Google Glass

Recently I had the opportunity to try the Google Glass for myself. The following is some observations noted about the newest tech innovation, that sounds really cool today, and will continue to sound even cooler as it gains more popularity.

The tagline is that Glass is a great concept and is most likely to be a great gadget in near future, and a household accessory within very few years.


To summarize in few bullet points

Pros:

1. Lightweight and comfortable - Looks impressive doesn't it? After few minutes of adjusting the projector at the right position, it felt pretty well fitted
2. Speaks in your skull - Glass uses "bone conduction" and sends sounds directly to your skull unlike the traditional devices. This enables you to hear better in noisy places, and not broadcast the sound to everyone in the building
3. Take videos and photos fast - I have a goPro camera for sports activities, which I recently took to karting. While I wouldn't risk ruining the Google Glass during rafting and surfing, for bike riding, karting and many other sports it would serve better than goPro, since (a) you see through the projector what you are filming, and (b) you can use voice commands to start and stop taking the video
4. Opportunity for innovation - There are not many features available yet, so why not innovate, now is the opportunity to write your own apps and rock the world
5. Coolest new device - Expect to become the "popular kid on the block" as you are one of the first people in you company/school/town to own them. People will try to be friends with you just to try the Glass!

 Cons:

1. Doesn't fit well with glasses - I wear prescription glasses everyday and didn't find it conformable to wear on top of those
2. Not ready for consumer use - Do not expect to get an out of the box solution like your IPad, this is a concept, so expect lots of crashes, draining your phone battery when synced on Bluetooth and brace yourself in public since you are likely to say more than a few times "OK Glass" to activate
3. Not many apps yet - It was just released to lucky few, so it doesn't come with Angry birds on it, wait for innovator to come up with the apps, or better yet design your own
4. Public acceptance - Not surprisingly people have mixed feelings about the futuristic device suddenly brought to reality from SyFy movies. The glass was already banned from number of bars and casinos, management claims that customers should be able to relax and not worry about being secretly filmed. I'd recommend not to take it on a date, unless your date is a dedicated Geek, others won't appreciate you looking like Terminator and communicating through "parallel universe"
5. "OK Glass" command - currently the only way to activate through voice command is saying "OK Glass", in case there is another person in surroundings with Google Glass "speaking" to his glass, or someone decides to say "OK Glass" suddenly, that will affect your Glass as well, and they will be in command of it! Expect this will be fixed soon.

So would I use one? Sure, I would love to. Would I buy one? The only scenario I could justify buying it myself, is committing to writing Glass apps at least part time, otherwise it's too pricy for a conceptual gadget.