10 Things We Want To Do With Google Glass

The Google glass workout

So we’ve talked about what Google Glass has tooffer, its features and capabilities and how it is the most anticipated wearable gadget in 2013. But why leave it there? Add a dash of wishful thinking (okay, maybe a whole lot of it) and here’s a wishlist of things we want to see happen with Google Glass.

Google Glass is a sight for sore eyes as it is touted as the lightweight, hands-free solution to the smartphone. It still tethers to the Internet access of the smartphone via Bluetooth but has a built-in GPS chip for navigational use. Voice commands make the integration almost seamless and Glass also comes with a camera for recording pictures and videos in first-person view.

With this recap, you now probably have a sense of the potential Glass has in all sorts of situations. Here are just 10 examples of how Glass can further enrich our lives. Note that this is just a wishlist and while Glass may not be able to do these things, who know what will happen in the near future?

1. Benefit Education

If Youtube tutorials have taught us anything, it’s that videos can go far in education that is not confined in the classroom. Glass can help push that barrier even further by recording tutorialsin for instances the type spaces mechanics find themselves in when fixing a car engine or machinery parts, or in restricted areas where only the surgeon and its staff is allowed.

In both examples, Glass keeps the mechanic’s and surgeon’s hands free to work their magic, and still gives students a first-person view of the masters at work. It would be great for the feed to be streamed live and to allow the viewers to get to experience what is happening in real-time.

2. Live Information When You Need It

In #1, the surgeon would appreciate having access to the vital stats of his patient straight in Glass if he needs it. For the rest of us, Glass could even provide information about programs we are watching on TV such as stats about the actor, the shows they’ve acted in, synopsis or facts about fashion.

Glass could also work in the world of sportswhere it gives you the latest team and playernews, table standings and past results the moment you switch TV channels or when you’re at a live sports event.

3. Recommendation Guides

With augmented reality in place, it’ll be cool to have Glass give you information of restaurants as you walk past, such as the chef’s recommendation of the day, prices and reviews. Information of promotions going on at each shop outlet would appease the shopaholic in you and can even be sorted to cater to the specific needs of each Glass user

This will even be a good thing to have for touristswho visit foreign lands where they don’t speak the language.

4. Health Monitor Interface

With Glass’ built-in GPS chip, it can easily track your movement. Together with an external health tracking monitor or through health related apps, Glass could probably display, track or log in yourpace, speed, heart rate and running durationfor use such as when you’re running a marathon.

Its capability to have sunglasses attachmentalso means it’ll be perfect for use on brigh sunny running days, and the avid calorie counter may be able to keep his or her nutritional intake in check almost constantly.

5. Get More Out Of Life

A person who has to keep an eye on the family while working from home could benefit from Glass. Instead of having to worry about missing an important call or email on their work phone, wearing Glass allows them to receive notifications while doing things around the house since both their hands are free.

They also need not tether themselves to any computer, laptop or tablet to receive updates.

6. Assisting Busy Lives

That said, having Glass equipped with apersonal assistant app like Siri on iOS or alternatives found on Android lets you manage your work life even better via voice commands, say, to schedule reminders, alarms and events.

You can set reminders as and when you have made decisions during a meeting, gotten a reply from a client or finalized a plan that is good to go.

7. Documentaries In First Person View

We’ve seen the video introducing Glass where skydivers recorded their descent. However, Glass can be used to push documentaries even further.

For instance, viewers can actually step into the shoes of police officers during an actual drug raid, first responders during a disaster or emergency event or even of paramedics who have to think on their feet to save lives. This beats reality TV shows anytime.

8. Video Conferencing Alternative

Google Hangout is a fine tool for conferencing but you still need to sit yourself in front of a laptop to use it. For companies that need to have a lot of meetings regularly it’s common to spend a budget on a state of the art conference room.

Perhaps Glass can be a great alternative for decision makers who are always on the move and who everyone wants an audience with.Group meetings can be done regardless of where everyone is.

9. Easier Video Logging

For the avid DIY builder, keeping track of screws and parts may be a common annoyance during the assembly process, but this is recitifiable with some strategic video logging. Since Glass has a camera equipped, the builder gets a first-person recording of what he does and keeping track of steps and parts are just a matter of playbacks.

Alternatively, scientists can log the results of their experiments easier, faster and more accurately. Video recordings and voice logs neatly time-stamped can ensure that they can focus more on the science instead of the documentation. To top it all off (since we’re dreaming anyways) it’ll be cool to then create an app for data-logging using speech-to-text with itemized logging.

10. Work Together With Any Smartphone & Its Apps

This is probably the most important thing anyone who is eager to try out the Glass would want. We’re talking about support for popular mobile OS like iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry as well as upcoming OS like Ubuntu, Firefox, Tizen and Sailfish.

With widespread support and a higher user base, and seamless integration with apps, there is probably hope for the prices to drop to affordable ranges so everyone can grab a pair

10 Things We Want To Do With Google Glass

8:55 AM Glass, google glass, wearable gadgets

Out Of The Box Patents By Google Inc.

 10  weirdest patents that Google has sought in 

recent years

Everyday Tech Pictures

An Android smartphone displays the Google website in this picture illustration in Seoul, South Korea. Google has lots of patents for products you never imagined. See everyday tech pictures.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt once noted that the patent system, originally designed to protect inventors, had degenerated into a swamp of lawsuits and creativity-killing delays. "These patent wars are death," he said in a 2012 chat at New York City's 92nd Street Y. "Everyone can find a prior art for everything. So the new trick is to get judges to block devices country by country. It's bad for innovation" 

That aversion makes it all the more remarkable that Google has become one of the most prolific applicants for patents around. MIT Technology Review reported in 2013 that Google's brain trust of scientists and engineers was winning about 10 patents every day that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office is open for business. Indeed, the company has become one of the top 10 patent recipients in the U.S. 

Technology Review theorized Google quietly changed its view on patents to protect its Android operating system for mobile devices, after seeing the way that Apple did the same when it introduced the iPhone in 2007.

Many of its patents cover Android, as well as the search engine technology and other services that have been Google's bread and butter. Others have to do with game-changing future gadgetry that the Internet giant is developing, such as driverless robotic cars. But Google's innovation machine is also churning out even edgier innovations, many that might leave you scratching your head.

The comic strip Google is proposing is not as detailed or colorful as this one, but could be just as entertaining.

Back in ancient times — in online social networking terms, that's about 2006 — it was really cool to post atext message on Facebook to inform all your friends that you were vacationing in Hawaii, starting a new job or getting a mole removed at the dermatologist's office. (OK, some people do share a little too much information.)

But now that we've all read countless status updates, that medium has gotten a little, well, mundane. That may be why Google in 2010 filed a patent for a technology called "Self-Creation of Comic Strips in Social Networks and Other Communications." The latter would allow a social network user to post a multipanel cartoon online across a variety of networks.

According to the patent application, a user would select a theme, and the software would offer a cartoon, plus a title and text which the user could alter to suit. Google, which was awarded the patent in 2013, hasn't yet marketed the comic-creating app.

Floating Wave-powered Server Farm

www.vivofibra.com.br

A shot of the mysterious barge being erected in the San Francisco Bay, thought to be an unannounced Google project.

Every time you do a Google search for cute cat pictures, watch a YouTube video or send a message via Gmail, Google has to use electricity to provide those services. The global information giant burned up about 2.26 million megawatt-hours in 2010 — about the quarter of the output of a typical nuclear power plant 

Perhaps to reduce its utility bills, Google filed a patent application for a "Water-Based Data Center" in 2008. The latter would consist of a barge or cargo ship equipped to capture energy from tides and convert it to electricity, which then would be used to power row after row of computer servers for Google's global information network.

While this might seem straight out of the old Kevin Costner dystopian sci-fi flick "Waterworld," there have been some hints lately that Google might actually deploy such floating facilities. The San Jose Mercury News reported in October 2013, for example, that Google was building a mysterious four-story structure atop a barge in the San Francisco Bay, for some secret purpose. The newspaper also reported that a similarly massive structure atop a barge was moored in a harbor in Maine.

Gadget That Projects Keyboard Onto Your Hand

Google founder Sergey Brin poses for a portrait wearing Google Glasses. The virtual keyboard would solved the problem of sending a message without having a hand-held device handy.

Google Glass, the technology giant's realized vision of a wearable, voice and gesture-activated computer with an optical head-mounted display that would resemble a pair of eyeglasses, would make us all into the equivalent of Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" movies.

But while that might theoretically free us from being deskbound and even from having to carry hand-held devices such as smartphones and tablets, in practice there still would be a tricky downside. If you're in a noisy environment, voice commands aren't going to work very well, and dictating anything longer than a brief e-mail is going to be a clumsy process for people who've spent their whole lives typing stuff into a conventional computer.

Not to worry, though. In 2013, Google filed for a patent for a technology called "Methods and Systems for a Virtual Input Device," in which the Google Glass headset would project a virtua lkeyboard onto a user's hand, turning it into a virtual smartphone-style touchscreen for the user's other hand.

Throat Tattoo Microphone With Optional Lie Detector

Is this what you'll have to do to get a microphone tattooed on your throat?

The animated TV series "Futurama" once jokingly suggested that future smartphone users would have an "eye-Phone" attached to their eyeballs, but Google's idea of implanting a microphone in users' throats isn't that much more far-out of a notion.

The 2012 application by Google's Motorola Mobility subsidiary, titled "Coupling an Electronic Skin Tattoo to a Mobile Communication Device," would attach a digital tattoo — essentially, a tiny printed circuit — to the skin on the outside of a user's throat. (For those who associate neck tattoos with prison gangs, the device also could be embedded in a collar or necklace.)

The tiny device would include both a microphone and a wireless transmitter, for relaying the sound of the user's voice to a smartphone or other device. According to the patent application, such an implant would be advantageous because it would reduce background noise, so that "communication can reasonably be improved".

And if that's not exotic enough, there's more. Optionally, the throat tattoo could be configured to light up whenever the user's throat muscles flex. In addition, the designers say they also could include a galvanic skin response sensor, which would enable the device to function as a lie detector.

Image-capturing Walking Stick

Google has a patent that cleverly hides a camera within a walking stick.

One of Google Maps' most appealing features is its online collection of street-level photographic panoramas, which allow users to roam neighborhoods across the U.S. and in other countries as well. In addition to the usual street scenes, Google has begun posting 360-degree images of hiking trails in North America, which its photographers have shot using cumbersome backpack-mounted cameras.

In 2013 however, Google was granted a patent for a device that would make shooting such landscapes far easier. The application, titled "Walking Stick with IMU [inertial measurement unit]," basically is just that — a staff with embedded cameras and location sensors, coupled with a switch at the bottom that causes the cameras to snap pictures whenever the stick taps the ground.

While the gadget could be used by Google's own photographers, the patent application notes that similar technology could be repurposed in canes, crutches and other mobility devices used by disabled people. This would allow them to shoot and transmit pictures while their hands were otherwise occupied or if they had a condition that made it difficult to operate a camera.

Sound, Light and Temperature Advertisement Generator

In the future, you might see an ad for sunglasses pop up on your smartphone if you are in a very sunny location.

Google has made a mint over the years by making sure that it reaches search users with deftly targeted advertisements. But the growth of smartphones and other mobile devices connected to the Internet has created a lot more opportunities to suggest that you buy this product or dine at that restaurant, and the search giant apparently intends to take every advantage of them.

In a 2008 patent application titled "Advertising Based on Environmental Conditions," Google envisions equipping smartphones and other devices with a sensor that would detect temperature, humidity, sound, light, and/or the chemical composition of the air around a user. The mobile device would transmit that data back to Google, which then would use it to send ads targeted to the user's particular settings.

For example, if you're in a hot, humid locale, you might see an ad pop on your screen from an air conditioning manufacturer. And if you use your mobile phone while you're at an Adele concert, the technology could send you ads for music by other British female singers or for restaurants close to the concert hall .

Software for Splitting Restaurant Bills

Bugging your friends to pay you their share of the restaurant bill might be a thing of the past, thanks to a Google patent.

This ever happened to you? You go to a restaurant with a bunch of friends, and the waiter will not allow split checks. So you offer to pay the bill, expecting to be reimbursed by the rest of the party for their share. The tricky part is, some of the group may "forget" to pay you back.

But don't worry; your days of reminding your friends to cough up may be coming to an end, thanks to a solution being developed by Google. In 2013, the company applied for a patent called "Tracking and Managing Group Expenditures." It envisions a software app — presumably for smartphones — that not only calculates how much is owed to the person who is paying the waiter, but also automatically transfers the money to that person's online account. Now all you have to do is get your friends to install this app before dining.

Pay-per-gaze Advertising Tracking System

www.vivofibra.com.br

At the Disney Media and Advertising Lab in Austin, Texas, computers follow the eye and facial movements of participants, providing data on what kinds of Internet ads attract attention. Google was awarded a patent for a "gaze tracking system" in 2013.

You may have read or heard advertising executives talk about how many eyeballs their ads are attracting, butWeb page views don't really measure the impression that advertising is making upon people. There's no reliable way to tell how long someone looks at an ad, or the sort of impression that it makes. Or at least there wasn't, until now.

In 2013, Google was awarded a patent for a "gaze tracking system" in which a head-mounted device — presumably part of a computer system with video capabilities, such as Google Glass — would capture everything that the wearer gazes at, with an eye to spotting advertisements. (These either could be ads projected by the wearable computer, or else billboards, signs on bus kiosks, and other physical objects.) The system then would record how long the user looked at each ad, and possibly measure the degree of pupil dilation to determine how much of an emotional response the ad evoked .

Virtual Assistant That Tweets and Posts on Facebook

www.vivofibra.com.br

With all those e-mails, text messages and social media posts to respond to, it sure would be helpful to have a virtual assistant, like Google has patented.

We all want to make an impression on online social networks by posting witty replies to other people's tweets and Facebook status updates. But let's face it, being clever and pithy is hard work, and continually coming up with suitably saucy digital bon mots can take so much effort that it becomes almost a full-time job.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if your computer or smartphone helped you out? Once again, Google seems eager to come to the rescue. In 2011, the company sought a patent for "Automated Generation of Suggestions for Personalized Reactions in a Social Network." The technology would look at others' postings, dig up related information about the topics, and then automatically suggest "personalized" responses to them, based upon the app's recollection of how you've responded to postings in the past

When the program wanted to make a post, it would notify you first and ask for your approval. That precaution would save you the embarrassment of having your electronic clone post a seemingly intimate birthday greeting to a Facebook friend that you barely know.

The Heart-hand Gesture

Taylor Swift makes her "heart" gesture at a performance on the Today show. Let's hope she won't get into trouble now that Google has patented it in connection with "liking" something via Google Glass.

Singer Taylor Swift may have popularized the gesture of using the hands to make the shape of a heart, but that hasn't stopped Google from trying to patent it. The company filed an application in 2011 titled "Hand Gestures to Signify What is Important," which seeks to lay claim to "a hand gesture forming an area bounded by two hands in a shape of a symbolic heart."

But unlike Swift, Google isn't intending that move to be used to signify affection for a celebrity boyfriend, whom you eventually will break up with and then excoriate in song lyrics. Instead, it wants wearers of itsGoogle Glass device to be able to make the gesture at an object — say, a grande latte at Starbucks — in their head-mounted video camera's field of view and highlight it, capturing a snapshot of it. The Google Glass wearer could then use the device to post the picture on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter .

Out Of The Box Patents By Google Inc.

4:47 PM Glass, Google patents, virtual keybord