By Jessica Guynn
On a recent afternoon, Homer Gaines hiked with girlfriend Tami Stillwell to the gusty peak of Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, bent down on one knee and slipped a topaz and white-sapphire ring on her finger, capturing the entire marriage proposal on a computerised device that he was wearing like a pair of glasses.
Gaines, a 41-year-old Web developer from Fort Myers, Florida, is one of 10,000 “explorers” testing Glass, the much talked about hands-free wearable computing device from Google that lets users take photos and videos, make phone calls, send and receive text messages, search the Internet and get turn-by-turn directions.
“I would not have been able to pull off that level of spontaneity with any other device and instantly share it with the world,” Gaines said. “Glass gave me the ability to share with everyone that special moment from my point of view — the surprise on her face, the way she jumped around, the ring on her finger and the tears of joy in her eyes.”Glass won’t be widely available for purchase until early next year, but it’s one of the most anticipated new technologies in years. The question many are asking: Can Google make digital goggles the world’s next must-have gadget?
As Google sees it, Glass is a revolutionary new way to quickly and effortlessly connect people with information. Critics view Glass as an invasive new technology that — if it takes off — could rob people of what few shreds of privacy they have left. Lawmakers are alarmed by the privacy implications and have begun asking pointed questions of Google. And some commercial establishments — most notably casinos and bars — have already banned Glass.
Google is downplaying the privacy and security risks, assuring the public that it will not permit facial recognition apps. Google says it’s obvious when someone is taking pictures or recording a video on Glass.
But some developers have already built a way to get around Google: an alternative operating system that runs on Glass but is not controlled by Google. One developer is making a facial recognition app that will help users remember the hundreds of people they have met and should recognise but don’t. That in-your-face quality of Glass could wake up more people to their ever shrinking privacy in the rapidly advancing digital age, University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo said.
Not only will people be more keenly aware that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public, Glass and devices like it could make it easier for government authorities to gain access to everything they see and record without a warrant, he said.
And, with a warrant, the government might even be able to remotely turn on Glass’ video recording capability without the user’s knowledge, the way it has done with OnStar systems in cars, Calo said. To counter that kind of growing apprehension, Google is trying to make the new technology seem as normal as possible.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin constantly has a pair perched on his nose. He has worn Glass to the Oscars, to the TED conference, in the Hollywood film The Internship, and last year he stole the show at Google’s annual developers conference by wearing Glass.
His cohort, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page, recently sported a pair as a groomsman in a wedding ceremony in Croatia. And he talked up Glass as the future of technology during Google’s second-quarter earnings conference call with analysts.
Still, even inside the high-tech industry, some aren’t too keen on Glass. Los Angeles technology entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis has asked friends to remove Glass in his presence, banned Glass from poker games and coined a new term to describe what he feels like doing when he spots Glass wearers: “Glass-kicking”.
And Glass hasn’t been able to ditch what could be its true Achilles’ heel: its dorky image. Labelled “Segway for your face,” it has become the butt of jokes on late-night television and on the Internet. Not only have Glass wearers been subjected to public ridicule for looking “glassed out,” they are referred to as a cross between Glass and a curse word.
Google is the first to admit that Glass is not quite ready for prime time, with widely reported glitches. The battery drains quickly (but also charges quickly). The capabilities are still very limited, with only a smattering of apps such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. And some complain that it’s not easy to hear notifications or phone calls with the bone conduction speaker.
Perhaps the most glaring omission: A way for the 64% of the US population who wears glasses to use Glass. Google has made a prototype of prescription frames designed to be compatible with Glass and said the company will release specifications for frames manufacturers.
“We still have bumps in the road and obstacles,” Glass product director Steve Lee said. “Right now, you need to be an early adopter who is excited about the technology.”
Glass is the first major product from Google X, the company’s super-secretive research laboratory for “moonshots,” big scientific bets such as self-driving cars. The lab is located in two nondescript brick buildings about a half-mile from Google’s Mountain View, California, campus. A row of electric cars — including Teslas — is parked and charged out front.
In a conference room inside Google X, Lee showed off an early prototype of Glass: safety glasses with a Nexus One smartphone attached to the right temple and the phone’s battery attached to the left. The device clearly didn’t win any style points and was not terribly comfortable (“guaranteed to give you a headache in 10 minutes,” Lee said).
Over the last three years, Google has dramatically refined Glass. The latest incarnation weighs about the same as a pair of normal glasses and is more attractive and less obtrusive. To keep careful watch over every detail, Google turned to Foxconn to manufacture Glass near its campus but won’t disclose the exact location.
And Google chose a marketing strategy as novel as Glass. This summer, it opened three upscale pop-up stores that it calls “basecamps” — in a San Francisco office tower on the waterfront, in a penthouse in the Chelsea neighbourhood of New York and in Google’s Venice Beach offices — to give thousands the white-glove treatment as they are outfitted with Glass.
This shopping experience is even more exclusive than most. Explorers not only stretched their pocketbooks to be the first to test Google’s $1,500 device, they competed in an online contest for the privilege.
“This is a big, new leap in tech, and I think it’s really important to get feedback on product and how people use it. Why would you do that in a vacuum, when you can do it with people across the United States?” said Ed Sanders, Google’s head of marketing for Glass.
“When you are inventing something new and something that by its very nature is very intimate and personal, a device that someone wears on his or her face, then you have to listen to people.”
In the San Francisco basecamp, an airy room with exposed ductwork, concrete floors and sweeping views of the bay, explorers first pick from five colours — demure hues of white, grey and black or bright pops of orange and blue — and then take a seat at wood tables. On each table sits a black shopping bag, a Chromebook Pixel laptop and a mirror.
One by one, guides deliver white boxes with the silver Glass logo. Inside the box under a single sheet of white filmy paper is Glass. The guides custom fit the lens-less glasses, bending the titanium and adjusting the nose guards.
The explorers slide their fingers back and forth along the right side of the device and stare into a screen the size of a postage stamp above their right eye. Soon they are ordering Glass around with ease, dictating messages to family and friends and making plans to take Glass sightseeing, even hang-gliding.
Erica Pang, 24, who works for a Palo Alto start-up, and her brother Aaron Pang, 20, a junior at Washington University recovering from spinal lymphoma, entered the #ifihadglass contest.
She was picked. Their idea: to broadcast live virtual field trips to museums and zoos for children who are immobilised by illness or stuck in hospital beds. They got the idea when Aaron spent three months in the hospital.
“We want to let kids see the world without any of their limitations getting in the way,” Erica Pang said.
Michael Kendle, an app develope., in flip-flops and jeans and lounging on a grey couch at the Google basecamp, is a self-professed gadget junkie and says he always has to be the first to get the new, new thing. Now he has Glass, and he says he plans never to take it off except to shower and sleep.
“I love being connected to everything, to have all this information at my fingertips,” Kendle said. — Los Angeles Times/MCT
Is a new iPhone
coming in Sept?
By Patrick May
In the midst of whiplash-inducing reports about Apple’s health and future, the most tantalising tidbit to emerge from the blogosphere was a simple date: Tuesday, Sept 10, 2013.
That, according to a report in AllThingsD attributed only to “sources,” is when Apple will release a new iPhone. Or perhaps two new iPhones.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling declined to comment. But many analysts say Apple must offer a cheaper version of its iconic iPhone to stake out a position in the midrange of the smartphone market, as sales of its higher-priced flagship model continue to slow and rivals introduce their own lower-priced gadgets.
In the past, Apple has chased that value-seeking consumer by selling its older-model phones for $100 or $200 less than the latest and more expensive model. But speculation has gathered that Apple in September may unveil a new iPhone 5S alongside a lower-cost iPhone.
Regardless of what Apple comes up with, analyst John Jackson of IDC in Boston says, it’s got to be a home run.
“Investors, along with the rest of the world, are waiting with increasing impatience, for Apple to wow them once again,” he said. “And whether it’s in September or not, the next event will arguably be the biggest product launch in Apple’s history because it will tell us about the future of the company as a true innovator.”
Apple’s hammered stock price, he said, is a clear sign that more and more investors are on the fence about Apple and wonder whether it can continue to live up to the legacy left by Steve Jobs of cranking out one mind-blowing product after another. “And whatever it is they introduce,” he said, “if there’s nothing that looks fundamentally new, the market will be greatly disappointed.”
There’s been buzz for months about such an unveiling. And the timing, if accurate, would be classic Apple. The company likes to announce software updates at its developers conference in June, give it a test drive for a few months, then officially release it to the world shortly before its latest product is announced in September.
So far, this year is no exception, as Apple shared its new mobile operating software in June, promising its iOS 7 will be available to the public in the autumn. — San Jose Mercury News/MCT
Caution advised
in online sharing
By Christopher Quinn
Seymour “Sy” Goodman, an expert on information security at Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, does not have a Facebook page.
Goodman knows the risks of spreading personal news and information on the Internet probably as well as anybody, but even he does not know as much as he should. The field is too vast and it changes too quickly.
“I am going to tell (people) what kind of risks they have out there and what they can do to mitigate those risks, and it’s not the type of thing I would have said to them 10 years ago. ... People can’t keep up with it. I can’t keep up with it,” he said.
And why does an Internet security expert not have a Facebook page? In a word, privacy. It’s what we hold so dearly yet give away in the public forums of cyberspace, where others can take advantage of it.
“You don’t provide Facebook with a penny,” Goodman said. “So how does Facebook make its money? You are their product.” Well, not you, but everything you post. Pictures. Family names. Where you travel. Pictures of things you like.
Facebook, Google and all of those handy apps on your smartphone collect your data and locations and use information to figure out how to sell you stuff. Or some unscrupulous firms may sell your information to others.
But however your information gets out there, there are people trying to figure out how to use it to their advantage, legal or not.
Online theft and fraud is a growing problem. Recent numbers from the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network say Georgia in 2011 had the second-highest theft of identities per capita. Florida was No. 1.
But it does not take a thief to cause damage. Friends or employers see something floating out there on the Internet, and bad things can happen.
Like the Barrow County, Georgia, a teacher pressured to resign in 2011 after Facebook pictures showed her on vacation with glasses of wine and mugs of beer.
“Each of us needs to give some thought to how to handle that risk. There are many ways available to us, although nothing guarantees security, and we all need to think about what we might lose if some things go wrong, and act with that in mind,” Goodman wrote.
“I am going to explain to them why they are vulnerable and give them a sense of what little they can do about it.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/MCT
