Snapchat's 10-Second-Video Glasses Are Real And Cost $130 Bucks (techcrunch.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader bheerssen writes that Snapchat "announced a new product yesterday, Spectacles, which are sunglasses with a camera built into the frame." TechCrunch reports: Snapchat's long-rumored camera glasses are actually real. The startup's first foray into hardware will be a pair of glasses called "Spectacles" and will go on sale this fall for $129.99, according to the WSJ... To start recording you tap a button on the side of the glasses. Video capture will mimic Snapchat's app, meaning you can only capture 10 seconds of video at once. This video will sync wirelessly to your phone, presumably making it available to share as a snap.
The cameras will be using a circular 115-degree lens to mimic the human eye's natural field of vision, and in the Journal's article, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel remembers his first test of the product in 2015. "I could see my own memory, through my own eyes -- it was unbelievable... It was the closest I'd ever come to feeling like I was there again." The camera glasses will enter "limited distribution" sometime within the next three months, which TechCrunch believes "could end up being like Google Glass when it first launched -- officially on sale to the public but pretty hard to come by."
The cameras will be using a circular 115-degree lens to mimic the human eye's natural field of vision, and in the Journal's article, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel remembers his first test of the product in 2015. "I could see my own memory, through my own eyes -- it was unbelievable... It was the closest I'd ever come to feeling like I was there again." The camera glasses will enter "limited distribution" sometime within the next three months, which TechCrunch believes "could end up being like Google Glass when it first launched -- officially on sale to the public but pretty hard to come by."
Didn't we already go through this with Google Glass? People don't want to be recorded.
One thing with social media is that people seem to post a lot more pictures of themselves (third person camera) than they post about experiences they were having (first person camera). Meaning video glasses point essentially in the wrong direction, as they show what the user sees, but not the user itself. Selfiesticks seem to be more in tune to how people actually use social media.
Either way, the 10sec restriction makes those glasses a rather limited gadget without much use outside of Snapchat.
Because currently a memory is only usable to the witness, and is often forgotten. It cannot be saved in perfect detail, duplicated (only described), or packaged and sold for monetary gain. When wetware comes to be, as you point out, these issues will need to be dealt with at an ethical and legal level, but the that's not coming as soon as you believe, I think.