Google Glass testers give their thoughts: 'It's kind of a tease' – video
Thursday 16 May 2013
Tuesday 14 May 2013
Interactive glasses design for elite athletes
PROXIMITY SENSING PERFORMANCE SUNGLASSES FOR OAKLEY
March 2012
Nominated for the D&AD Student Award 2012 - Product Design category for Oakley
The light mirrors are an innovative concept of performance eyewear for elite athletes. It is the answer to the D&AD award 2012 product design brief: Design the next generation of Oakley eyewear that will allow an athlete to enhance their performance, be visually differentiated from existing eyewear products (either Oakley's or that of their competition) and embody the Oakley design philosophy and brand statement "Beyond Reason".The submitted concept received a nomination for a D&AD Yellow Pencil, which ceremony will take place on the 26th of June 2012.
The 'Light Mirrors' sunglasses differentiate from conventional sport glasses by introducing proximity sensing in competition.
RFID technology will be soon replaced by GPS tracking to get the exact position and time of athletes during the race. As proximity sensors helps drivers in their car when approaching an obstacle, information about the distance between you and the athlete behind or ahead will be transmitted to a radio receiver inside the frame of the glasses and displayed on the edges of the lenses in a non intrusive way. This product is especially dedicated to middle or long distance pursuit races such as triathlon, cycling or running, where athletes can make strategic decision about their energy consumption.
More than a simple mirror placed on the side of the glasses, sunglasses will enhance the athlete's performance by giving a feeling that the physiognomy of the race is changing.
A metaphorical mirror to reveal if the closest competitor is gaining or losing ground.
Thursday 9 May 2013
6 May 2013
Google Glass - will we love it or hate it?
The glasses have a small camera and display built in
Google's smart glasses project has been causing excitement in the tech world for months as speculation about what it will finally look like and be able to do reaches fever pitch.
Prototype devices are being tested by around 1,000 so-called Glass Explorers and are expected to go on sale to the public next year.
While some see such wearable computing as the obvious next step for the digital age, others regard the idea of even more intimate connections with the network quite scary.
The BBC has garnered the views of those who have tried Glass and others who have strong views about the project to see what a smart-glassed future might look like.
Dan McLaughlin, senior software engineer, Agilent
I was the first person on the West Coast to pick up my device and, having had Glass for a few weeks now, I'm mostly surprised at how much there was to learn about using it, and how much more there is to discover.
What comes to mind first is that the preconceptions we had of Glass before actually using it are largely irrelevant. Glass is different: "new" is too weak a word to use. As a developer I'm just getting an idea of how to write helpful applications for this new form of intimate information access. On a personal level I've never met this many people in this short a time, simply because they are curious, friendly and interested to see what this thing is and where it might go.
My issues have mainly been technical. I wear glasses and as part of the Glass Explorer program don't yet have the unreleased Glass eyeglass frame the team is developing. As an amateur photographer I'm finding it not too different from what I did before - just more convenient. "The best camera is the one you have on you" goes the refrain, so instead of having to pull out my cell phone and find the camera app to get that already gone shot of my 10-year-old, now it's easier.
Mostly it's about checking the time without giving the impression I'm hurried, picking up phone calls effortlessly, and accessing new emails so quickly it doesn't seem like work - compared to sitting at a computer in a stuffy office.
I'm looking forward to seeing the new places this will take me. For example, I use a task management system on my computer - can I write an app to make this easier on Glass? What about at work when I need to help a colleague troubleshoot some equipment where he needs both hands free? Or keeping in touch with my distant family: can I find a way to make them a closer part of my life? I don't know where this is going, but I'm entirely sure it will be interesting.
Mark Kaelin, senior editor, CBS Interactive
Google Glass is supposed to be ready for sale in late 2013, but I am still sceptical about the whole concept.
Most of the people excited about Google Glass are mobile device slaves who feel the need to compulsively answer every text message or check every email. The Google Glass device sounds like a match made in heaven for them. The ability to feed your compulsion without having to actually look at your mobile device - that must be nirvana.
Fortunately, at least so far, those types of people are not the norm. From my perspective, Google Glass sounds like a terrific recipe for creating more annoying rude people talking to themselves in public. You know the people I mean: they occupy our world while existing in their own separate virtual world, oblivious to the social awkwardness they leave in their wake.
Augmented reality glasses are just a more perfect way for them to avoid substantive interaction with normal people like you and me.
Don't get me wrong. There are definitely niche uses for easy augmented reality devices, and I believe Google Glass devices will be common in the future. I just don't think everyone will be wearing the devices on a daily basis, at least not until someone can explain to me why we would or should.
Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch
Like nearly every online service, Google's greatest sleight of hand was to make us all think of ourselves as Google customers, when in reality we - or more accurately, data about us - are Google's product. Advertisers are the customers, generating around 96% of Google's revenue.
In this arrangement, we used free services, and - current anti-trust investigations aside - if we didn't like the deal, we could choose to use a different service. Google Glass tips that choice on its head.
Now the people making the choice are the ones wearing Glass, but whoever asked what the Glass sees for its permission to be monitored? And don't think for a second you're in control of the data from your own Glass. You're just a conduit for data collection.
It makes CCTV cameras look trivial. Here is a real-time, always-on, internet-connected data stream being fed in - not from a fixed position on a building, but from among our everyday lives. The person next to you isn't just another commuter any more, they're a Google agent.
What they see, Google sees and can use, store and, after that, who knows? Facial recognition analysis? Your picture on a billboard? In reality, it is an academic question. If there's someone willing to pay for it, it will almost inevitably happen.
Choice is key to trust in the digital economy and Glass doesn't just challenge our assumptions about consent, it challenges whether we even have a choice any more. And that can't be good for anyone.
Prof Thad E. Starner, Georgia Institute of Technology
For the past 20 years I have been wearing a computer with a head-up display as an intelligent assistant in my daily life.
My research teams have formed communities of users to create "living laboratories" where we can explore the potential benefits and social aspects of these devices.
We found that a head-up display with a properly designed interface can help the user pay attention to the real world as opposed to retreating from it into a laptop or mobile phone screen. By having an interface that takes less than two seconds to access, we can reduce the time between intention and action, which enables access to useful information in almost any situation.
Wearable computing interfaces can effectively augment the user's eyes, ears, voice and mind while being less socially intrusive than a desktop, laptop or phone. In addition, a properly designed interface can actually create a "calming" technology that helps mediate interruptions and allows the user to be in charge of her own attention.
To quote Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital, these technologies will evolve into "a digital butler... [it] recognises callers, disturbs you when appropriate, and may even tell a white lie on your behalf. The same agent is well trained in timing, versed in finding the opportune moments, and respectful of idiosyncrasies."
In the future, wearable technologies will help us manage our lives, keep us in tune with our bodies through on-body sensors, augment our minds and allow us to be more independent of the physical desktop computing infrastructure that currently limits us.
Getting a frame to fit perfectly around one’s face is every spectacle-wearer’s personal woe. Most mass-manufactured spectacle frames are made to standard fit which means that a wearer needs to spend a good amount of time finding one that fits just right. Designer and spectacle wearer Ron Arad understand how meticulous this process needs to be and how some people end up buying ill-fitting glass frames for lack of time. He thus created a spectacle frame called Corbs that are derived from the regular hinged design and the shape of the vertebrae!
Hingeless Sunglasses flex like animal spines
Thursday 28 March 2013
Oakly sail
oakjly sunglasses design with encorporated eletronic gadgets for sailing.
http://www.jamesparkerdesign.com/products/oakley.html
Tuesday 26 March 2013
5 Eyeglasses Innovations on the Horizon
5 Eyeglasses Innovations on the Horizon
After not changing much at all since the 19th century, the process of vision correction using eyeglasses has been progressing in leaps and bounds in recent years. Check out these exciting concepts, available very soon or even right now!
1. No More Reading Glasses or Bifocals
Until now, an inevitable and dreaded rite of passage into middle age has been the need for reading glasses, or even worse, bifocals. Trufocals or Superfocus glasses aim to change the need for multiple glasses and lenses by use of fluid-filled lenses behind the usual corrective lenses. The extra lens is adjustable by means of a slider on the nose piece, allowing the user to sharpen focus for different focusing distances.
When available: Now, but be prepared to pay significant money–the Superfocus glasses retail for $895.
2. Hi-definition eyeglasses
Recent computer technology allows far more customized lens making than formerly, creating a lens that is adapted not only for the overall vision correction but individually designed for the contours of your particular eye. The same wavefront computer mapping technology used to map the eye for LASIK surgery is used to create the lenses.
When available: Now, at a cost of 25 – 30% more per lens than traditional eyeglasses.
3. Inexpensive Vision Correction for the Developing World
Josh Strickland is a physicist by education, but since 1985 has worked on the problem of having too many people needing glasses in the developing world, and too few optometrists. His solution: glasses with DIY adjustment. The user simply puts on the glasses and turns a knob on each lens until he or she sees clearly. Then the adjustment is locked in using a screwdriver.
When available: About 30,000 in use in pilot programs; aim is 1 billion by 2020.
4. Night Vision Glasses
With the same thin film technology used in flat screen TVs, scientists have developed a light, inexpensive filter that can convert ultraviolet to visible light. This would be useful not only in eyeglasses but also on cell phone cameras and even car windshields.
When available: Technology exists but still in the laboratory stage.
-no need for additional LEDs
-lighter weight than LEDs
5. Glasses with OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) Technology for Data Display
How would you like to be able to access computer data, communications, maps and more in a hands free display right in front of your eyes? Students at a technical institute in Germany are working on a system to do just that. It would include an eye tracking system that would allow the user to operate menus using eye movement.
When available: In early lab development stage but looks promising.
Other Product Insporation - Night vision glasses
Night vision glasses
Most of the time, it becomes difficult for many of us to take a break from our working life and enjoy the beautiful environment of the night. But there are some that find some difficulty in night vision and believe it or not, they must be the real screwed ones to miss the peaceful exploration after the sunset. To overcome this issue, markets are already flooded with many promising products that guarantee to evade the vision problem in night. No wonder about such hopeful products, but Sanne – Marye Huijing, an Industrial design engineer, wants more exploration in such products. And so, she came up with some unique concept in the form of Night Vision glasses that will extend the horizons of sight in the dark. Night Vision glasses hold unique creativity of intellectual work by the designer.
This unique product holds its USP in its glasses and technique used for the development. The Night Vision glasseshas Phosphorescent layered design that sends out the UV light, increasing the sight vision more accurately and clearly. As UV light has high intensity, it helps out to evade the invisibility to great extent. Moreover, it also has micro lens arrays that help in concentrating the light to the eye. The glass frame which is printed in ABS has a stylish appeal attached with durability. There are two small lithium batteries of 300mAh and 3.7 V at each of the frame’s side, lending power for the UV LED (3.3 V, 20mA) light. These LED lights are situated on both sides of the glasses beside the lenses. The lenses are formed in mold type structure and are made from PMMA and vacuum.
Thus, Night Vision is a set of compound engineering that makes possible to enlighten up your sight, giving you the freedom of visibility.
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