Extendiality

Google Glass With Prescription Lenses

Mar 28

Many of those, wearing prescription lenses, wonder, if they are able to attach Google Glass to them.

There was some info from the project team that they are working on it and now here is the picture of Greg Priest-Dorman (one of the members of the Glass team) with a prototype attached to the regular prescription lenses. Looks cool.

Many of us have some vision problems and either do not want to use contact lenses or cannot due to high eye sensitivity and so on. Nice to see that Google thinks of this category of potential Glass users and works on the special edition for them.

Google Glass Banned In Seattle Bar

Mar 26

Google Glass will definitely face huge resistance from some groups of people, who are afraid of the privacy.

In my opinion, danger is a bit exaggerated. Michael Bloomberg, mayor of the New York city, said recently that surveillance cameras will be placed on autonomous drones, flying around. And he gave advise: “Just get used to it!”. Even now it is easy to get everything about you by checking you phone cell data, credit card usage and your own public tags — Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook.

So, we are watched more and more, no big issue if someone also makes a photo of you. But drones do not post their pics on Facebook for all to see (yet 🙂 how drunk you were last night :). And this is the main concern – not everyone want their pictures to be publicly available on the web.

By the way, Facebook is testing their feature of face auto-recognition. You will be able to remove tag, but there can be lots of views before you do that.

Bar in Seattle (ok, this is more marketing thing than real protest, so here is the name — The 5 Point Cafe) already banned Google Glass proactively in their premises. They say, people visit them to have fun and not be afraid of someone making pictures of them. Reasonable.

I predict, this type of places, where “Google Glass” style devices are banned, will be quite popular in the beginning. And I still wonder, how long will it take for people to get used to Google Glass and stop being afraid of a, so called, “Facebook eye“, watching their every step?

My opinion, this will be soon. Even now you can grab a smartphone and make a discredit picture quite quickly. Why don’t you do it all the time? Because it is dirty. Google Glass makes it easier, but reasons for not using it for shooting inappropriate pictures and videos are the same.

So, would you take Google Glass off or just find another bar?

Ingress Conversion Script Is Open Source Now

Mar 26

As you have probably already heard, Ingress Intel Total Conversion script development has been shut down as it violated Google TOS.

Amazing. I would hire that guy (Stefan Breunig) to Niantic Labs straight away, but they forced him to shut the project down? The plugin, which was extremely popular and far more advanced than the original map.

But good news is that project is still alive! It is now in open source phase and latest updates can be found here.

Of course, Niantic can think of something else to block the data flow, though this can be difficult as plugin works on the client side and just transforms information in a different way. In other words, data for all these awesome features is already coming from Niantic servers, but is not implemented in the original Intel map yet.

Probably, Google just wants to slowly roll these features out, but it is still not an excuse to ignore and bull the creator of such a useful plugin. I believe, this contradicts with Google’s promotion of open-source and transparency (take Android system, for example).

Making Ingress Better – Part 4

Mar 20

Fouth post concluding your suggestions of how to make Ingress better. Got some interesting feedback to share. Previous are here, here and here.

9) Ingress mobile app

Come on! It is so awkward, everything is messed up. Thanks God, we have at least a basic filter, but this is clearly not enough. Here are some ideas:
Portal keys should be filtered by Own faction / Enemy Faction / Neutral. Passkeys are used to recharge and link, I do not care about those which do not belong to me at the moment. I am just wasting my time going into it and checking, whether I am able to recharge or not.
Portal keys should have indication of portal level charge. Again, I want to pick up those, which really need my precious XM, right? 🙂
You should be able to trade not needed Resonators and XMPs for the ones you need between own faction’s members or/and with system. Exchange rates can be established, for example, 5 * XMP L1 for 1 * XMP L2. Exchange can be done in person via NFC chipsets (many smartphones already have it). This ensures that game’s “socializing aspect” is still kept. Also, this became important when the 2000 limitation was introduced.
Auto-hack. This is a bit contradictory as makes Agents’ life easier. But logic is simple: many people hack nearby portals while driving and trying to do it at the same time could lead to car accidents. Yes, their own fault, but I still hope Google introduces this feature.

10) Notifications

Suggestions include:

Notification of the attack. Currently, notification is sent only if resonator is already dead. Something like “Hello, your entity is destroyed, enjoy your meal!”. While you still can try to switch on Ingress and recharge left resonators, in most cases, it is already useless.. So, there should be an option to request notification every time there is an XMP blast around.
Sound / vibration notifications for COMM chat. Some users find it useful, why not?
Widgets for mobile desktop. These can include current XM level, AP, MU controlled in given area, etc. Can be an issue with server load, but anyway worth mentioning.

To be continued…

Samsung Galaxy S4 Augmented Features

Mar 15

There was a huge presentation of the new Samsung Galaxy S4 device. This blog is not really about all these mobile gadgets; there are plenty of such websites on the Internet. But there are couple of interesting augmented features I noticed.

Actually four, to be more precise. Two of them track your eyes: Smart Pause puts video on pause, when you stop watching it and Smart Scroll will scroll webpage or a book, when you look at the bottom of the screen.

Other two track gestures. Air Gesture “sees” hand movements and allows to show next pic from the gallery, for example. Air View shows letter contents, when you just point finger at the header (without even touching the screen). Same for thumbnails in gallery.

Small enhancements, but they are those small bricks that bring closer augmented future and seamless interaction with gadgets.

Google Glass Allows You To Feel

Mar 14

Good pic, which illustrates my yesterday’s post about Google Glass and how it helps to stay in reality.

As you probably know, Catholic Church has elected a new Pope. Picture below is from the Saint Peter’s Square, where people are greeting him.

I think, you agree that most of them are religious persons and this moment means a lot for them. This is why almost all of them are making videos on their smartphones, tablets and cameras.

The result — they miss that very special spiritual moment an cannot enjoy it to the full extent.

And this is the situation, where Google Glass could be very handy.

Google Glass Hands-On Experience

Mar 13

Are you ready for future? For Google Glass? Hope, some of you took a chance to get their Glass by participating in the contest.

The Verge journal published a remarkable “hands-on” testing of Google Glass by Joshua Topolsky. There are both experience described in the article as well as video. This is particularly interesting as now it is not a polished marketing teaser, but an actual opinion of a very judicial columnist.

And he met with the most important Google Glass employees — Product Director and Chief Designer.

The idea behind Glass is very simple. You cannot avoid using modern gadgets, but it results in “living” inside them. You do not belong to reality anymore, you are in smartphone now. Goal is to make interaction as smooth as possible without distracting you from the beauty of the world around.

Joshua even asks, — “Isn’t it weird that to become more “human” we need to augment with Glass?”. Yes, that’s the paradox.

There will be different colors to match your personality, some parts will be detachable (probably, to change colors easily). Cooperation with fashion companies like Ray-Ban can be a possibility. Google Glass device needs to be not only perfect in technical sense, but also appealing as an accessory. It should be attractive as it will be placed on the “strategically important” part of our body — the face.

Version for normal prescription glasses is also on its way. Additionally, you are able to attach a “sunglasses” lens to Google Glass and it becomes even more stylish.

Joshua admits that walking around is simply awesome and adds the whole new layer of reality. I strongly encourage you to read and then check the video.

By the way, just got information that there are already some widely used apps ported to Glass. For example, Gmail and Evernote. And this is only the beginning.

The picture, which illustrates emotions, is simply this one: