Thursday & Friday: The Second Coming

Well today is my final day with Glass and honestly, I'm actually relived to be rid of it.  The lack of organization of pictures, texts, and videos on the device make it difficult to find anything.  The amount of Glassware is limited and half of them don't install/work properly.  The nose pieces on Glass get uncomfortable fairly quickly to the point I couldn't wear them for more than 30 minutes.  It was easier to just check my phone if I got a notification than to try to put Glass back on.  The voice recognition wasn't very accurate.

All in all, the concept behind Google Glass, essentially to wear your phone on your head, is interesting but I don't feel that Glass has implemented the idea well enough for me to really ever want one for myself.  Perhaps once Glass is out of testing and is commercially available, these issues will be addressed.  But for now, I'm content on just checking my phone normally.

What do you call a game consoles wedding day? WedNESday!

Game time!  I found some Glassware that included a couple of simple games that used various parts of Glass’s hardware.  The games were: Tennis, Shape splitter, Balance, Clay shooter, and Matcher.  You can play Tennis by tilting your head side to side to aim and tapping to hit the ball back.  Shape splitter would toss varying shapes into the air and you used your hands to slash them while avoiding the bombs that would occasionally appear.  Balance would drop a couple blocks on your head and you would attempt to virtually balance them for a time period before a new round with more blocks would begin.  Clay shooter used the verbal commands “pull” and “bang” which while fun, was a bit disruptive to those around me.  Matcher asked you to match pairs of octagonal cards by moving your head and tapping the device to flip a card.  These simple games might help professors or students to relax a little between classes though some games more so than, or potentially louder than, others.

No Pain, No Gain. It's Tuesday!

It’s that time again!  After messing with Glass this morning, I noticed that I had a few pictures taken randomly as well as a video.  The other testers had told me about this so I had disabled the wink feature of Glass but that didn’t stop these.  Originally, one of my thoughts was it might be caused by some security feature built into Glass.  After I looked in to some settings however, I noticed that the head wake up angle was still on.  I disabled it and the pictures seemed to stop.  Since the video is upside down, I figured that wake up angle was triggered while it was resting on a table.  When I went to adjust its position on the table to insure it didn’t fall off, I must have caused Glass to record the video.  While these pictures and videos themselves are minor annoyances, if they keep occurring, they can quickly fill up the storage on Glass.  With no file management, it can be a bit of a pain to wade through all the notifications to delete the pictures unless you are constantly managing them.  Of course then, it’s still a pain.

Monday is Word day

And so it begins.  Finally, I get to play with the precious. Thanks to spring break, my turn got delayed but now the fun begins.  After getting it setup and synced to my phone, I decided to delve into Glassware.  For those unfamiliar, Glassware are applications specifically designed to be used with Google Glass.

The first app I downloaded was an app called Word Lens which is designed to translate text in real time. After a couple attempts, I realized that the translation didn’t work to well.  When it would translate, any movement, no matter how slight, would cause the text overlay to completely disappear.  Once Glass is properly released, further development of this app and apps like it will minimize these issues.

Friday: Strengths and Limitations of Google Glass

During my trial of Google Glass, I have slowly been developing a list of the areas that Glass excels in and the areas where it falls short. Of course, some of the limitations I will mentation will probably be overcome when Glass in mass produced. However, until this happens, I believe they are still worth mentioning.

Strengths:

• Quick and Discreet Picturing Taking: Glass has a button on the top that can be pressed to take a picture at anytime. The same can be done by winking.
• Communication (Incomming): Text messages and emails display directly on the Glass screen as soon as they are received.
• Easy Time Check: The clock home screen on Glass can be seen by raising your head or tapping the side of Glass once.
• Navigation: Glass can display turn-by-turn navigation without being too distracting.
• Being Unintrusive: Before I got to test Glass, I figured that this big screen would always be interrupting my field of vision when I wasn't using it. It turned out that I would forget I was wearing Glass because it was out of sight and out of mind.
• Phone integration: the android phone integration appears to be seamless most of the time.

Limitations:

• Call Quality: I don't know if it is just because of the size of my head, but I find it hard to hear anyone when making a call through Glass. I believe this is because there is a small gap between my head and the speaker built into the frame of Glass.
• Voice Command: Glass become nearly useless when I'm in an area where I cannot issue voice command (class and the library).
• Communication (Outgoing): I find it difficult to respond to text messages through voice command. Although it is a neat feature, it can be tedious.
• Battery Life: Glass has a battery life of approximately 5 hours of normal use.
• Mic Sensitivity: Glass will accept voice command given by people across the room from me.
• Bulkyness: Obviously, Glass is still bulky. I'm sure Google will cut this size down on Glass over time, but for now it just isn't very cool looking.

This was my last blog post. I am going to factory reset Glass now and pass it on to Ethan. It's been a fun adventure exploring this technology. I can now see how Glass could eventually be a technology for the masses after some more development.

Thursday: Easter Egg Hunting

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "Easter egg," an Easter egg is an undocumented feature imbedded in software, included as a joke or a bonus. Google regularly inserts Easter eggs into its products, so today I set out to find the Easter egg in Glass.

If you are familiar with how google usually hides its Easter eggs, it isn't too hard to find. In the case of Glass the Easter egg can be found by going to Settings -> Device info -> View licenses -> Tap the touchpad 9 times -> Tap Meet Team

This Easter egg is by far one of the most impressive ones that I've come across. What is it? It is a 360 degree panoramic picture of the Google Glass team. The entire team is circled around you. If you want to look at the people to your left, you turn to your left. If you want to look at the people behind you, you turn around. You can also look at the ceiling or at the floor. This gives you an idea about the possibilities that can come from Glass and some ideas of features that we can expect in the future.

Here is a video I found that demonstrates how to find the Easter egg and what it does:

Wednesday: Friend Filtering

It's midterm week at Schreiner and tensions are high, and time is scarce. Everyone is scattering to figure out what they need to know for the exams. What this means is that while I am trying to cram last minute information into my head at 11 at night, showers of texts are flowing to my phone from my peers who need help or have figured out something useful that they are willing to share. This makes studying near impossible when my phone is buzzing every minute. Of course, I could ignore it, but then I would be missing out if I received a useful text.

A text message in Glass

Google Glass has once again saved the day. How so? Everytime I received a text, Glass would present a picture of the person on the left side of the screen and their text message on the right. When I received a text while studying, all I had to do was focus on Glass' screen for half a second. If the person who sent me a text was in a class I was still preparing for, I would take a moment to read the text to determine if it was useful to me. If the person was in a class that I was prepared for, I would go back to studying and respond later. It's incredible how much this simple feature increased my productivity.