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Ever since search engine giant Google announced Project Glass, an experimental set of glasses that can capture video, take photos and provide the wearer with a Web-connected heads-up display (HUD), the Internet has been buzzing with anticipation for more information on the futuristic technology. This past week Google officially released photos and a video taken with the prototype glasses, which give people an idea of what it would look like reading a newspaper, taking photos of children or taking shelter under an umbrella in the rain.
In addition, the 15-second 720p video shows the first-person perspective of someone doing backflips on a trampoline, an effective, if nausea-inducing example of how the video-capture technology works. Since we started testing Project Glass in public, our team members have been taking a lot of pictures. We selected some of them to show you what kinds of moments weve managed to capture, Project Glass tech lead Max Braun wrote in a blog post on the companys Google+ site. When our team started using Project Glass test devices at home, we saw a different kind of family photo. These are the precious moments you want to savor and capture at the same time.
In April, a two-and-a-half minute promotional video the Project Glass team posted on YouTube, which takes viewers on a tour of a user’s daily routine as he makes breakfast, video chats with his girlfriend and travels around New York City, gives an impression of what the technology is capable of. Photos on the project’s Google+ page also show what the final creationa sleek, white, paper-thin geek-chic framecould look like.
However, Google has admitted that some of the more advanced features, like the sleek graphical user interface used in the promotional video, wont be available in the first iteration of the glasses. This may actually be a good thing, based on the increasing number of minor accidents people are getting into these days because their eyes are watching their smartphones and not the people and objects in front of them.
According to a report in DigitalTrends, Google will be working on an alert system for hearing-impaired users of the glasses, which would send the wearer a text message when a speeding car (for example) was a approaching. The report cited a patent Google filed with the United States Patent Office, which in the filing described the technology as displaying sound indications on a wearable computing system that indicate the direction of a source of sound and the intensity level of the sound are disclosed.
A method may involve receiving audio data corresponding to sound detected by a wearable computing system. Further, the method may involve analyzing the audio data to determine both a direction from the wearable computing system of a source of the sound and an intensity level of the sound, the filing abstract explained. Still further, the method may involve causing the wearable computing system to display one or more indications that indicate the direction of the source of the sound and the intensity level of the sound.”