With wearables all the rage now the team at Brisbane agency BCM decided to jump on board the technology trend and buy themselves a Google Glass, shipped direct from the UK. In the first of a series of posts, BCM put Google Glass under the microscope. Here, MD Paul Cornwell begins the examination of what this wearable piece of tech can do.
Way back in 3500BC glass was first created in Mesopotamia. It has turned out to be one of the world’s most incredible inventions. Aside from its primary use as a transparent material for buildings and cars, it is used in thousands of other ways. For optical lenses, for jewellery, for decoration, for photographic lenses, and for all sorts of vessels including beer bottles and wine glasses. It even comes in a bulletproof version. So glass would be pretty hard to top.
Every day we hear about some amazing new technology that’s supposed to change the world forever, like glass did. Often we’re disappointed by its poor design and its functionality.
Google has been talking up its new Glass technology like it’s the next big revolution. The geeks have been Beta testing it in the US.
So, following our experimentation with 3D printing and Drones, we ordered our very own Google Glass (it’s not available in Australia yet, so we had a friend purchase it for us in the UK).
Having read up on Google Glass our expectations were high. It sounded like it was going to be amazing. You could describe Google Glass as a head mounted computer with a camera and a microphone – all built into a pair of glasses.
The computer is very powerful for its size. They’ve crammed Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, speakers, a camera, a microphone and more into a tiny computer about the size of the tip of your little finger. And what it can do is very impressive.
Voice activated driving directions. Take a photo. Make a phone call. Shoot a video. Share video or a photograph online. Send an email. Respond to a text.
It’s an always ready smart device that sits comfortably on your face just like a pair of glasses but with a small screen which is just out of your direct line of sight. It sees what you see and hears what you hear. And it delivers sound through your head via a ‘bone conduction transducer’.
According to most reports it’s very easy to use. Because it’s voice activated, you can simply command it ‘Okay Glass…take a photo’ and with a wink of your eye…it does. No more reaching for your phone and hitting the camera app, or worse still, digging around for your camera. It’s all there on your face and ready to go. It’s live and ‘on call’ the whole time, so you’re ready to take video or photos, use it is as a webcam with the data connection from your smartphone, dictate text messages…and the list goes on.
So, we’re excited. And we can’t wait to test it out.
As for the negative comments we’ve read about how antisocial Google Glass is, how clunky the design is, how expensive it is ($1,500), and how many people don’t “get” Glass, we’ll test it out and come to our own conclusions.
Stay tuned.