Google is now accepting preorders for an Explorer Edition of Google Glass, its lightweight eyeglass-meets-smartphone invention. For U.S.-based attendees of its I/O developer conference willing to pay $1,500, it will ship in early 2013.
Google wowed the crowd at its I/O
developer event June 27 with its Google Glass. It did this first by enlisting a
Google Glass-wearing suite of athletes, from a team of skydivers traveling by
plane to the roof of the San Francisco Moscone Center, to stunt bikers to a
rappelling expert, all working under the conceit of delivering a Glass to
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, on stage at the event, and second by announcing
it would soon make the Glass available to the developers at the event.
Calling it a Glass Explorer Edition,
Brin said theyre now available for preorder, and Google will begin shipping the
units early next year to U.S.-based attendees for $1,500.
This is a really new technology,
and we want to get you to help shape it, he told the crowd.
The Glass is essentially a pair of
very lightweight eyeglasses with a tiny display-like component just above the
users right eyecarefully positioned to not block the wearers direct
visionthat enables the capture and sharing of photos and video in real time,
such as in a Google Hangout (thus the skydiving escapade) as well as basically
all the things we use our smartphones for. Google says its working on a
version that could be compatible with prescription glasses.
Cant picture it?
Google posted a helpful video on YouTube.
The Glass could be worn by a
surgeon, showing a difficult procedure from his or her perspective, or by a
professional athletewhat does it look like to have a Rafael Nadal serve aimed
at you?or by a chef showing off a recipe or technique. Google expects a lot of
parents will want to wear it to catch footage of their kids doing amazingly
cute things. Surely, someday, we wont be spared a reality show from the
perspective of a Glass.
But theres much more the Glass is
capable of, and Googlers dont want to be the only one doing the thinking.
We could just keep developing this
in our own little corner of the universemany companies would just secretly
develop it and say, Ta-da! Here it is, world! But since we showed it to the
public in April, weve gotten so many great ideas and so much feedback, and we
found that so valuable, Brin said later, during a video interview on
Bloomberg. We want to take it to the next level by letting other peoplewho
are dedicated and serious and willing to be on the cutting edgeletting them do
their own experimentation learnings that can feedback to us and affect
our future designs and software.
The Glass, while figuratively and
literally a show stopperBrin had to hop onstage and interrupt a demonstration,
to properly time things with the skydivers
wasnt the biggest announcement of the day.
Google introduced Android version 4.1, code-named Jelly Bean; as rumored, a tablet
of its very own, the (Asus-made) Nexus 7; and, greater surprise, the Google Q,
a bowling-ball-shaped home media hub that can be controlled by an
Android-running smartphone or tablet.
Google appeared to be in the
unenviable position of following up a strong actApples Worldwide Developers
Conference took place in the same venue weeks earlierbut it proved itself more
than up for the challenge, exciting the crowd most, not with its answer to the
iPad, but with two products unlike anything it might have occurred to us to
hope for.
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Michelle Maisto on Twitter.
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