My six weeks with Google Glass
Google Glass may be the product you’ve heard most about without ever having been able to try. It’s certainly still a hot ticket item: the company is set to unveil new, limited edition frames for Google Glass from fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. But in terms of its actual functionality, not that many people can say they’ve gotten a chance to really ingrain the technology into their daily life.
That’s why Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent for the BBC, has been rocking Google’s frames for six weeks, and fielding questions about the device from curious strangers. The most common question: “What’s it for?”
Cellan-Jones says it’s great for taking pictures, but he found that the Glass’s voice command feature – the easiest way to navigate through its interface – had trouble translating from “English English” to “American English”:
“I wanted to put a caption on a photo I took of my garden. And I wanted to say, ‘Garden looking unusually tidy,’ in a rather British way, and it came out as, ‘Gordon looking for usual Thai tea.’
Unfortunately, translation issues aren’t the only problem Cellan-Jones found with the smart frames. He says that because of its lack of functions, and its generally clunky feel, Google Glass is still a ways off from being the must-have item that everyone will rush to buy.
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