The Impending Headache of Google Glass Apps

Jessica Leber

May 17, 2013

Glass apps will require people to create new content filters. Maybe that’s just a losing battle.

 
Glass office hours at Google I/O this week. Will these desks one day be as common as the Apple genius bar?
 

Would you want your daily horoscope beamed to your right eye? That’s the vision of the future I saw when I tried out the fashion magazine Elle’s app for Google Glass yesterday, one of several apps announced at the extravagant software developer love-fest the internet company puts on every year.

Smartphone Tracker Gives Doctors Remote Viewing Powers

Here’s the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble.

• By Tom Simonite on May 17, 2013

Why It Matters

Patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes could benefit if doctors had a way to tell when they stopped taking their medication.

Tracking you: The Ginger.io app tries to detect health changes by monitoring a person’s phone use.

At the Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, nurses can see into the lives of some diabetes patients even when they’re not at the clinic. If a specific patient starts acting lethargic, or making lengthy calls to his mom, a green box representing him on an online dashboard turns yellow, then red. Soon, a nurse will call to see if he is still taking his medication.

Treading Carefully, Google Encourages Developers to Hack Glass

Breaking its own restrictions, Google will show developers how to build any kind of app for Google Glass.

• By Jessica Leber on May 15, 2013

Why It Matters

Google Glass represents the cutting edge of a new form of computing.

Glass full: Google cofounder Sergey Brin wears Google Glass at an event held at UCSF in February.

Google has set plenty of restrictions on the functionality of apps for Glass, the head-mounted display it is now shipping out to early adopters. At the company’s annual developer conference, I/O, which kicks off today, it will show app creators how to break those rules.

New Kind of LED Could Mean Better Google-Glass-Like Displays

Micro-display LED tech could light up the next generation of face-wearable gadgets.

• By Rachel Metz on May 13, 2013

Why It Matters

As wearable technology becomes more prevalent, we’ll need small displays that are brighter and more efficient.

Blue chip: Lumiode tests out a blue LED.

A tiny head-mounted display, like the one in Google Glass, will only be useful if you can see on-screen alerts and information clearly. And that’s tricky to achieve, especially without draining battery life—as Google notes, it can be hard to use Glass’s projected display in bright sunlight.

With Personal Data, Predictive Apps Stay a Step Ahead

Apps that proactively help people with their lives represent a significant departure from earlier approaches to software.

• By Tom Simonite on May 13, 2013

Why It Matters

Software that delivers information before we ask for it could make our lives easier.

Part of our Business Report:

Big Data Gets Personal

Data science and personal information are converging to shape the Internet’s most powerful and surprising consumer products.

Promptomatons: Phone software mines personal data to cue up reminders and weather reports.

A new type of mobile app is departing from a long-standing practice in computing. Typically, computers have just dumbly waited for their human operators to ask for help. But now applications based on machine learning software can speak up with timely information even without being directly asked for it. They might automatically pull up a boarding pass for your flight just as you arrive at the airport, or tell you that current traffic conditions require you to leave for your next meeting within 10 minutes.

Facebook Reacts to Criticisms of “Home” App; Promises Upgrades

A month after the release of Home, Facebook is working to answer criticisms with improvements.

• By Rachel Metz on May 9, 2013

Why It Matters

Facebook hopes to reinvent the smartphone interface in its own image.

Growing home: Facebook’s Home app running on an HTC First smartphone.

Facebook Home—an app for Android smartphones that provides users with a constant stream of images, messages, and updates from friends on the social network—launched with fanfare a month ago along with the promise that additional features would be added shortly (see “The Facebook Phone Is Finally Here, but Who Wants It?”). Now, as some users level poor reviews at the app, the team behind it is focused on making those upgrades happen—and fast.

Want to See What it's Like to Wear Google Glass?

Rachel Metz

May 8, 2013

 

You can’t wear Google Glass–yet–but you can get a glimpse of what it will look like.

 

 An image taken by tech blog Mashable shows what it’s like to wear Google Glass, up-to-date sports scores and all.

If, like most of us peons, you haven’t gotten a chance to try out Google Glass, there’s now a way to get a sense of what it’s like to take it–and its virtual display–for a spin.