Despite my sarcastic tweet from last night, I am actually intrigued by Google Glass (and I even believe that Google Plus will matter as Google is all in). First, as Fred pointed out yesterday, Google’s machine learning capabilities are a key enabler for making Glass useful. You need voice commands to change Glass is doing or displaying and Google’s speech recognition is exceptionally good. Second, only a technology such as Glass will make augmented reality a viable experience. Holding up a phone is simply not compelling. Third, the success of GoPro shows clearly that people have a desire to record their experiences. When I was just skiing in Alta, my guess is as many as 1 in 20 skiers was wearing some kind of camera. Fourth, it’s not hard to come up with real world applications. For example, I recently drove a BMW with a head up display for navigation that was excellent and Glass could provide that experience (it will be interesting to see what the safety implications are). Of course the most likely early use cases will be for police and military but eventually I can see many specific professional applications (eg construction, medecine, etc). So good for Google to be pushing the envelope here and even showing off that they know how to make Twitter work for them in promoting Glass!
