By: Orville Wright
Many of us spend a significant portion of our day glued to our smartphones, or to other connected devices. Reading social media or checking out the weather or otherwise dipping into the wealth of data at our disposal will typically consume all of our attention, making it hard to do anything else.Google Glass might offer a solution to this problem, giving us a way of using the outboard brain of the internet while still being able to do other things. The first Glass units have been with early adopters since April and Google is using this semi-public testing period to fine tune the device for general consumption, as well as get the world used to the idea of wearables.
Google Glass features
Essentially, Google Glass is a wearable Android-powered computer built into spectacle frames so that you can perch a display in your field of vision, film, take pictures, search and translate on the go as well as run specially-designed apps.
Google Glass uses a miniature display to put data in front (or at least, to the upper right) of your vision through a prism screen. This is designed to be easily seen without obstructing your view.
Google Glass specifications
Current versions of Glass offer a 640 x 360 display. According to Google the display is the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away. There is a 5 megapixel camera built-in to the frame that can also capture video at 720p resolution. The rechargeable battery lasts for roughly a day, although that’s with the standard, which probably excludes a lot of video capture or playback.There’s 16GB of flash memory built into the device, although only 12GB is currently available for user storage. The device will sync to your Google Drive, giving you both a place to stash your photos and video clips as well as a stash of documents and files you can call up from the cloud. It’s important to note that there may be restrictions on when you use Glass, both legal and social. Indeed, one early adopter has already been arrested for driving while distracted by her Google Glass headset. On the other side of the legal side, another member of the Google Glass Explorer program became the first Glass user to film an arrest using his headset.