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Saturday, June 17, 2017

Remember Google Glasses??? By Karthik Sankar

Remember Google Glasses???
By Karthik Sankar

            It was that amazing Google product with tons of hype around it. If you don’t remember it, it was an AR (Augmented Reality) headset made by Google.

Here are the things it could do:
  • Google. It would be quite strange to have a Google product without google's core service, searching the internet for information. You could Google things on the Google Glass by using your voice.

  • Voice Control. This allows you to use voice commands to control glass by saying things like “Call Jim” or “text Bob”. The only other form of input available on the glass is the trackpad like surface on the right leg of the frame. It can only recognize taps and swipes. Voice control adds a tremendous amount of functionality to your device since you can quickly and easily execute complex commands.

  • Directions. This was an ingenious use case for the glass. Since it is head mounted, it is always in your vision ensuring you can see what you need to in a timely matter. Glass helps you navigate while walking or driving. It will notify you of any upcoming turns without you having to take your eyes off what's in front of you. This has the potential to save lives.

  • Camera. It could take pictures and videos of what's in front of you.  This means you can still be in the moment while taking pictures since you don’t have to pull out a separate device.

  • Video call. (the camera wouldn’t be pointed at your face though). Instead, the camera would see what you saw. This would allow you to really show the other person what your environment looked like. Obviously, their video feed would still be displayed on the glass.

What happened? Google essentially gave up. With concerns over privacy (everyone walking around with a head-mounted camera), looks (you have admit that you would look strange wearing a pair of them around in public) and complaints from developers testing it, Google decided to kill off the glass. It is sad that Glass wasn’t released to the public but at least VR and AR devices are becoming more common with projects like Hololens and Cardboard.


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