By the way, what is wrong with mid-westerners or Texans, Google? By omitting Chicago or Dallas as a city from which a person can pick up a Glass (you have to attend a special pick-up experience), you are omitting the heartland from this exercise. I care only modestly what the coastal hipsters can dream up to do with these new fangled devices, but would love to see how real people in the middle of the country use them. Is the point to record your skydiving adventures or to make life better for as many people as possible?
Things I would actually do with my Google Glass (for which I believe the functionality probably exists):
- Enjoy the view: I live outside of DC - there are a ton of places on and off of the beaten track that people should see. Best choice is to go themselves, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that there are plenty of places I don't want to visit, but I'd love to see them (Moscow and Russia in general is on this list). This is not an original thought, my first real thinking on the topic was done after I read this post on Marginal Revolution.
- Run & Ride: There are a lot of good trails near where I live. I would like to share the trails at River Bend Park, Great Falls National Park, the Cross County Trail and other places with a wider audience in an easily produced sort of fashion. Some can't run or ride, but should be able to explore nonetheless.
- Voice blog/track thoughts: as far as I can remember, I have some pretty good thoughts for blog posting or just ideas when I'm driving or otherwise in a position that I can't write things down. I would love to collect these random thoughts simply. "OK Glass, blog this for me:" and start rambling. I would guess that I'd still want a keyboard and screen to help organize the thoughts later on, but initial gathering would be great. Imagine yourself in the middle of a home-improvement project with lots of measurements to record/track. Would be great to have them all recorded and retrieved with a few statements.
- Record my commute: better than a dashboard cam? Probably not, but seems like it could serve the purpose without having to have a dedicated device.
Ways in which it would actually make my life better, if the functionality existed:
- Facial and voice recognition: I interact with several hundred people at other firms. I can't keep track of them all. How about an auto-facial/voice recognition mode that will fill me in on who I'm talking to without me having to say, "OK Glass, who is this joker and do I want to talk to them?" Potentially also useful to other people with big families or politicians.
- Food recognition: I am a fan of Lose It! to track my food intake. How cool would it be if I could just put a credit card down on the table (for scale), take a picture of my meal and have the calories estimated? Better still, record the meal in the background and process for the following: food calories, drink calories, appropriate number of chews per mouthful. Provide feedback by meal, day or week.
- Workout/lift: I write down what I do every session that I work out. My little dog-eared notebook is a relatively impenetrable database. Why not record a workout and then process it down to its essentials: exercises performed, weights used, timing of each rep and set, heartrate through-out (bluetooth integration here?)? The user could provide some guidance up front by inputting the plan and then speaking the exercise so that the processing is simplified.
- Little reminders: If it were near effortless, I'd love to be able to remind myself of certain things. For instance, before I go to work tomorrow, remind me to bring my lunch. I'd like to get this reminder as soon as I step into the garage tomorrow morning. There is pretty much no way to make this happen with current technology, but if Glass was tracking where you were in your house at all times, this could be a reality. Then, I would have no excuse for leaving without the right things.
- Track Daily Activities: I'm pretty good about flossing, brushing and washing my face. Glass could be building up a database of things I normally do and remind me to do something when I leave it out of the routine.
Things I will not be doing with my Google Glass:
- Going to work: Nope - I think that this will be a problem for almost everybody. Nobody wants a potential recording device around in such an obvious way. Yes, everybody's mobile phone can record conversations, even surreptitiously, but that isn't the primary purpose of such a device. Given that the Google Glass is new, there will be concern. Also, you'd love Google to be an additional searching tool, but in these litigious days, any of your work related materials can be "discoverable". Do you want (or can your business tolerate) that? Do you end up with work and personal Glasses?
- Sleeping: That would be seriously boring and pretty much useless.
P.P.S. Imagine yourself leaving your house without your mobile phone today. If you are anything like me you feel totally naked. Imagine then a future state where you've been living with Google Glass for a year and you walk out of the house without them. That would have to leave you feeling 10 times more naked than being without your phone. Is this a good thing?
#ifihadglass
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