Google Glass

Google Glass may not be welcomed at movie theaters, but the popular wearable computer is getting a free pass to an opera house in Italy during a show being performed in Cagliari later this week. On Wednesday, cast and crew members from an Italian opera company will wear Mountain View’s high-tech eyewear during a performance of Puccini’s Turandot.

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Google has updated the Google Glass GDK documentation to include support for external webcams attached via an On-The-Go cable (via Android Police). This means that, while developers already have access to the standard built-in Glass camera, they will now be able to incorporate additional camera views in their apps. Sadly, webcams won’t be Plug-and-Play, so developers are going to have to provide their own drivers for the hardware they want to use.
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Although Google Glass is available to the public, it’s understandable that the wearable tech isn’t welcomed everywhere, however being barred from a convention full of nerds has a special kind of sting. Comic-Con is currently underway and while the San Diego Convention Center is packed to the gills with cosplayers, anyone dressed up as Google co-founders Sergey Brin or Larry Page better not be wearing Glass — at least not during the show’s video screening panels.

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The eBay-owned app RedLaser — available for quite some time now on mobile platforms — has today landed on Google Glass. Using the well-known “OK Glass” voice command, you can use RedLaser to quickly price check products you see on the shelf in front of you. But the app doesn’t stop there, letting you also find products that are physically within your vicinity.

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Google has seemingly skipped right over XE 19, tonight pushing the XE 19.1 update to Google Glass users. The latest version of the Glass software features a redesigned voice menu as well as much more reliable connectivity. For moving up an entire version number, this actually looks to be a relatively minor update.

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Google X director Babak Parviz founded and led both the Google Glass and contact lens projects at Google, but it appears he has now left the Mountain View corporation in favor of Amazon. This news comes shortly after just two months ago stepping aside to let former Old Navy and Gap marketing VP Ivy Ross take the Google Glass helm.

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A new app has appeared in the official Glassware directory today, bringing you the ability to easily view the latest radar information on Google Glass. Whether you’re commuting to work or out for a bike ride, this app available to you in an instant gives you a quick glance at stormy weather in your vicinity.

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It sounds like a pretty cool idea right there, but for those with medical conditions that don’t allow them to control Glass by voice or touch – such as those with locked-in syndrome – this could change their lives.

Engadget reports that UK company This Place has created the MindRDR app to enable a Glass user who’s also wearing a head-mounted EEG sensor to take a photo and upload it to Facebook or Twitter by pure thought control.

It’s essentially a proof of concept at this stage, with only one form of measurement: concentration.

MindRDR shows up as a thin white line on Glass’s screen, which moves upwards the more the user concentrates. Once that line reaches the very top, it snaps a picture of whatever you want – you simply need to repeat the process to upload the image to a social network …

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Google X director and former head of Google Glass Babak Parviz said at the Wearable Technologies Conference that the company’s product is “one answer” but “not necessarily the definitive answer,” reports CNET.

Parviz, who last month stepped aside from leading the Glass team in favor of the more fashion-focused Ivy Ross, described the product as a first step in the right direction.

This is a nice first step to where we want to go. We can see glimmers of how this might work out …

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As the most populous city in the United States, New York City has a big transportation challenge on its hands. The arrival of the bike sharing system Citi Bike aims to solve that problem, but New Yorkers still need to be able to track down these bikes for the program to be useful. Enter City Ride for Glass, an upcoming app that aims to be a simple and effective way of finding Citi Bikes using Google Glass.

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Countless accessory makers have taken to the Google Glass platform, but few have gone as far as Rochester Optical. The company is now offering a line of sun lenses for the device, hoping to make Google’s head-mounted computer just that much more stylish.

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The Independent is reporting that UK cinemas are to ban the wearing of Glass in movie auditoriums over fears the device could be used to video films for piracy purposes – the same month Alamo Drafthouse implemented a ban in the U.S.

Phil Clapp, chief executive of the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association, said: “Customers will be requested not to wear these into cinema auditoriums, whether the film is playing or not.”

The Vue cinema chain said it would ask guests to remove the eyewear “as soon as the lights dim” …

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While Glass was pretty much a no-show at Google’s I/O keynote, its explorers received a small treat today in the form of an over-the-air update. Software version XE18.3 introduces simplified paring that walks you through connecting Glass to your smartphone via Bluetooth. Hopefully, this will making things easier for people who are new to using Google’s wearable computer. As for you shutterbugs out there, you’ll be treated to a viewfinder that can be activated by saying “show viewfinder.” This much needed feature will display what Glass is seeing, making it much easier to frame pictures and videos.

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Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell have demonstrated an interesting (and slightly scary) technique for using Google Glass to detect phone PINs with 83 percent accuracy from across a room – even when the screen wasn’t visible.

The technique used applies an image-recognition algorithm that doesn’t need direct sight of the screen. Instead, it uses a reference image of the target device to detect the angle at which it’s being held, then tracks the shadows from finger taps to detect which on-screen keys are being pressed … 
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Google’s annual I/O conference is only two days away but leaks and rumors leading up to this year’s show have been going strong for quite a while. In an effort to brace ourselves for Mountain View’s latest contributions to the tech world, we’ve decided to discuss what we might be seeing in the next couple of days. While some of these items are a given, others are a mix of rumors and speculation. There’s no guarantee that everything listed here will be announced during I/O, but we eventually expect to see these projects from Google at some point in time. That being said, here are some things that we might see this year in San Francisco.

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Update: Google Glass is now available on the Play Store in the UK for £1,000 and is available in black, red, white, charcoal and blue. Google says the device will ship from its warehouse in one or two business days. Glass still carries the Explorer tag and does not appear to be any different than the U.S. variant. You can view Glass on the Play Store here.

Original post: Ahead of Google I/O this week, Google Glass is now listed as being available in the United Kingdom on the Play Store support page. When the Nest Thermostat became available on Google Play, it too was prematurely posted on the Play Store support page for country availability. Should the support page be correct, the UK would be the first country besides the United States in which you can purchase Glass.

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The Diane von Furstenberg frames and sunglasses for Google Glass first leaked earlier this month have now gone on sale.

If you already have Glass, you can buy the frames and shades from the Google Glass Store. The frames are $225 while the shades are $120 … 
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