Google glasses to stream Internet straight to eyeballs: reportCyborg-style eyeglasses

http://www.thestar.com/business/art...o-stream-internet-straight-to-eyeballs-report



Cyborg-style eyeglasses with Internet access and a video camera are reportedly coming to market by year’s end.

Google Inc. is said to be developing the glasses with a small screen. Subtle head movements would activate traditional scrolling and clicking, bringing augmented reality literally right before the users eyes. And all for the price of a smartphone, or between $250 and $600, according to the New York Times report, which quoted several unnamed Google employees.

Google did not respond to The Star’s request for comment Wednesday.

The device is said to work on the Android operating system with a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors, including GPS, and look a little like Oakley Thump sunglasses.

Sound surreal? About as surreal as your mobile device.

Photo gallery: Gadgets through the years

“The glasses as described are really no more exotic than a differently shaped smartphone,” said independent technology analyst Carmi Levy.

“You don’t have to hold it out with both hands, but the software that drives it, the apps that run it and the cameras attached to it are little removed from the smartphone and tablet that you carry today.”

In theory, computer eyewear would allow a person to walk through a world of augmented reality, Levy said.

You pass a hotel and the glasses display room rates. You approach a bus stop and the glasses display fares and schedules. You pass a café and today’s specials appear before your eyes while selected music plays.

Revenue streams, said Levy, are what the glasses are all about.

“Google’s goal here is that we use its services no matter what we’re doing,” Levy said.

“We’re walking down the street looking through our Google glasses, having augmented reality information displayed, and the company is able to serve up ads that are context-centred — specifically targeted to what we are doing now and where we are doing it,” he said.

To the streets of Toronto, computer eyewear would not be entirely new.

University of Toronto applied science and engineering professor Steve Mann has been experimenting with high-tech goggles for years, embedding a computer screen in his glasses in the mid-1990s and carrying a hard drive in a pouch.

In 2003, he outfitted mannequins with high-tech headgear for an art-science show at what was then Pages Bookstore on Queen St. W.

Mann, who wasn’t available for comment Wednesday, also helped Toronto documentary filmmaker Rob Spence replace his missing right eye with a video-camera implant.

“My first reaction when I read about (the Google glasses) was, ‘I want to get some,’” Spence said in an interview.

“I have a particular interest in all things cyborg, particularly cyborg eyes,” he said. “I’ve already done some experiments where I live stream (to the Internet) using my eye as a video source.”

Spence can’t see through his video eye. But researchers are working on restoring vision to the blind by implanting a small TV screen into the retina, he said.

If it works, the filmmaker said, anybody with the implant could live-stream to the Internet — just like anybody with an iPhone or Google glasses.

Privacy implications are under discussion by the engineering team at the secret Google X lab in the San Francisco Bay area, the Times report says.

“The company wants to ensure that people know if they are being recorded by someone wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera,” Bilton says.