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.

Tuesday: Reassurance and the Wink Notes

Today was the second day I got to truly test the functionality of Glass. When I arrived at work this morning, I was surprised to see that our phone system was down. Since I work in Schreiner’s Enterprise Technology Services department, this is partially my problem. I worked with the rest of my team to get the phones back online as soon possible. However, because we had all hands on deck trying to get things working again, nobody was in a truly in a position the reassure the rest of the campus that we were working towards a fix. Luckily, I was able to put many minds at ease using Glass. As I worked, I got streams of text messages asking what was going on. Because I was wearing Glass, I was able to reassure everyone who text me that we were working on a fix. All without slowing the repair process down.

One of my wink notes.

Later in the day I had to make some software changes to an entire computer lab in ten minutes. Normally, this would not have been a big issue, but the lab was full of students, so I have to jump randomly from unoccupied computer to unoccupied computer to make the changes. The problem with doing the software changes in this way is that I would normally have a lot of trouble remembering which computers I had completed the changes on and which still needed them. Because I had Glass, I was easily able to keep track of the computers I had completed the changes on by using the wink for picture function. After I finished a computer I would wink at it, and go on to the next on. If a came across a computer that I wasn’t sure had been configured, I would simply flip through the pictures I took to see if it was there. Another day saved by Glass!

Monday: Quirkiness Aside

It’s my turn! I got Glass passed to me last Friday in the middle of Schreiner’s Game Night. Because of my workload over the weekend (Thanks to midterms), I didn’t have much of an opportunity to see what Glass had to offer. However, I did the same basic setup and personal calibration that Matt did; synchronized Glass with my phone, adjusted the screen for my face, set the wake up head tilt option to 12 degrees, and enabled “Wink for picture.”

One of many accidental yawn photos.

Today is the first day I get to truly test Glass as I leave the weekend sanctuary of my bed and interact with the real world. On my drive to Schreiner, I noticed a few quirky things that Glass does. First, because I set the tilt wake to 12 degrees on Glass, and because I have to drive through the hill country, Glass would wake up as I went up a hill and then sleep as I went back down. Although this is not necessarily an issue, I assume that it burned some of Glass’ limited battery. The second thing I noticed is that Glass has trouble distinguishing between when I yawn and when I wink. Because I have Glass configured to take a picture when I wink, as I yawned throughout my drive, I got several pictures of the road in front of me.

However, I forgave all of Glass’ quirkiness today while I was in class. Normally I am a good student and my phone is put away in my pocket throughout all my classes. Today was one of those days. Luckily, Glass didn’t feel the same as I did. During my class today, a friend of mine (Business major) told me to quickly sell some stock he knew I had, and purchase some that he suggested. Glass projected this text before my eyes and the professor was never the wiser. I pulled out my laptop and did as my friend suggested. After class I checked to see what the market price was for the stocks I just traded. Thanks to Glass, I traded at the perfect moment. An opportunity I would have missed out on if I had waited until the end of class to check my phone.

Day 7- Goodbye

Sadly, the week has come to a close and it is time to pass Glass on to Cody. I hesitate to give it up. Glass is defiantly a personal device. Over the past week I optimized the settings to my personal preferences. Glass became very comfortable to wear. I wore it with every outfit, every day. It became an extension of my phone. I hardly ever took my phone out of my pocket. Everything I normally do with my phone I did with Glass. Cody will now begin giving his experiences here on the SUGlass blog.

Glass now faces the doom of factory reset as Cody resets the device to his personally settings.

R.I.P. Glass I will miss you. 

Day 6

Today I did make a discovery with the help of one of our other testers, Ethan. While he was wearing glass I pulled my phone out to look at Facebook and saw a button called start screencast under the drop down menu on my phone, under ongoing, under connected to Glass. Out of curiosity I pressed the start screen cast button. I struck gold!!!  It was a live feed of what Ethan was actually seeing. Weather he was looking at menus, my messages, or whatever.  I could also interact with Glass via my phone. The commands were the same. I had control of Glass from my phone while Ethan had control from the device.  Of course two people navigating the same device is not efficient. But it allowed us to see what each other was doing. It might be useful to control Glass from your phone on occasion.  When Cody came into the office, Ethan and I showed him the function. As a group, we then tested the recording function. Ethan (still wearing Glass) started a video. He tapped to make Glass record longer than 10 seconds, and then walked out into the library. Cody and I were able to see on my phone what he was seeing and recording. There is also a video call function which I did not test. I am sure though, that anyone you video call would be able to see whatever Glass is seeing when you make the call. 

Day 3 and 4

Glass and I have been getting to know each other more and more. I am becoming more efficient with the device. I used Glass GPS to navigate to San Antonio. Selected “Get direction to…” I spoke the full address and off I went. I was on my way to a birthday bowling party. Glass got me to San Antonio, safe and sound.  The party was a lot of fun. The next experience was driving back in the dark using Google Glass. The screen was easy to see and did not interrupt my vision as much as I expected it too. I also tested texting while driving. I know we should not text and drive. I normally do not. Using Glass though, made its super easy. When you receive a message you tap or move your head up to your set degree. Glass opens the message for you. Then you can quickly read it or have it read aloud to you. To respond, you tell Glass you want to reply and you verbally send your message. I was able to do all of this without looking away from the road although I changed my focus to the Glass while driving, so the road was more obscure. This is much better than looking away, but it is a distraction. I was able to see vehicles breaking in front of me and had no trouble with using the hands free Google Glass while driving. It was hard to hear Glass in the car when you had music on. Most of my drive I did not play music because I forgot the ear piece.

 Phone calls in the car were hard to hear also without the earpiece while playing music.  I found that without the earpiece and with no music playing I could hear when my sister called me. But later, I spoke with a friend through Glass and he was hard to hear. He was softer spoken than my sister. All of the sound testing was done with Glass always at 100% volume and without the earpiece.