Canon PowerShot S100
ƒ/2
5.2 mm
1/3
80

I noticed neighbor Salil walking by sporting the cool Google Glass. Time for a demo!

It has a battery back on one temple stem, but feels pretty comfortable. The rectangular glass has an internal 45° cut with thin film coating that reflects the projected light from the side into the eye. The technique and refracted tint are similar to the docking sight used on Apollo, just much smaller.

The Google Glass is an overlay. Salil is also wearing prescription glasses underneath. With the display above the vision center line, it’s fairly easy to ignore, yet always available a quick glance up.

It starts with a simple display of the time. There is a voice interface. When I say:
“OK Glass. Take a picture.” It takes one from that first person perspective.

As a photographer, this speaks to a certain recurring daydream I have, of being able to “record” the fleeting moment of something wonderful with just a click of the mind.

It also can “take a video” and in an earlier experiment, it could be set to take a photo every 10 seconds, all day long. That leads to some amazing perspectives, but I have to imagine it creates a bit of a photo editing challenge. =)

This internal glass partial-mirror has the added benefit that the person you are facing can tell if the screen is an active distraction, or if video is recording (this cue was a recent UI addition). That has proven to be an important social cue to what might otherwise be a bit off-putting in conversation.

Sergey Brin and Salil are wearing the Glass continuously as part of extended user testing. They claim that the battery lasts all day.

And then, as if the scene was not surreal enough, Sergey’s mom walks by. She gives us a glance like “not that thing again.”

8 responses to “Impromptu Google Glass Improv”

  1. the every 10s photo thing leads to cool time-lapse videos.
    no editing required :-))

  2. I have the same recurring daydream of being able to take a photo just with my mind of whatever I see and without holding camera, acquiring focus, then pressing the shutter button.. especially while riding a bicycle 🙂
    BTW, those Google glasses would be quite good for a cyclist – speed, gps, heart rate etc.

  3. The last ten years brought us so much…what about the next ten. Wow I love to think about it. And I have the feeling that the science of photography will make a step in a totally new direction. New extremely powerful sensors with rocket speed possibilities and zero noise capacities for pitch dark night capture.

  4. I am shocked! 🙂 You cross-posted this photo to Facebook and Flicr. On Facebook got 60 likes, 11 shares, and 17 comments, I assume during the same period when on Flickr it got 256 views, 3 favorites, and 3 comments. Now you have a problem: can you set up a convenient way so that you keep the best of both worlds, without doubling your effort? It looks to me that you separately uploaded the photos to both sites, which is not scalable. But you want to keep them on Flickr too, since Facebook is a silo, and Flickr allows you to grow the ecosystem better through its default Creative Commons license. I haven’t found a good solution yet, personally. (Yes, this comment cross-posted to both platforms!)

  5. I completely agree. FB is more social, but broken when it comes to search and public conversations…

    And coming back to the press of the stem and pink light on google glass that shows you are recording… I first tried that at a Foresight conference, and it has become my fB icon…

    steve ear glow

  6. The lack of search on FB is very frustrating. I often have moments of "I remember that somebody (can’t remember if it was person A or B or C) posted something interesting about X a while back…can I find it?" And I never can.

  7. btw I must say that you have a high density of interesting people in your neighborhood.

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