GOOGLE GLASS
Let your Instrument get Composed, Car Routed with Google Glass
Google Glass’s voice commands could extend far beyond “OK Glass,” the device’s firmware suggests.
Android Police reviewed the latest firmware update and found a long list of potential new features, including voice commands such as “call me a car,” “translate this” and “tune an instrument.”
SEE ALSO: Now Your Classes into Google Glasses
Android Police explains that certain commands may work with specific applications, much like how Glass’ current “take a note” command allows a wearer to virtually jot down thoughts within Evernote.
For example, the newly discovered “find a recipe” command could be used with “KitchMe, an app that currently allows Explorers to send recipes to Glass,” Android Police writes. Likewise, the firmware includes a “play a game” voice command, which could be used with existing Glass apps and inspire more development for games in the future.
In total, Android Police found 19 new voice commands: add a calendar event, call me a car, capture a panorama, check me in, created a 3D model, find a recipe, learn a song, play a game, play music, record a recipe, remind me to, show a compass, start a bike ride, start a round of golf, start a run, start a stop watch, start a timer, translate this and tune an instrument.
In addition to new voice commands, the firmware features new eye commands, too.
“They’ve added a ‘double blink’ detector, potentially for control by blinking twice in rapid succession,” Android Police reports.
We’re not sure what utility a double blink would command, but Glass already allows users to take a photo by winking.
The review also shows an expanded emphasis on music. There’s now a layout for album art, album names, track names and artists’ names, which pairs nicely with the new “play music” voice command in the updated Glass firmware.
Now Your Classes into Google Glasses
“I’m not really sure whether my dog helped me become a Glass explorer,” Dr. William J. Ward, a social media professor at Syracuse University, said. He was being serious. “In my pitch to Google to be part of its Glass Explorer program, I said I would share the social global classroom. But I also said I’d bring my dog — Ty the Wonder Dog — into it.”
Ward is making good on that pitch to Google and teaching two classes this semester, Social Media for Communicators and Social Media Theory and Practice, in which Google Glass doesn’t just augment learning — it’s the focus of the curriculum.
VISIT ALSO: Now Your Photos are Into Paint Chips with Google Glass Apps
The class involves one semester-long assignment: Try out Google Glass, dream up ideas for useful apps, develop those ideas in teams and use social media to garner votes for the best concepts. The winning ideas will be developed into actual Google Glass app prototypes.
Last week, students had 10 minutes each to pitch their Glass app ideas before a panel of expert judges, comprised of startup founders and professors, who offer constructive feedback. One app promised to help children with autism learn through videos; another would interface with restaurants to find out accurate wait times; yet another would allow “time travel,” to show what an area looked like 50 years ago (“Ancestry.com meets real life,” the student developers called it).
Now, students are refining their concepts and preparing to launch them on a slew of social networks to see which ideas gain traction and which ones flop.
This feedback, from millions of strangers on Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Facebook and Google+, will be the ultimate determining factor of success. Ward puts great faith in the wisdom of the crowd.
“Companies are trying to figure out Glass and mobile, and here are students figuring out solutions and solving problems on their own,”
“Companies are trying to figure out Glass and mobile, and here are students figuring out solutions and solving problems on their own,” Ward said. Glass is expected to be a $3 billion-plus market. “Hopefully, that experience helps them prepare to jump into a company grappling with those issues — or start their own business.”
The class then rallies around the “winning” apps — the ones that receive the most positive feedback, Likes and shares on social platforms — and helps to build them into prototypes, perhaps eventually launching them on Kickstarter. (At that point, Ward said, they’ll reach out to alumni to help with funding.) App development takes up the rest of the semester; a developer at the university will provide coding assistance.
But this doesn’t mean a ton of tweets equals an A for the semester. Grades aren’t based on the final product; students’ projects are scored along the way.
“They’re rated on how well they tell [their app’s] story,” Ward said. “If you can’t convince people of your idea’s merits, you’ll never get it off the ground.”
Now Your Photos are Into Paint Chips with Google Glass Apps
Sick of the stacks of paint chips and countless shades of beige? A new Google Glass app can help.
Powered by paint retailer Sherwin-Williams, ColorSnap Glass lets users turn photos of design inspiration — a favorite piece of art, a scene from your backyard — into a custom palette.
VISIT ALSO: Access Your Google Glass with Remote Control
First, a Glass user snaps a picture of their inspiration, which is sent to Sherwin-Williams’ server. The photo’s primary colors are translated into a set of paint colors, so a snapshot of flowers in a garden is reduced to a palette of pinks and reds; a specific shade of green is extracted from a photo of your mint ice cream.
Users can share photos and colors with friends and find Sherwin-Williams stores through the app, too.
ColorSnap Glass is the latest in the Sherwin-Williams family of apps. The app is available foriPhone, Android and Blackberry.
ColorSnap Studio, a version optimized for the iPad, lets you change the color of your walls in photographs of your home — a virtual experimentation of colors before committing.
ColorSnap Glass was developed by Resource, an independent marketing agency, as part of Google’s Glass Explorer program, according to a press release. ColorSnap Glass is still in beta,download it now.
VISIT ALSO: Chip it app makes selecting colors easy as pinning
Google’s Upcoming Glass Apps Store
Get ready, Glassholes: Google Glass will get its very own app store next year.
The long-awaited news was first revealed rather off-handedly in a long New York Times Magazine piece this weekend, and Google has since confirmed it to the blog Marketing Land. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday night.
It’s expected that the Glass app store will debut next year, and as Times writer Clive Thompson notes, a 2014 launch date for the store does makes sense because Glass will be available to the general public by that time.
Will the Glass app store stand on its own, or be integrated into Google Play? What will the process to get apps listed in the store be like? These are among the many questions that have yet to be answered.
The addition of an actual app store and wider Glass adoption should only cause an exponential growth in the cool ways people use Google’s wearable tech. We’ve already seen it hacked to fly a drone, used to live stream a surgery and leveraged as a virtual tour guide.
What’s next? Share your best, coolest and most out-there Google Glass ideas in the comments.
Access Your Google Glass with Remote Control
Google has added a MyGlass update that allows Android users to turn the companion app into a remote control.
The update comes after some users noted the interaction behind the Glass technology wasn’t as smooth as anticipated. They reported awkward transitions among the swipe bar, head nods and voice commands.
The MyGlass app, which can be used as a remote control for the headgear, fixes this issue. It allows users to “touch/swipe/tap” to control the Glass user interface through the screencast experience, as described on Google Play.
The Verge noted that the update should also make it easier to take photos and video surreptitiously.
Some Google+ users have reported the remote control update doesn’t work yet and may require a matching Glass update. As its Google Play page states, “If you don’t have Glass, then downloading this will be a waste of time.”
Browse Also: Google’s Upcoming Glass Apps Store
The Future of Connected Advertising with Google’s ‘Pay Per Gaze’
Google may currently have no plans to insert advertising into its nascent Glass product, but the patent the company was recently granted for “pay-per-gaze” technology hints at an ad platform that elevates pay-per-engagement to a whole new level.
While Google has played down the notion of rolling out anything soon (it will take years until Glass builds up enough users to make it worthwhile), marketers can’t stop buzzing about the possibility of paying for ads in the physical world based on user engagement and reactions. The patent even details how a device like Google Glass could infer a user’s emotional response to an ad — whether they were happy, sad or indifferent — and adjust pricing accordingly.
But Google Glass is just one of many connected devices that could transform advertising. Wearable gadgets like Nike FuelBand and Jawbone Up send data on our activity levels, sleep schedule and more to the cloud, so it’s not hard to imagine a world in which ads are targeted based on health across each platform we engage with. Not getting enough sleep? Here’s an ad for Red Bull on your Internet TV!
Google Glass Tech Can Track Your Emotions
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