The Glass Edge: Lots of Pictures

My First Week with Glass

Positive Impressions

• Many serendipitous conversations.

This employee at Bed, Bath, and Beyond who turns out to have a very interesting background. I almost got it on my first guess.

The shoppers at the local HEB in Texas

Two charming young girls, and their cool Dad, at the local steakhouse in Texas

A collage of pictures I’ve taken. You can’t zoom with GoogleGlass yet, and that means some people don’t even know they are in the frame. I also like the non-posed quality of some of the shots.

Overall, there is a more honest quality to many of the pictures.

• People are comfortable speaking to me when I’m wearing GoogleGlass

Huge surprise here. People of all ages have been very relaxed. We talk for many minutes and it’s clear they’ve forgotten about them or at least processed their presence. Kids of course are no problem. Texans (I’ve been here this weekend) are quite enthusiastic. Even my 78-year-old mom was happy to try GoogleGlass and ended up reading a text on it wishing her a happy birthday yesterday.

Of course many people pretend not to notice them.

• Even if you have imperfect vision, you can make them work.

I wasn’t sure how GoogleGlass was going to work for me as I wear glasses and have a particularly weak right eye, and at least as of now the prism screen sits only over your right eye. But I’m happy to report I don’t have any problems using it or reading simple text (which is all you’ll ever see really) and I’m actually hopeful the new exercise for my right eye will finally get it to pull it’s weight.

Downsides

1. They get warm, perhaps even hot. You tend to forget that GoogleGlass is a small computer and when you ramp it up to do harder things—like recording a video, it heats up. Just a bit uncomfortable but I have thick curly hair so I’m padded.
2. I really wish they bent in the middle like regular glasses. You can’t easily tuck them in the V of your shirt. As I said I need to wear regular glasses in many situations so I’m constantly trading them with my GoogleGlass. Unless I’m going to put them away in their nifty carrying case (size of a quality paperback), I’m left to put them on the top of my head. Because the right arm of Glass is heavy, the slight pressure on my head tends to give me a little headache. The exact same kind that I would get in my youth when I tried to wear headbands.
3. Short and mysterious battery life. Not always clear what’s drawing the power or why the power level can drop precipitously at certain moments.
4. Touchpad and voice controls are both uncertain. I’m much better at it than I was a week ago, but both are still quite buggy. Of course voice controls can’t seem to distinguish nuances among words so there are just some things you can’t make it understand.

Stay tuned for more reports from the Glass Edge.