Positve Experience

Although I have seen some of the negative sides to Google Glass and was limited in how I could use it, I have had an overall positive experience. As a science major, one of the things I appreciated most about Glass was its ability to aid in studying. While studying for my organic chemistry test, I was able to look up Kahn Academy videos on Glass and take notes/ write on a whiteboard without having to pull out a bulky laptop.


It wasn't all work and no play. Just as Glass could be used for studying it could be used for leisure. For example, I found it useful when playing guitar. I could easily look up a YouTube video or chords to a song without having to look down at a paper or squint at a screen. Not to mention, its portability and hands free capability allowed me to go outside and enjoy the sweet sounds of nature all while learning a new song.


I enjoyed my time spent with glass, and hope to one day see it as something that could be checked out at the library.

Helpful, But Distracting

One of the things I've noticed about glass is how distracting they can be. A couple of times in the library, in the process of using Google Glass, I have had friends come up and talk to me. While I was able to carry on a conversation, resisting the urge to look up at the little bright screen hovering above my eye proved to be difficult. Not to mention, the person you are speaking to becomes so focused on the glowing cube on your face that they can't remember what they actually came to talk to you about.

Google Glass has been great in aiding in school work and various other activities, but when it comes down to everyone having one, I'm not sure some people would know when to unplug. It's hard enough to get people to set down their phone and actually have a conversation. Can you imagine what a future family dinner might look like?

The not so easy setup process

Getting glass to sink up with my phone proved to be a difficult task. I have an IPhone 4s with sprint. It took several days working with the techies to get wifi to work with Glass, only to find out that my Bluetooth wasn't recognizing the device. In order to get the full use of Glass, using bluetooth to get texts and calls, my personal hotspot needed to be turned on.


After a call to sprint to find out about turning on my personal hotspot, it was discovered that additional charges would be made to my account if I turned it on. Since I only have glass for a week, I decided not to do it. Although this has severely limited the phone capabilities of glass, with the help of wifi, I have been able to download different apps onto the device using the MyGlass app on my phone.

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.