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Google Glass Specs Hit the Web

Posted by timothy on from the for-your-fashion-needs dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google has issued the specifications for its spectacles. The search-engine giant's Google Glass, an augmented-reality headset that allows wearers to view information on a tiny screen embedded in one of the lenses, features a camera capable of snapping 5-megapixel photos and 720p video. That aforementioned screen, in the words of Google's just-released specs sheet, "is the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away." Google Glass is compatible with any Bluetooth-capable phone. Its MyGlass app, which enables SMS messaging and GPS, requires a companion device running Android 4.0.3 (the "Ice Cream Sandwich" build) or higher. Google claims the battery will provide a "full day of typical use," although the company warned in the specs sheet that certain functions—most notably video recording and Hangouts—could drain the battery faster. Despite those neat features, Google Glass also raises some thorny questions about surveillance culture, and whether people really want whole crowds recording every moment of our collective lives. But those are the sort of conundrums that will only become more clear when Google Glass is actually released sometime later this year."

32 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. so what am i supposed to do with them again? by alen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    i still can't figure out the point in spending $1500 on a pair of glasses when i don't even wear glasses

    1. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by larry+bagina · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe it's me, but the only use I can think of is (secretly?) recording POV porn.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    2. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Funny

      At least it'll be safe. Wearing a pair of Google Glasses will be the best contraceptive known to man.

    3. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by Noughmad · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, you will be transformed right back the instant someone sees you wearing them in public and steals them.

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    4. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Why just be a walking douche when for a few thousand dollars more you could be stood on a segway and enjoy the total douche experience?

    5. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 5, Funny

      i still can't figure out the point in spending $1500 on a pair

      - stylish accoutrement while riding your Segway
      - Create instant envy while in Starbucks with your iMac
      - Hands-free brutalization while recording cops brutalizing you
      - hilarious Google Glass Fail videos for the rest of us to enjoy

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    6. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by BorisSkratchunkov · · Score: 4, Funny

      Who will ever be able to forget the 21st century's greatest porno hit- "Google Asses"?

    7. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by prelelat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can think of a crap ton to do with these things.

      Facial recognition comparing people with facebook: Can't remeber a persons name? have glass go through your contacts and match up faces.
      Overlay of items at a grocery store: Setup your grocery list before you leave home, your local store now has everything mapped and your glasses will optimise your route in the store and show you where each item is on the shelf.
      Guided tour: Going on a vacation and want a tour of the town? We have an app for that! visual recognition of landmarks(or gps locations) and you will get videos and audio on historic events and buildings as you walk through the area.
      Education: learning anatomy has never been easier as you look at the subject and glass tells you where each part of the body is.
      Google Hangout/Skype: Take a video call or hangout with your friends while your on the go.(can't see you but hey it's a cool idea especially for conferencing in)
      Record videos: Make home movies while your out
      Play music and video
      Play games that require interaction: kind of like geocaching but with monsters along the way.

      I don't know if you could do all of this with the current version the area is pretty small that you see. That would affect things like overlays. I think there's lots you could get out of it though and many more crazy ideas people could use. Some of it your smart phone can do and maybe do better, others not so much. I like the idea of having facial recognition so that it pops up the name of someone you know when you see them out on the street. That would be cool. my phone already can do facial recognition for security so that doesn't seem impossible. I won't be getting one when it comes out and I may never will but there's a boat load of things you can do with it.

    8. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by TWiTfan · · Score: 2

      At $1500, I'd be more worried about some thief ripping them off your head and running.

      --
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    9. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by boristdog · · Score: 2

      These are all great ideas...BUT....

      Wouldn't people become dependent on them? I used to be able to remember dozens of phone numbers, but now my phone does it and I remember maybe half a dozen. Hell, I can hardly remember my own number.

      Would you really want them? A lot of life is the minor adventures. Even at the grocery store wandering around and trying interesting new things you see is a small adventure. I've had plenty of adventure seeing the non-landmark areas of towns and cities in the world. Getting lost is one of my favorite things to do when traveling. Heck, I love getting lost in my own town, I find new stuff I never would have thought to look for.

      Play video? Really? There's not enough video available already that it has to be available everywhere and every time? I'm afraid a lot of people would completely miss out on life with something like this. I just took a long train ride through the Chinese countryside. I think I was the only one looking out the window and enjoying the amazing scenery. All the locals and tourists were looking at their smart phones 90% of the time. Though it would be pretty cool if the glasses could identify various things as you passed by. But then again, sometimes not knowing that that weird structure you just passed is just a water tower and imagining it to be some bizarre temple structure is more fun.

      I, too can see a lot of great uses for these, but I can also see a whole segment of society dropping out of real life, not that that hasn't already pretty much happened.

    10. Re:so what am i supposed to do with them again? by geekoid · · Score: 2

      " I used to be able to remember dozens of phone numbers, but now my phone does it and I remember maybe half a dozen. Hell, I can hardly remember my own number."
      does that matter? And why?
      And why do you relate you diminished ability to remember numbers on cell phones and not say, age?

      I would rather have my own little adventures, then one dictated by others. Do you think you are making your own choices when you go shopping?

      Great, you like to look at a window and stare at the something for hours on end.. Fine. But once you've seen it, that's about it.
      "society dropping out of real life, "
      well. gee whiz mister, thanks for being the dictator of what 'real life' is! without you we wouldn't know what to do. well, maybe star at the same countryside for hours on end. What fun!

      --
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  2. ive always been by nimbius · · Score: 2

    frustrated by the fact that I as do many geeks already wear glasses.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:ive always been by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      If google doesn't have plans to sell lens-fittable versions to optometrists' offices, they're missing out on some easy cash. Unlike you, I've had better than 20/20 vision my whole life, but I can't help but imagine my eyesight will go downhill as I age, and I'd still want smart glasses then.

  3. The display is not HD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Read the UI guidelines. The display resolution is 640x360.

    1. Re:The display is not HD. by djsmiley · · Score: 2, Informative

      Read the summary, it doesn't claim to be.

      The camera does.

      --
      - http://www.milkme.co.uk
    2. Re:The display is not HD. by tysonedwards · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunately, the summary does allude to being a HD screen by the passage "is the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away."

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    3. Re:The display is not HD. by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

      Read the UI guidelines [google.com]. The display resolution is 640x360.

      Read the summary...

      Novel idea:

      That aforementioned screen, in the words of Google's just-released specs sheet, "is the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away."

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    4. Re:The display is not HD. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Read the UI guidelines. The display resolution is 640x360."

      Very good point. That is why:

      "... is the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away."

      is a totally bullshit "specification". It means virtually nothing. 640 x 360 is crappy resolution, no matter how you try to spin it.

  4. The glass battery lasts all day, but... by schivvers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What does their app do to my phone battery life? Who doesn't wear glasses in the rain (it can't get wet?) Why/what does this actually bring in utility to my life? I think this will actually be adopted by a few, but not mainstreamed in the immediate future. (Think Segway)

    --
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  5. Re:Radiation by JeanCroix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Protip: Your eyeballs are just fancy radiation detectors. Worried? Keep them closed.

  6. Augmented reality. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    A common idea for autmented reality is to put some kind of tracking on the glasses so that the annotations can be overlaid on the world.

    Go find a 25" screen and stand 8 feet away from it. Hold out yout hands at arms length and form a box just surrounding the screen. The FoV is tiny. Imagine viewing the world through such a little portal. Finding anything wull involve a lot of manual scanning with your head. Not fun.

    The thing is with AR is that the augmented reality, the more interesting autmentations will be overlaid in this manner.

    Also, AR is really a bit of a solution in search of some problems at the moment. About the most compelling thing seems to be advertising, but it's a mechanism which requiers users to buy and use a system which is basically only good for ads.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
    1. Re:Augmented reality. by gsgriffin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The funny part is that they the 25" display they say is equivalent to "high-definition". What a stroke of marketing brilliance. At that size and distance, you could be running QVGA, and it will look like high-definition for most of us.

      Of course, if they told us it would look like a 13" VGA CRT display at 4 feet away, most would laugh. Good twist on the stats, Google!

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      jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
    2. Re:Augmented reality. by nametaken · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be fair, it's obviously not even close to the augmented reality demos we're all used to, so it doesn't have to be much more.

      I mean, how amazing does the display have to be to show a small little box that says, "Your friend is calling."

      If it were supposed to change my movie watching world, or overlay amazon prices on everything in the pantry as you look up and down, it'd have to be doing retina projection or cover your whole face. Nobody was going to bring that to market for $1500.

      So yeah, it's to augmented reality what the VirtualBoy was to virtual reality.

    3. Re:Augmented reality. by gsgriffin · · Score: 2

      Oh, I still think this is a great step and going to lead to much more in the future. This is very cool, and I would like one (though I will wait for a few iterations and reductions in price before jumping in). Google should realize that the average person that is going to buy on of these is a geek that knows better. The point being, don't call it a HD 25" display just to lure the unsuspecting customer that buys anything called HD. I would hope or expect most geeks to set their expectations properly, but some might be suckered into it thinking they will be able to clearly make out details of a web page or something.

      At 8' away on a 25" display, you will need a font size of 140pt to make it legible. What the heck do you need HD for then. My 55" HD TV is great from 8', but wouldn't mean much from 32' away.

      --
      jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
  7. Good one! by John+Napkintosh · · Score: 4, Funny

    Specs! I get it!

    --

    Long signatures suck.
  8. Can't wait for the game from Risa... by ath0mic · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...I'm told it's better than chocolate.

  9. Re:Radiation by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    Protip: Your eyeballs are just fancy radiation detectors. Worried? Keep them closed.

    And covered with tinfoil

  10. Re:Pitiful resolution by telchine · · Score: 3, Funny

    .. awful. Really, try it. Back eight feet away from your monitor and what can you see?

    I can see doctors...

    I backud up and fell out of the window and now I'm in hospital :(

  11. Oblibatory Snow Crash (gargoyles) by BetterSense · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All welcome the real-world gargoyle. Bluetooth headsets weren't enough...

    Following quotes from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson:

    Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time. ...

    Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift
    in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background
    checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light,
    infrared, millimeter. wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think
    they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of
    some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model
    of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there
    measuring the length of Hiro's cock through his trousers while they pretend to
    make conversation. ...

    "Where the hell are you, Hiro?"
    "Walking down a street in L.A."
    "How can you be goggled in if you're walking down a street?" Then the terrible
    reality sinks in: "Oh, my God, you didn't turn into a gargoyle, did you?"
    "Well," Hiro says. He is hesitant, embarrassed, like it hadn't occurred to him
    yet that this was what he was doing. "It's not exactly like being a gargoyle.
    Remember when you gave me shit about spending all my money on computer stuff?"
    "Yeah."
    "I decided I wasn't spending enough. So I got a beltpack machine. Smallest
    ever made, I'm walking down the street with this thing strapped to my belly.
    It's really cool."
    "You're a gargoyle."
    "Yeah, but it's not like having all this clunky shit strapped all over your
    body. . .'
    "You're a gargoyle. ..."

  12. Their FAQ... by gQuigs · · Score: 2

    Is Glass indestructible?
    Can I use Glass while operating a jackhammer?
    Is it OK to go scuba diving with Glass?

    https://support.google.com/glass/answer/3064131?hl=en&ref_topic=3063354

  13. Re:Radiation by somersault · · Score: 4, Funny

    So what you're getting at is.. there's a risk it will turn some of us into werewolves?

    --
    which is totally what she said
  14. Chips implanted in our brain? by SternisheFan · · Score: 2

    So, at the rate that tech is expanding, what would be the time frame for google glass technology to be permanently implanted in our brain via a wireless computer chip. Full time interaction with the internet, with of course full time tracking/monitoring all we see, access, and think. We'll all be walking versions of "My Favorite Martian", sans the 'visible' antenna. Less than 100 years away? 20 years away? The future looks both extremely cool and very frightening to me at the same time.