As I first told you across several exclusive reports, Google’s next move for Google Glass is into the enterprise (via The Wall Street Journal). As I said,the device is expected to have improved internal hardware including an Intel Atom processor, a new physique that makes it more suitable for less-than-ideal working environments, and will be coming exclusively to the workplace through the Glass for Work partner groups.
Nest founder and former Apple iPod lead designer Tony Fadell has intimated in a BBC interview that the decision to make an early version of Google Glass available for public sale may have been a mistake.
He said that while Google has always launched beta versions of its products and gathered feedback from users, there was a very big difference between software and hardware.
If you are only doing services based on electrons, you can iterate quickly, test it, and modify it and get it right. But when you are dealing with actual atoms – hardware – and you have to get manufacturing lines and it takes a year or more to develop that product, you better understand what it is and what it’s trying to do and specifically what it’s not going to do.
Customers have to spend money to buy those atoms. They want something that delivers value or you end up with a real disappointment and you can spoil the market.
He was, however, “very bullish” about the product, and believes it has a big future … Expand Expanding Close
As we’ve come to learn more about the next iteration of Google Glass, it’s clear that this device isn’t the “Google Glass 2.0” that many diehard fans of the product — however many there are — have been longing for. Google Glass “Enterprise Edition” or “EE,” as the company is referring to it internally, is rather a spinoff of the Explorer Edition and an incremental revision targeted at the workplace. Google is ditching the fashion runways and #throughGlass pictures — and they’re getting into the enterprise where Glass has practical use cases.
And with that, Tony Fadell and company had to deeply consider with EE how the device looks, works, and functions. We’re familiar with multiple prototypes that are nearing the final stages of revision, and one thing is very clear: This isn’t going to be a drastic departure visually from the Explorer Edition. It has been tweaked, though, and there are at least a few differences noticeable from the outside. It folds like a regular pair of glasses, and because it’s first and foremost being built for the workplace, it has a more rugged build and appearance… Expand Expanding Close
We told you earlier this month that Google is internally referring to the next iteration of its Glass hardware as “Enterprise Edition,” and rightfully so — the Explorer Edition is long gone, and people close to Google have said that the company is planning to go full-force with its wearable computer in the workplace. But how are they going to do that? People familiar with the company’s plans have told 9to5Google that Google is currently planning to distribute the device exclusively through its certified set of Glass for Work partners… Expand Expanding Close
We told you last week that Google is internally referring to its next iteration of Google Glass as “Enterprise Edition” or “EE,” and now we’ve uncovered information about the soon-to-be-launched device’s hardware. According to several sources familiar with advanced prototypes of the device, the Enterprise Edition includes a larger prism display, as well as an Intel Atom processor that brings better performance and moderately improved battery life… Expand Expanding Close
CrowdOptic is one of the most well-established of the 10 current Glass for Work parters, and now the company is in acquisition talks. According to people familiar with the matter, the company has been in advanced discussions with a Fortune 500 firm that intends to build software applications for the upcoming iteration of enterprise-focused Google Glass hardware… Expand Expanding Close
We told you yesterday about a new device that passed through the FCC—codenamed GG1—and many have speculated that it’s the next generation of the Google Glass hardware. While it’s often suggested that the device is soon going to get some iterative Explorer Edition overhaul and see its first official consumer launch, it’s much more probable that Google is first going to push this hardware toward the one place it has seen success: the enterprise market.
As we reported earlier this year, there are many different prototypes of a future Glass hardware revision being tested within some Glass for Work startups. We’ve come to learn from people familiar with the matter that the next hardware is being referred to by Google internally as “Enterprise Edition” or “Google Glass EE” (If you remember, Explorer Edition was referred to as “Google Glass XE”)… Expand Expanding Close
A mysterious Google device appears to have passed through the FCC yesterday. First noticed by Droid-Life, the product was filed under the FCC ID A4R-GG1 and the filing is incredibly vague when it comes to specific features of the device. While it could be the new Chromecast that is reportedly coming later this year, many of the hints throughout the filling lend credibility the potential of it being a new version of Google Glass.
Benjamin Yonattan, from Guatemala, is legally blind. With very limited field of vision, he can only see through what is effectively a hole the size of a straw. But that’s not stopping him from taking to the America’s Got Talent stage as a dancer, first thanks to his courage and secondly thanks to the first generation Google Glass. Expand Expanding Close
Tony Fadell, one of many fathers of the iPod and founder of Nest, was put in charge of the Glass project when the company stopped selling the “Explorer Edition” of the device in January earlier this year. While it was assumed that this would mean that Google was giving the project a restart (and, in fact, Google confirmed this to be the case during its Q4 earnings call), Tony Fadell has recently came out publicly to reiterate this point…
According to a report this morning from The Wall Street Journal, Italian eyewear giant Luxottica is moving forward with work in partnership with Google on the next generation of Glass. The next version is “in the works,” and will be “out soon,” according Statements from Luxottica CEO Massimo Vian on Friday. Expand Expanding Close
Google is hard at work designing the next hardware iteration of Glass, but not many details have surfaced regarding what the next generation be capable of nor what it will look like. Patents are definitely not the most reliable source of “leaks,” but sometimes they can give us a good overarching idea of the direction a company might be headed. A new patent published recently gives us yet another peek at what the next Google Glass might look like, and this looks more believable than anything we’ve seen up to this point… Expand Expanding Close
The next iteration of Google Glass is already in the works, but not much information has surfaced thus far about what the device’s hardware will be like. Google has given much of its focus and attention to the Glass at Work program over the last couple of years, and it’s no secret that specific work applications have been where the device has found its best use cases, but what will that mean for the direction that Google takes with the device’s hardware in the future?
A newly-published patent might give us an idea, and it might involve a new way to get information from the wearable display device based on where you’re looking. Expand Expanding Close
Google has teamed up with Johnson & Johnson-owned Ethicon to help create more advanced robotics technology for surgical use, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Mountain View tech giant hopes to tackle the software side of the issue by creating machine vision technology to help doctors more easily guide and control surgical equipment.
Google has been pushing further into the areas of medicine, health, and fitness in recent years, with entire divisions in its Google X lab focused on creating technology like nanobots that can detect cancer. The Glass project has also been integrated into some surgical procedures and other medical applications.
The Google Glass Explorer program ended somewhat abruptly in January, and this didn’t come as much surprise to the Glass-bashing media nor those who tried the device for their own consumer use. In these situations, where Glass was a privacy nightmare and an underpowered gadget, the head-mounted wearable display would appear to be a failed piece of consumer technology (and Google’s Astro Teller believes that allowing this mindset to spread was one of the project’s biggest failures).
And it’s true. The first-generation of Google Glass might not really bring much value to the daily lives of most people, and it’s definitely not close to being socially acceptable quite yet. But many companies and organizations that adopted the experimental $1,500 spectacles for specific use cases weren’t so quick to dismiss the device. In fact, there are many groups—even now, after the Explorer program has ended—who are still doing some exciting things with it.
If you’ve been following the facts behind the situation with Glass, you know that the project is not seen as even close to being dead within the Mountain View company. Despite the Explorer Program being shut down earlier this year, Google clearly sees potential in the platform. And according to comments recently made by Google’s Eric Schmidt, Glass is just far too important to scrap… Expand Expanding Close
Google has really been shaking up the Glass project since it was graduated out of the experimental Google[x] lab and placed in its own division under Tony Fadell. We exclusively reported in February that Google was mixing up the Glass engineering team amidst this leadership shift, but that story focused mostly on the engineers that were being moved off the team to work in other Google divisions. Now we have further confirmation that the Mountain View company is indeed bringing on some fresh talent, as several job listings for Glass engineers have been posted to LinkedIn… Expand Expanding Close
Sony announced today that Virgin Atlantic is piloting its SmartWatch 3 and SmartEyeglass wearables to “help streamline communications and speed up technical assistance” among employees.
The SmartEyeglass Developer Edition will be used to stream real-time video between engineers, while the SmartWatch 3 will offer notifications and quick communication: Expand Expanding Close
You may have heard that Google shipped some lucky select Glass Explorers a book—labeled simply “Vol 001″—to officially close out the Explorer Program. Within it is a collection of #ThroughGlass phot0s, quotes from some influential members of the community, and a few words of thanks to those that made the program possible.
Among some of the more interesting quotes thrown in are some from team members that were actually part of the Glass project in its earlier days, including one from Lasse Wassermann that details the hectic process of setting up a Basecamp in San Francisco…
The weekend before I/O 2013 we were overrun with Explorer requests to pick up their preordered Glass during I/O so we went out and tried to find a space close enough to the Moscone Center. We ended up renting the presidential suite in the Intercontinental Hotel and changed it into a Glass Basecamp. Over 72h we met more than 500 now Explorers, who were not only able to get set up on Glass but enjoy the gorgeous view of San Francisco from the 32nd floor.
What a lot of our Explorers didn’t notice was that for a long time we only had 3G tethering available to set up Glass – somehow we couldn’t get the hotel ethernet connection working in the room: As we found out 12h later, the cable was cut during the last visit of President Obama in the city, when he was staying in the same room.
And another from Greg Priest-Dorman, who mentioned an experience with the earliest builds of Glass, one of which that was named “Dog”:
In the early days of Glass, we built and shipped a new version of the device every 4 – 6 weeks. We named them alphabetically, so the fourth version was called Dog. It was a popular device; it ran well and lasted a long time, but when people had battery problems, they’d email me with messages like “my dog’s dead” or “my dog’s misbehaving.” After a while I started receiving Gmail ads for pet cemeteries and behavior training for dogs.
Sarah Price documented what it was like launching the #ifihadglass competition:
We decided to announce #ifihadglass at 6am EST, in order to catch morning in the eastern United States. But our team is based in California… so that meant we went live at 3am PST. Now a lot of people on the Glass team work a lot of hours and it’s not uncommon to see people in the office late at night or on the weekends, but 3am is pretty exceptional ;) The people who needed to push the website live stayed late; and their work “ended” once the announcement was made.
I knew my work would just be beginning, though: this would be the launch of our Twitter handle and the beginning of Glass replying directly to our fans and followers. I went home around 4pm and tried to go to sleep, then came back around 2am. Everyone was in a great mood (and perhaps a bit hyper from the caffeine and energy drinks). I had all of our social media posts queued up in tabs in Chrome. When the time came, it was so unnerving to push that button, but I did, right on the hour.
Then I waited for the responses. A few appeared almost immediately. I started replying as Glass, but soon there was a backlog of a dozen posts. Then two dozen. Then fifty, then a hundred. Wow!
When I first joined Google, I’d heard about the communal Gbikes that Googlers could ride. I even saw some of the weird ones like the conference bikes. One day during my first week, I went downstairs and saw this weird Elliptigo bike in the lobby. I thought it was one of the communal Gbikes, so I grabbed it, and took it out for a quick jaunt around campus and back (maybe around 10 minutes). When I brought it back, the receptionist (who wasn’t there when I first took it out), gave me a strange look and I couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t until I saw Sergey riding it the next day that I realised I’d actually stolen Sergey’s personal bike and taken it out for a joyride.
And that’s the story of how I stole my billionaire boss’s bike and didn’t get caught/fired. (I’ve never told him this story though, so it’s probably not too late to fire me).
There’s plenty more to be read, but these are some of the most interesting. If you’re a Glass Explorer and weren’t lucky enough to be chosen for a book, Google says that you can head over to this support page and download the book in PDF form.
A lot of movement has been happening on the Glass team this month in Mountain View. In January, the project graduated out of the company’s Google[x] experimental projects lab and into the hands of ex-iPod-head Tony Fadell—although still being lead more directly by Google’s Head of Glass Ivy Ross. But with this change, it appears as if Google is doing—as is fairly common at the company—a bit of shuffling in the engineers who are working on the project…
Google Glass has been getting slammed by the media since it was announced that the Explorer Program was being shuttered, with countless outlets claiming that the project is simply dead in the water. I’ve already told you on a coupledifferent occasions why this isn’t the case, but now we have more confirmation that Glass isn’t dead yet (beyond Google simply telling us that they’re “excited” to be working on something). Google has given—and continues to give—a select group of its coveted Glass at Work partners very early versions of the next iteration of the device to test and develop for, according to several sources… Expand Expanding Close
As Apple prepares to bring its new smartwatch to the market, an extensive profile of Jony Ive from The New Yorker (you can find more over at 9to5Mac) has revealed how the Cupertino company sees Google Glass. But it wasn’t Ive, Apple’s design head, that made the comments. Rather, Apple CEO Tim Cook was very straightforward in saying that Google’s head-mounted display was putting a wearable in “the wrong place,” and that “glasses were not a smart move.” Expand Expanding Close
Google X boss Astro Teller spoke with the New York Times on the topic of the experimental lab and the value it produces for the company, saying that the X lab’s goal is to find new technology markets that the Mountain View company can jump into and problems it can solve.
According to Teller, Google gives X projects a longer period of time in which to prove they can become profitable. He specifically highlights the “Neural Network Project” (previously known as Google Brain) as one project that has turned a serious profit. In fact, Brain is now bringing in enough “value” to offset the costs of running the entire X lab, Teller says:
