GreenZoner egypt: Google Glass

Google Glass learns how your friends dress, picks 'em out in a crowd

<div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;"> <img alt="Google Glass" data-src-height="381" data-src-width="620" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/03/abfabglas.jpg" /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">Facial recognition<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7080182682816192337">? Pah. Dahling, the only way to find someone in a crowd is to pick out what they're <em>wearing</em>. InSight is an app being developed for Google Glass  by Duke University that helps you identify your chums, even when  they've got their back to you, by channeling its inner Joan Rivers. All  your pals have to do is submit some self-portraits to the app, which  then creates a spatiogram -- identifying the colors, textures and  patterns with which they've adorned themselves. That data is then pushed  to Google Glass, hopefully allowing you to avoid the usual "I'm by the  store, no, the <em>other</em> store" routine. Then again, maybe your friends will find you first -- after all, you're the one with a computer strapped to your head.</a></div></div>

Google Glass learns how your friends dress, picks 'em out in a crowd

Facial recognition ? Pah. Dahling, the only way to find someone in a crowd is to pick out what they're wearing . InSight is an app bei...

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Editorial: Google Glass contest elicits mild uses for wild tech

<div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;" trbidi="on"><hr dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" />   	  	      	 	 		  		  		  		  		<div class="copy post-body" dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">	<div class="image-container" style="text-align: center;"> <img alt="Editorial Google Glass contest underlines mediocre uses for brilliant tech" data-src-height="350" data-src-width="620" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/02/ifihadglass.jpg" /></div>Google's #ifihadglass contest advertises for "bold, creative  individuals" to start carrying pre-production builds of Glass later this  year. Since most people flatter themselves as dauntless and inspired,  Google's challenge casts a wide net and applications are piling into  Twitter. The contest apparently also seeks prosperous individuals  willing to pay $1,500 for the prize, plus travel expense to pick it up.  There might be good fiscal reasons for Google's parsimony, but I can't  help noting that the $12 million of revenue generated by eager beta  testers represents five-thousandths of 1 percent of the company's market cap, or one-tenth of a percent of its liquid cash.<br />  Putting aside whatever demographic-shaping is in play, the more  interesting question is whether Google will find its desired 8,000 bold  creative types. The applications do not foretell blazing originality  among foaming early adopters. If there is a depressing strain of  mediocrity in the #ifihadglass Twitter stream, perhaps it speaks less to  human limitation and more to intrinsic constraints of the device as it  is currently understood.<br />  	 A survey of #ifihadglass Twitter applications (which, by the way,  are formally called "essays" in the contest rules, and wouldn't Thoreau  be pleased) reveals two things. First, most people aren't trying very  hard. Google encourages photos and short videos along with the tweets,  but those media enhancements are rare. Applications of fewer than 50  words may also be posted to Google+, but I restricted my research (hey,  if tweets are essays, my trolling can be research) to Twitter because I  don't know where Google+ is, and am not certain it truly exists.<br />  The second facet of the Twitter supplication stream is its categorical  quality -- not unlike the Academy Awards, so neatly do the creative  works order themselves into groups. The contest challenge is to describe  how you would use Glass. <span>The answers fall into broad divisions:</span><br /> <strong>Record Everything:</strong> This is the obvious use case for a media device that you don't have to  pick up or put down. It imagines Glass as a dash cam, where the user's  forehead is the dash. I did not break out response types by percentage,  but variations on this theme occurred frequently in my sample.  Applications of this sort will probably not meet the jury's guiding  criterion of "the most compelling possible uses for Glass." Unless the  judges get desperate.<br /> <strong>Share My Unique Life:</strong> A  subset of the Record Everything bucket, these tweets presume the  applicant to be uncommonly interesting, especially when engaged in  undisclosed daily activities. One tweet promised (threatened?) the world  would "live in my shoes." Another committed to "share an incredible  life with the world."<br /> <strong>Travel:</strong> Many submissions  pledged to organize global jaunts if Glass were bestowed. Starting with  what, for some people, will be a long journey just to get their hands on  the prize.<br /> <strong>One Special Moment:</strong> Short-term  thinking is evident, sometimes to good effect. One pre-nuptial couple  promised on video to us Glass during their wedding ... and the  honeymoon.<br /> <strong>Praise Google:</strong> This is the suck-up category in which applicants promise to be viral marketers for Glass.<br /> <strong>Put Glass On Things:</strong> Especially animals. I do hope the judges pick some of these. I know I would not be able to resist clamping Glass on my dogs.<br /> <strong>Gushers:</strong> The core thesis here is, "I should get Glass because I think Glass is the most awesome thing ever."<br /> <strong>Humorists:</strong> Clearly not trying, except to make their followers laugh. Examples  include, "I would put my phone down, get some friends, video car  accidents and show my new friends." And, <span>"I would stare at my hamster eating and save every precious moment." And, "</span><span>I'd look like elves had given up building a monorail to connect my ears."</span><br /> <strong>GTD:</strong> Productivity-minded hopefuls are among the best candidates in my  opinion, as they lift the device's floundering use-case prospects. One  tweet envisioned surreptitiously taking pictures in class instead of  notes. (That was possibly a joke; see the Humorists category above.)  Another student bent on real self-improvement thought it would be  valuable to let his archaeology professors watch his work on digs in the  field. That guy has to get one. Another interesting appeal: "<span>I  would caption everything (I am deaf) using a speech recognition software  and language processor that I am helping to develop." (Not to be  cynical, but I wonder about copycat submissions, and whether  fact-checking is baked into the contest.)</span><br /> <strong>Demonstrations of Skill:</strong> These rare and mighty submissions inarguably illustrate creativity that  must be attractive to the judges, even if the applicability to Glass is  uncertain -- as in this Android wrist mount, and this 15-second movie. Those are the people Google should <em>give </em>Glass  to. (Forget the $1,500 crap. Why is Google willing to risk excluding a  rare creative individual who can't afford an expensive and probably  buggy gadget?)<br /> In a recent interview,  a Glass developer explained that the product concept came to life for  her when she observed a long line of people waiting for a bus. Every  head in line was buried in a screen, and all hands were busy holding  those screens. The product vision solves that scenario by simultaneously  bringing technology closer and moving it out of the way. I'm not alone  in loving that vision, and standing ready to eagerly adopt wearable  computing. But the mundane underlying truth is that Glass is a  smartphone with a new form factor. In fact everything that observers  know now, a year or so before launch, tells us that Glass is less  functional than an average smartphone. (That could change.)<br />  Removing hands from mobile computing provides an incalculable usability  gain. But let's remember this about hands. They distinguish us as  humans, and hands do most of the creativity in the world. Genius without  hands goes nowhere. Human civilization was built with opposable thumbs.  Is it a mystery that #ifihadglass contest applicants can't think of  anything interesting to do with a handless device? Pics, vids, mapping,  texting, sharing. Notwithstanding functions I might be leaving out, at  this point it looks like a rudimentary mobile feature set. Nimble as  hell, but not very capable aside from that.<br /> I expect the business  and product impact of Glass to be tectonic. I will want one. But its  usefulness points rather to the ordinary than the extraordinary.<br /><br /><hr /> <em>Brad  Hill is a former Vice President at AOL, and the former Director and  General Manager of Weblogs, Inc. His planned use of Glass is turning on  the video and staring blankly into space.</em><br />   	  	 </div></div>