Resources for educators and journalists interested in using Google Glass. We are a community of Glass Explorers in higher education and not affiliated with Google
CNET had a piece today about the first Google-designed custom frame for Glass. Up to this point, the only frame we’ve had is the one on the Explorer Edition (EE). Not only does the EE look very much unlike a regular glasses frame, it doesn’t have permanent lenses either.
The new frames, which you can see via the link above, are much more stylish looking. Google has been talking for a while about the notion that custom frames are a natural area for this device’s evolution, but this is the first real concept we’ve seen from the company.
Custom frames make a lot of sense to me. I’m finding that there’s an inverse relationship between age and tendency to want to have a device on one’s head. Custom frames won’t solve some of the issues driving this, but it definitely makes the tech a bit more subtle and that might be enough to pull in a few more of the 30somethings.
I’m a little surprised we’re seeing this now. It makes me wonder if the mass-release device coming next spring is going to look very different than the EE. I’ve been assuming that the mass device will just be a smaller, more powerful version of what we have now, but maybe Google is advancing the design a lot more quickly than I figured was possible.
One thing I am hoping for is that custom frames mean custom lenses. I’ve found in my own experience showing the device to others that people who wear glasses tend to struggle with vision when they put the device on. You have to remove their frames to don the device, and the heavier the prescription the more difficult it is for them to see the screen. Bifocal users in particular struggle to see the screen. Perhaps we can design lenses that leave the upper-right corner with a special lens magnification for those who want to use Glass.
At Glass HQ in New York, where Rocky set me up with the device and a Shiner Bock.
My Google Glass Explorer experience began on Saturday, when I traveled to the Glass basecamp at Chelsea Market in New York for what was something like orientation. After a few moments in a very stylish lounge, I was introduced to Rocky, a self-described actor who walked me through the basics and helped me get Glass to fit and work properly.
(Aside: It was kind of a cool experience. The office was a studio on the top floor of Chelsea Market, with giant windows and a terrific view of the city. I was offered a choice of drinks including beer or champagne. Because I’m a difficult person, I asked what kind of beer; when the response was “Shiner Bock,” that made the decision easy for me. And made me wonder: Is Shiner hipster beer now? I remember when we used to get quarter pitchers of it in college.)
Then, I began exploring. First through Chelsea Market, which is a foodie paradise. I shopped for gifts for the family at a chocolate stand, a cookie bakery, a cheese shop, a kitchenware supply store, and others. Nobody flinched at me wearing Glass, but then, they’re probably used to seeing folks wearing them.
The cheese shop didn’t have the one thing I was hunting for – fresh cheese curds (remember, I’m a difficult person), but they told me Beecher’s had them up on 19th and Broadway. I love Beecher’s and its cheese curds, having been introduced to them in the Pike Place Market in Seattle about five years ago, and I checked Glass for a route there. Glass was somewhat helpful (the stated search for “Beecher’s” didn’t take, but “19th and Broadway” did) for directions; but I turned to the trusty iPhone for actual walking directions – less than a mile away.
I began the journey, planning on using Glass to guide the way, but then I ran into connectivity issues – my tethering from the Samsung Galaxy S3 I’d planned on using kept dropping, so Glass couldn’t use the GPS function to make the directions work. Again, the iPhone guided the way.
After scoring a couple of containers of cheese curds, I caught a cab to LaGuardia, where I played with Glass and the Galaxy and got them to sync up again. This actually worked well eventually, though I’m still figuring out how many steps it takes and in what order to get the connection consistent (I’m currently turning on both the Bluetooth and mobile hot spot on the phone, then going to the MyGlass app and making sure the device is recognized, then going to Glass and clicking through to enable the connection).
Then, I played – I wore the device in the airport after going through security, and I felt a bit odd talking to it as people sometimes watched me and wondered what or whom I was talking to. I know I feel the same way about people talking on Bluetooth walking down the streets – there’s an unavoidable sense of “that’s a crazy person” when you see it, even now, after it’s become common.
I wonder if this will become more common with Glass – people talking to nobody apparently to make Glass work. We’ll see. I know I was a bit uncomfortable, and I still am. And speaking quietly to Glass doesn’t solve things – it means that when you try to say “tweet,” Glass interprets it as “meet “ or “eat,” which led to a strange tweet from me on Saturday evening.
That gets me to the title of this post – trying not to be a “glasshole.” The presence of Glass already appears to make some uncomfortable – my wife among them. I’m trying to find ways to use them in culturally acceptable places and fashions, but trying to remain cognizant of where they will be deemed obtrusive. For example, I declined to wear them to church on Sunday – fearing the response more than I would have valued being able to record in an unobtrusive fashion my daughter speaking to the church during the service. It just doesn’t feel right to wear them into or around the church, at least not yet.
I wore them to do some back-to-school shopping Sunday afternoon – I had them on at Target and didn’t get any odd looks that I noticed.
Today was the first day of school for my three daughters. I regretted not wearing them for hands-free photography chances; while carrying a stack of books in one hand and a bag of school supplies in the other, having voice-enabled photography for the pose in front of the school would’ve been handy. But I also didn’t want the presence of Glass to distract from my youngest’s first day of kindergarten. So I left Glass in the car.
I finally broke them out as we walked my oldest daughter to her first day of middle school, and I snapped a photo of her in front of the school sign. For some reason, I felt far more comfortable around the 6th-grade set than I did the elementary schoolers with Glass. The older bunch is already smartphone friendly and comfortable with tech, so maybe that’s it. That said, I took them off once we walked into the school.
The final exploration of the day was to Avoca Coffee, the delightful coffee roaster over on Magnolia Avenue here in Fort Worth. I wore them a bit in there and got a picture of my wife and her mocha (she mostly laughed as I did this). Again, I didn’t feel as obtrusive around adults, particularly in what is probably the most hipster-friendly coffee shop in the area. They were playing Black Flag on the speakers – I doubt Glass would be all that obnoxious to this set.
And now, I get ready to wear them to class (Law & Ethics of Mass Communication at TCU) for the first time. I’m very much looking forward to it – college students, particularly this generation, should be comfortable with new tech adoptions. I’m excited to show off Glass to some journalism profs as we come up with ways to introduce them to student reporters. I’ll feel most at home with Glass there, I hope, where I expect there to be more enthusiasm than fear or reflexive resentment about the presence of Glass.
I’ve alluded to my idea for a “Glassumentary” project in my Multimedia Storytelling course a few times in this blog. Today I got to take my first crack at putting together an edited version of what it looks like in my head.
Lehigh has an annual tradition for first-year students. They pull in with packed vehicles, and then volunteer students, faculty and staff unload the car and move everything up to the new student’s dorm room while the family gets to relax for a second. It’s a cool thing that I love about Lehigh; people from all over campus pitch in to help on Move-In Day in ways big and small.
Our provost, Pat Farrell, is one such volunteer. So along with Lehigh News, we worked to get him to wear Glass for a few minutes as he went about his routine. I captured some third-person candid and interview footage with my iPhone, and I went to work on Final Cut Pro putting together a rough sketch for a Glassumentary. This was finished and uploaded within four hours of me getting back to the office.
I’m going to go back and do some editing and stylizing, but I was trying to get a sense of what could be done on a medium-duty Glass project where there is some deadline pressure.
My idea for the Glassumentary is to take the third-person documentary format and turn the camera outward. My students do mini web documentaries in the class anyhow, but Glass is going to give us an opportunity to experiment with other forms of documentary-style stories. I’m very interested in the unique opportunity Glass affords us to transport the viewer into first-person mode both as a liberal arts educator and as a media producer.
Sure, we’ve had the ability to mount cameras on subjects before. But first-person style documentary storytelling has mostly been the domain of those who operate with high-production quality. Glass is easy and unobtrusive to use. I gave our provost about 5 minutes of training and off he went. The raw footage was pretty good too! I enjoyed watching just that as I went through to pull out moments.
I don’t expect my students to follow this format per se, but I do plan to show them this so they can start to think about what is possible. I didn’t storyboard this shoot, but I did do some planning about what kinds of footage I was expecting to see so I could mentally note parts I wanted to use later.
The Guardian recently published an interesting piece on Tim Pool, a journalist for Vice who has made a name for himself as a “mobile first-person journalist” over the past couple years. You may have seen his work on Occupy Wall Street.
Pool’s latest effort had him covering the protests in Istanbul, and he was using Glass as part of his coverage. At one point his video streams were being watched by about 750,000 people per day, according to the story.
“As soon as I saw Google Glass, I realised that it would allow me to do what I always do with this first-person live recording, but my hands would be free,” he says.
“I don’t want to stand filming in front of the water cannon and guys with Molotovs. I want to show you what it’s like to be there as best I can, even if that ends with me running full-speed into a cafe and rubbing lemons all over my face after being tear-gassed.”
Pool is the first journalist of any note to be producing material in the field using Glass, but he certainly won’t be the last. As a hands-free recording device, it offers other types of content production than a typical handheld device, although he did note that sometimes better quality matters.
Anyhow, an interesting read. Check it out. You can follow Pool’s work via his Google+ profile.
I’m Jeremy Littau, an assistant professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh University. My JOUR 230 Multimedia Storytelling course will be using Google Glass this fall and this will be a home for some of the results of that work. I’ll be posting work my class is doing, curating work done by journalists around the country, and putting up resource guides for best practices and configuration tips.
This is a conversation. Anything you have to add is welcome. Tweet me at @jeremylittau if you want to contribute!
