The development of Google's Project Glass is moving along nicely, and with the search giant having promised to release a November software update at some point this month, version XE11 brings a healthy amount of new features for those in ownership of the Explorer Edition to enjoy.
Google's Glass is still in beta, and as such, has only been offered to select individuals thus far. The Explorer Edition now has a more relaxed program allowing a broader range of interested parties to get involved, but selling the device on has hitherto been strictly prohibited. While the resale of Glass is still very much against the search company's terms of service, Google will no longer be deactivating the wearable tech if users are caught doing so, something that has occurred up until now. So, in essence, it's still an illegal act, but in this case, the police (being Google) will be turning a blind eye to those looking to sell Glass for potential profit.
Google Glass has almost become old news at this point, and will possibly remain that way until the device either gets a major redesign or becomes available to the public. Google did offer a minor redesign of the Glass hardware very recently, dubbed as Google Glass v2, but it managed to fall considerably short of where we had all hoped it would go. Prescription lenses are all well and good Google, but if you still look like you're walking around with a tube of candy stuck to your ear, the game's up.
Google glass may be losing some of its shine as the novelty wears off for some of us, but that hasn't stopped Google from building on its original design and trying to come up with a better version. Now, a day after offering existing members of its Explorer program the opportunity to exchange their Glass for a new one, Google has showed off what the new model looks like.
Next year should follow the usual prose when it comes to the technology industry, but one project that stands out as, quite literally, a potential eye-opener, is Google's Glass. Having first been teased last year, it has been developed and enhanced considerably during its tenure as the Big G's most exciting up-and-coming, and such is the level of work being put in behind the scenes, that it would seem as though the search giant is already working on a model beyond the inaugural Google Glass Explorer Edition.
When it comes to emerging products in mobile space, Samsung is very rarely caught off the pace, and following the release of the Galaxy Gear - the first smartwatch effort from any of the big names in tech - it now looks as though the company is going to create a product rivaling that of Google's Glass. According to industry insider Eldar Murtazin, the South Korean outfit is working on its own pair of digital spectacles, which Murtazin is touting for a spring release under the "Gear Glass" brand. More details can be found right here.
It's fairly safe to say at this point that there is no love lost between Google and Apple, and the latter has used its Siri digital assistant to poke fun at some of Google's properties in the past. With that in mind, it's no great surprise that Siri is in fact no great fan of what is perhaps Google's most popular product that nobody can buy.
Google Glass has made waves since the search giant first announced the project last year, and with many developers and creatives currently testing and helping to enhance the wearable tech ready for launch early next year, we've just caught wind of the kind of price point we should be expecting. Glass has long since been perceived as an expensive gadget, and as such, many analysts and commentators have been quick to suggest that $1000+ would simply be too steep a climb for the average consumer. But if a report originating from the China Post carries any weight, the actual retail cost of Glass will be significantly cheaper than that.
Home automation has long been one of the things people point to when trying to explain what they think the future will look like. We'd have to put Google Glass in the same bracket - Glass is something that at the moment seems ahead of its time, but we can totally see it being the norm in another ten or twenty years, even if it doesn't take off all that quickly in the next two or three.
Google Glass may only be in the hands of developers, creative individuals and one or two competition winners, but that hasn't prevented the world of tech from getting itself excited about the search giant's wearable tech. Last month, we saw one such creative, Adam Bell, had managed to route iOS notifications through to Glass using a contraption he'd thrown together, and now, a tweak has emerged offering a simpler way for such a process to be achieved. More details and where to download from, can be found right after the break.
