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Digital Music Eyewear From Oakley
Mecha-A writes "Am I the only one that finds this insanely awesome? Oakley is marketing a new line of digital music eyewear in time for the holidays. $400-$500 is an obscene lot for a small USB MP3 player, but the coolness factor is way up there. Questions: Is a brand name like Oakley going to get this idea off the ground? Who's going to be first to market this same thing except with a 'now playing' HUD on the sunglasses?"
I'm holding off until they come out with a hat that's got a built in subwoofer
My guess is that you're playing for the Oakley sunglasses...the MP3 players is more or less a tag-along, as far as cost is concerned.
As somebody who has never owned a pair of Oakleys, I ask: wht does a good pair cost?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
The geek factor will go way up after you break your brand new Oakley MP3 player shades and tape them together across the bridge...
Yes, you are.
Supported OS
Windows XP, 2000, ME or 98SE (98SE requires additional driver);
Mac OS 9.2.2, OS X 10.1.5, OS X 10.2 or OS X 10.3
Am I the only one that finds this insanely awesome?
I see no BSD on the list, and seeing as this is slashdot, so most likely, yes.
Notice how both guys in the pictures have false teeth?
Maybe they got their heads kicked in for wearing rather geeky mp3 players.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
This is very similar or the same as the eyewear that Lance Armstrong wore this year in the tour de France. His was only 128MB though.
Is this news? These things have been heavily promoted by Oakley all summer. For example, if you watched any of the tour de france coverage you would have seen cyclists wearing them. Putting the story here is just one more way to get free publicity.
Then again, I'm just pissed that Oakley hasnt given me a free pair yet...
Notice how both guys in the pictures have false teeth? Maybe they got their heads kicked in for wearing rather geeky mp3 players.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Perhaps. I for one however find it insanely ugly.
Download my free songs!
I thought Oakley was all about thermonuclear protection stickers for cars?
I would never want these shades. Why? No Ogg support. Everyone, even you lay persons out there, know that Ogg sounds FAR superior.
Now back to the latest issue of Audiophile...
Here is a link with a picture of Lance's MP3 sunglasses.
m l
http://www.tdfblog.com/2004/07/armstrongs_othe.ht
...indeed. But I would have prefered a full size image of her!
Looks pretty ugly to me. Mostly because it's quite big and bulky.
This seems like a bad idea mostly because if I want to wear my sunglasses, I've also got to tote around an MP3 player strapped to my head. Conversely, if I want to listen to my MP3 player, I need to be wearing my sunglasses. Do you still wear it on cloudy days, inside, and night?
Digital Music Eyewear From Oakley
Music
Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday September 25, @06:41AM
from the listen-to-them-frames dept.
Mecha-A writes "Am I the only one that finds this insanely awesome? Oakley is marketing a new line of digital music eyewear in time for the holidays. $400-$500 is an obscene lot for a small USB MP3 player, but the coolness factor is way up there. Questions: Is a brand name like Oakley going to get this idea off the ground? Who's going to be first to market this same thing except with a 'now playing' HUD on the sunglasses?"
( Read More... | 16 comments )
...I expect everyone to start complaining about ./ becoming an advertising outlet in 3, 2, 1...
I guess I am not in the target market (then again, I'm 36 and French): the very large face shots that illustrate the product actually repulse me.
Why don't they just sell a product instead of a lifestyle ?
Apart from the fact that I find the sades both ugly and flashy, I find the idea quite good... 1 item less to carry. Oh wait, my bluetooth phone already does MP3 and FM.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I think both of those guys modeling should have spent the $400 on a dentist instead.
Wasn't it a pair of "modified" Oakley sunglasses which Ethan Hunt wore to receive his mission, at the beginning of Mission: Impossible 2? Media, HUD, soundbud, and a self-destruction device. Just a little more engineering...
[
I listen to music at work on headphones; it would be great if I could come back to my desk, put them back on and have the same song playing that I interrupted when I left. I'm a bit surprised that Apple hasn't figured out how to do this yet....Hey Apple and Oakley -- you listening?
Carousel is a lie!
Now all you need is a digital visor with funky fonts scrolling around on the right hand corner, a big blade and you have your Predator kit ready.
Now I can't sell my combined hat, eye glasses, fake nose and moustache with an MP3-player without looking like I'm imitating oakley!
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
what if you want to listen to music at night?
No number of tattoos will change the fact that you look like a TOTAL DORK with that crap on your head! And the lady wearing the ones without the frames? I think that photo made the cover of Nerdular Nerdence!
The other problem with this how sturdy is this going to be? Rigid frame sunglasses (unless titanium!) frequently get crushed in pants pockets, or when they are sat on. (thus, my polarized bolle's are pastic).
So in conclusion; MP3 player adds fragility and cost, subtracts any kind of coolness (to the point where gold fronts won't even save you).
This sucks.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
How much do you pay for original Polaroid lenses ?
How much do you pay for MP3 devices ?
Less.
Now if my glasses break, I lose my MP3 layer. And if my MP3 player breaks, I get a bulky pair of glasses. Convergence is Awesome!
Well, the price is complete bullshit, but I think its 'fairly' awesome.
Anything that gets rid of the problem of headphone wires breaking is good by me. Now dont start telling me about bluetooth - yes, thats cool, but it is fucking overkill to wirelessly transmit audio from your belt to your ears. At least this cuts out the middleman.
Then again, the price for the top of the line is always bullshit. When these things are $49.95 I'd be interested in getting one.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
'Use OAKLEY THUMP to store and transport computer files'
Yes, its obvious, but I just find the idea of transporting files around on my face funny.. And yes, before the masses ask about face mounting a Linux distro, I have no doubt it can be done with this...
resistance is fut.... ahh nevermind.
....but the coolness factor is way up there.
No it's not. But it explains why so many slashdotters can't get a date
A couple years ago I remember talking to a mac-geek friend of mine and he said "Someday, Apple will be an eyewear company"
This obviously only makes sense in a future where the network is CPU and Storage, wireless is very fast and advanced, and the glasses are basically just display technology.
How likely is this future, maybe as a precursor to direct neural jacks ala Matrix?
Do slashdotters believe the "Network is the Computer" idea will eventually come to be ?
Can you say cheating? What are the odds college students can get away with this? I haven't read into the specifics by the way.
The IPatch is WAY cooler.
Now in my day.... spending $300 for sneakers was understandable, but $300 for sunglasses is STUPID!
Very ugly. I think the answer to this has already been seen here, MP3 goggles. Bone conduction could slim down the almost bulky looking arms/earpieces. PLus totally up the geek factor even w/o tape.
My sausage tree didn't grow, does that make me a bad mommy?
Why is everything these days "awesome"? A hurricane is awesome, a star exploding is awesome, but a sunglasses/mp3 player combo?
awe n.
A mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might.
OK, they are a neat lil gadget, but they dont inspire reverence, respect, dread and wonder in me.
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
Back when I was a kid (late 60s/early 70s), someone sold eyeglasses with a built-in FM radio. For all you history buffs, that was before the Walkman (tm).
...but they'll probably be blasted out of the market as soon as a company like Sony gets their own version out. Because frankly, it's going to be a question of features, not sunglass brand reputation.
Then again, I don't seem to be the only one to find these insanely ugly.
Yeah, he is. It is just a big marketing ploy aimed at the 'extreme' and 'hardcore' markets. It is an iPod to the MAX.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Anyone else find the model offensive? At least use someone that has teeth! Geesh..
Didn't stay long enough to read the specs.. wont be buying one in the store..
I wonder how may other potential customers they scared off..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Anyone dumb enough to pay 500.00 for a pair of stupid sunglasses that have a certain logo on them is a fool.......just like the line, a fool and his money are soon parted. It's your money, but if you are dumb enough to pay that amount for a pair of sunglasses, so be it. You are just being suckered so you can have everyone look at the logo on those glasses......
Oakley doesn't target the slashdot crowd. They target skiiers, snowboarders, skateboarders, cyclists, etc.
The people doing these sports would really like the idea of not having the wires for headphones to get caught up in, and the extra weight of a player flopping around. I've pulled my headphones out a lot while riding a bunch of times.
The placement of the headphones looks really nice since they don't need to fully block your ears. They've even got good operating temperatures for the player and support both windows and mac. Since they don't specifically require software, thet might even be compatible with everything else.
Most people aren't going to spend that kind of money, but having the music in the glasses will be something that a lot of people go for. But you can bet that Oakley will find people who will definitely want to buy 'em.
And bad jokes about the teeth of the models aside, Oakley knows who they're marketing to. And a bunch of clean-cut models wearing clothes from the Gap isn't how they sell their products.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Am I the only one who saw that photo linked in the story, and thought, "Borg"?
These were showcased during the Tour de France, as Oakley is one of Lance Armstrong's sponsors. I wasn't impressed then, and I'm not impressed now.
If Oakley wants to impress me, put a HUD inside my M-frame lenses, with a wireless link to my cyclecomputer, so I never have to take my eyes of the road to check my data.
blog |
Am I the only one here that thinks
...
a) the design of the glasses look like something you might get free with a happy meal?
b) the "models" have their mouths open and look slightly gay?
I was expecting something a little more slick to be honest.
I wouldnt be seen dead wearing a pair of those.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
what does a good pair cost?
.
While all these ideas about implementing new digital technology are important and interesting, I feel that the designers don't grasp the central point of the digital revolution.
That is, digitronics are supposed to make everything in which it is implemented vastly cheaper. Designing an MP3 player into the frames of a pair of glasses is cool, but then charging $300 to $400 for them is an insult. The super rich won't buy them, the rest of us can't afford them, and anyone who would take the idea and make it into a commercial reality finds that they can't because the concept is patented-trademarked-copyrighted-whatever.
Now I understand that the marketers want to get as much money as possible for their new designs and ideas, but they don't seem to understand exactly how much money is actually possible. The total amount of $400 times the_number_of_actual_ pairs_sold at that price is much, much less than the amount of $65 times the number of pairs that would be sold if the price were in line with the concept.
Besides, I believe that incredibly cheap is incredibly cool. I'm trying to get a contest with a prize for the best computer design each year for an application that costs less than $5 for its parts. And a special prize for computer circuit designs that cost less than $1.
The winner (so far by default as there have been no other entries) is the PC-keyboard-to-MIDI controller that uses a 42-cent AVR Tiny11 to play a stand-alone PC keyboard as a MIDI piano note controller. It's found here
Anyway, cheap is good. $400 MP3 sunglasses is an insult when sunglasses are $10 and MP3 players are $60.
the coolness factor is way up there.
For the price of the sunglasses you can get an iPod, which also has a great coolness factor plut the functionality.
When I go to buy sunglasses I look for the ones that are lite and easy to put in my pocket, these sunglasses look pretty similr to a science project where you tape a USB memory stick mp3 player and tape it to a pair of sunglasses. Definately not worth 395$ or even half that. Of course thats just my opinion, i'm sure i don't speak for most people
At any rate, I personally think Oakleys are over rated and over priced. Get a pair of Rudy Projects and a decent MP3 player for the same price and have better sunglasses and better mp3 player.
Buy the President
I could make a mortgage payment or buy a new mid-range video card for that much money.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
"Am I the only one that finds this insanely awesome?"
Sure not; I, too, find this girl insanely awesome.
What I find insalely awesome is an adaption of:
Who's going to be first to market this same thing except with a 'now playing' HUD on the sunglasses?
How abaout a HUD to play UT2004?!
--
Slashdot: Racism against Indians OK. China bad, USA good. Blue pill in water supply.
Fairly crappy looking sunglasses with added weight to make them fall off your face. I'd rather have a set of Bluetooth headphones for my existing mp3 player. And what's with the price tag? I presume this is aimed foursquare at label conscious idiots.
Is everyone blind? This thing looks like ass, and I wouldn't be caught dead wearing this in public.
I mean, the fact that it's oakley gives it some credibility... but still, it's just soooo ugly. Jesus.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
If you were, you would know that this 'model' is the one and only Lil'Jon. Although I find those glasses hideous, I find Lil'Jon to be hilarious.
Yeah, probably.
In fact, if I remember correctly, there was a minor uproar in the early 1990's when Sony ran an ad in Bicycling magazine with a person wearing headphones while riding. Readers were aghast that Bicycling would even run the ad, and the magazine said that in the future they would not allow depictions of cyclists wearing headphones.
That said, even since I bought a small flash based 512MB mp3 player, I have imagined integrating it into a helmet. Instead of headphones you could have small speakers above the ears. This way you could hear noises around you and still have your tunes without wires. Of course modifying a helmet is a good way to make it useless as a helmet so this would have to be done by Bell or Giro or something.
I will award bonus points if they include a handlebar mounted bluetooth remote. Double bonus for making the current song info appear on a cyclometer.
Lasers Controlled Games!
OTOH the lack of wires is a big benefit for many applications. If I were working outside often I would definitely consider a pair of these. Of course the battery life makes it unsuitable for anyone but the hobbyist, but that is still a market.
In future versions I hope they put bluetooth connectivity for a remote and hookup to a cell phone as an additional mic. In fact, this might be a better product all together.
The biggest problem might be for someone who uses this regularly. The battery will run out, probably lose half it's lifetime in relatively short order, then what happens. Throw the entire thing away?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
My understanding from my years biking is that only an idiot would wear headphones while riding, especially road riding. It makes you deaf to approaching cars, other cyclists, moose, and feral cats.
I use my iPod all the time (with the regular earbud headphones) when riding my bicycle to and from work. I can hear the traffic just fine.
JP
They won't even sell you replacement lenses for their sunglasses..
They say that's because they don't want you to install them in your own custom frames and sell them as counterfeit. Right.
"Am I the only one that finds this insanely awesome?..."
it would seem that it's just you and the homeless man with the terrible teeth on the website.
the rest of us are laughing at you.
ôó
But what about the feral cats? Can you hear them? Didn't think so.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I suppose you could call it an EFD (Eyes Front Display), though.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Headphone wires breaking? I used to have a problem with that. The solution? I stopped chewing on them.
It's Camaro you tard.
I think these are, aesthetically, right up there with those yellow plastic sunglasses with the amber flashing lights and "windshield wipers."
You taught me something new.
I never cared enough about the cars to actually know how to spell it.
Obviously, you are an Oakley wearer.
To create a small mp3 player that grabbed onto a glasses arm, rather than a whole pair of glasses.
Luckily for the manufacturer, there's no shortage of obscenely stupid people out there, as witness the current administration. Where would Bush be without idiocy? Unemployed, probably.
This is both:
1) an MP3 player that you can't listen to without wearing sunglasses
2) a pair of sunglasses that you can't wear in extreme conditions.
This is about as useful as a champagne glass with a built-in knife.
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The requested URL
He would be their first spokesperson. According to CNN, he wore these specialized oakleys during the tour de france. A lot of people were wondering if they'd make them available for everyone else... guess they did!
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
So, to cut a long story short. A more mature jock, wearing Oakley's and driving a camero stole your 16 year old punk geek girlfriend, and you fantasise about beating him with a stick.
Old news: http://www.tdfblog.com/2004/07/armstrongs_othe.htm l
I just found out yesterday that we're going to carry those (Circuit City), and that I get to wear them as a demo and share them with customers. I think it's going to be funny, but fun. I'm actually looking forward to the holiday season this year!
Does anyone have glasses-sized VGA HUD that takes a serial output right now? Even if you can't see through them, my (Treo 600) phone's got a camera, a 100Kbps Internet connection, and USB/serial ports. The camera's only about 20KB:frame, so the phone might be able to overlay small transparent windows of text over a video image, at a framerate acceptable when you're sitting at a desk, like 2-5fps. It would suck, but it would be a start!
--
make install -not war
"the perfect compliment to your digital music collection"
It's no wonder that people enter university with atrocious language skills.
i don't understand the appeal. every carbon-copy w.a.s.p. joe chucklehead wears them. they're just tasteless, tacky, and bland.. i suppose they are a symbol of excess in the place of good taste, something that characterizes the USA.
news flash: oakleys are not cool. wearing them does not make you cool. and nor are you cool by telling everyone on the road that you prefer oakley sunglasses by putting the symbol on your rear windowl. that just makes you gay.
armani, diesel, etc, even ray-ban make glasses that are decent.. their designs are original, unlike oakley's infinite variations of the "wrap-around" space-alien cybergoggle theme (did i mention it's tacky?)
anyways,
that's it,
thanks for your time
With any product that has a dominant name (some that come to mind are Oakley in sunglasses, Sony in consumer electronics, etc), you usually pay more for the name. But seriously, this looks like a great idea, though not for me (I have a great pair of glasses, and a nice MP3 player).
As someone who has done some reading about Oakley (and a former wearer of their glasses), I can say one thing, Oakley does not come out with a crap product. They would not just snap a MP3 player on their glasses and release the product, not without serious though as to how the product will look, work, be interfaced, etc. I would expect that if you went to an Oakley store to give this a whirl, you would find that it is well though out.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
This summer I went on a 4500 mile road ride (see sig for details/pictures) and one of the guys I went with had the ingenious idea to duct tape some cheap speakers to his handlebars and plug his iPod into them. It actually worked pretty well, and you'd be surprised how well a little music can lift peoples' moods when you can see for 50 miles and not see any cars (think middle of Nevada, right around Area 51. Middle of nowhere, literally.)
or the imac, so they won't like these. nevertheless as the success of such products has shown, there is an enormous market for mixing fashion/design with tech; the difficulty is tapping into it. Only Apple & Sony have done it more than once so far. I would say Oakley have a good chance at hitting the vein.
Does this mean I can now wear my oakleys listening to music while I go for a run, get all sweaty and cause the stupid thing to stuff up!..
;0
ohhh sorry most people dont excerise
Where can i BUY that stuff? Right Now!
*me wantssssss it*
Now all we need is the rumoured wireless iPod interface and the ability to stream music to the glas...er.. eyewear.
Now that would be cool.
Should have bluetooth. If I'm gonna wear something like that, I don't want to take it off to put my BT headset on to answer the phone.
Am I the only one that finds this insanely OLD NEWS?
-S
Everyone should know by now that the more expensive your sunglasses are, the sooner it is you'll lose them or break them.
But it comes with a hot chic! Sign me up!
---- Take the Space Quiz!
crank up the cory heart "I wear my sunglasses at night so I can so I can...."
Mentioned in this story from July. Following links in the story brings you to this page, which says
Posted Jul 12, 2004...
"Oakley is going to sell "Thump", as they're calling the sunglasses, to the non-Tour-de-France-winning general public beginning in December. Thump (which we're already finding annoying to write) will come in 128MB and 256MB versions, have a battery life of six hours, support for both MP3 and WMA audio files, and sport volume and track controls on the eyestem.
So, the news is a bit old already... whatever.
RTFA
They are not headphones, but little speakers mounted in front of the ear. They flip up so you can talk to people and use the phone and stuff. That's very cool. The flip up lenses are a nice touch too.
Oakley has never had any problem selling well designed and insanely overpriced glasses and I doubt that they will have any problem selling well designed and overpriced music player hybrids.
I won't be getting any though.
Now their slogan will be
"Thermonuclear and boredom protection"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Probably. An insanely awesome device would have been able to play OGG files.
)9TSS
RTFA!!! THe eyeglasses headphone does not sit INSIDE your ear, but at adjustable distances from it specifically to avoid the loss of outside sound if need be. That is the one thing that I am finding most impressive about these items, and while I know that it will be an overpriced pair of glasses it doesn't seem that Oakley is charging all that much for the MP3 player.
Can't wait for someone else to develop this kind of flip up earphone for those of us that have never seen a pair of Oakley's that we liked the look of.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society - M. Twain
And that's the truth, geek.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy an iPod AND glasses separately? Who in their own mind would even consider dropping FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS on this gay-looking piece of garbage?
Yes indeedy, you're the only one.
It looks like the hearing aid glasses of the 1970. Except clunkier.
Integrating a wireless headset into sunglasses, so you could listen to music or talk on your cell phone, would be cool. Only one gadget to carry around, too.
Their target audience are assholes that never graduated high school but 10 years later are still trying to pick up 16 year old chicks in their ratted out cameros
You say that like it's a bad thing.
wow, nifty gadget!
...). it annoys me constantly that i have to take a good quality pair of headphones for listening to music _and_ a phone-headset with me when both items could be easily build into one.
the numer one problem of such a (wireless) device is battery life. before something like this can't offer at least one full day of continuous operation it will not be successfull.
but i'm sure this issue can be resolved with some years of hard engineering.
it's far from perfect, for a sunglass it looks quite bulky, and storage is limited (i wouldn't want to miss the 40GB my iPod offers) but it's the first device of that type (that i'm aware of), so there's certainly room for improvement.
what i would like to see is something similar without the mp3-player built in, but equipped with some wireless technology (the technology of choice at the moment would be bluetooth), acting as a headphone for any other device that needs audio output (mp3-player of course, phone, computer, tv,
then wait some more years until some (very) small laser projectors become available that can be attached to normal glasses...
When is someone going to mass market EYEGLASS frames?
Hell, one could even make a thicker LCD display that could be ground down into a lens, hypothetically speaking.
Even though some geeks can tolerate most of the hassles of contacts or surgery, most still wear glasses.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
If only -- that would have meant I had a 16 year old girlfriend for even a few minutes. I haven't had one of those since, hmmm...I was 16. Dammit.
:-)
Luckily for me, 30 year old women don't get picked up by these guys, so I'm relatively safe
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Maybe a few pictures of coders standing next to the coffee pot or working late in the cube farm would improve their sales...
Okay, maybe not, but these guys aren't doing it.
...if I could plug it in to random computers and transfer 40GB of files without having to install iTunes or a similar "you get drivers as a side-effect" program.
As it is, iPods only show up as mounted disks on systems with iTunes or some commercial software installed. Other computers report "unknown USB device," which effectively kills its usefulness for file transfer.
Damn spiffy device other than that, though. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
$400-$500 is an obscene lot for a small USB MP3 player, but the coolness factor is way up there.
I guess if your idea of cool includes fanny packs and pocket protectors, then yeah, this is a great way for you to make your fashion statement.
Personally, I will stick to my iPod mini.
These are just like hearing aids built into glasses... with the same sort of style: heavy frames, the electronics on the temples, and a little ear bud than hangs down and fits in your ear canal.
The only difference is that these can HURT your hearing instead of HELPING it.