The New York Times is hearing from sources at Google that the company is ready to role out special display glasses that will allow wearer to stream information directly in front of their eyes. Wow. That happened a lot sooner than I expected. It’s not even 2015 yet.
The NY Times blog, Bits, spoke with Google employees who asked not to be named. “These people said they are expected ‘to cost around the price of current smartphones,’ or $250 to $600. The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.”
“The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby, according to the Google employees. The glasses are not designed to be worn constantly — although Google expects some of the nerdiest users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed,” writes the NY Times.
Seth Weintraub, a blogger who had been looking into the new product said they will look similar to a pair of Oakley Thumps and will include navigation. “The navigation system currently used is a head tilting to scroll and click,” he wrote this month. “We are told it is very quick to learn and once the user is adept at navigation, it becomes second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.”
Apparently the project is being worked on in Google’s X offices, where lots of other futuristic designs are being developed. “One of the key people involved with the glasses is Steve Lee, a Google engineer and creator of the Google mapping software, Latitude,” writes the NY Times. “As a result of Mr. Lee’s involvement, location information will be paramount in the first version released to the public, several people who have seen the glasses said. The other key leader on the glasses project is Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, who is currently spending most of his time in the Google X labs.”
Although the glasses will provide access to the internet, rather than look like a web browser, the information will be displayed in an augmented reality view. The article points out that the release of the glasses will be more of an experiment to see if the public will accept them. Pretty soon, folks, you could look like this…
(via THR)
