in front of the wearer," the application reads.

Sources of input data

Some illustrations, which you can see as part of the patent applicationshow that the glasses include a microphone, a keyboard, a camera, and a touch-pad.

Project Glass speech commands can also be used to play videos, open applications, translate sentences heard or spoken, answer questions and convert spoken words to text.

Winter is coming? No problem

It seems like Google Glass is also winter-friendly. Glass will detect the temperature outside and switch to a hands-free mode, in case the user is wearing gloves.

Glass will include "an antenna and transceiver device" for wired/wireless communications between itself and "a remote device or communication network". This could mean 3G and 4G networks, as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

This will probably allow connectivity between Glass and phones, tablets or other "wearable computing devices or a server in a communication network".

Via SlashGear