Silica Labs

We build and power beautiful apps for Google Glass. www.silicalabs.com

[silicalabs]

Five Surprising Things at Google I/O

Every year, Google I/O gives us developers the chance to step into the latest and greatest in developer news and consumer products. Two years ago it was Google Glass and last year it was the Google+ developments. This year was the year of the Android.

Here are five things we learned from this year’s I/O:

1.    More Women at Google I/O

Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President at Google, led the keynote with the announcement that 20 percent of the attendees were women, up from 8 percent last year. More than a quarter of the presenters were women this year, and Google announced an initiative to provide free coding lessons for women and minorities in technology.

2.    Integrating Google Glass & Android Wear

The Android Wear platform allows Android applications to push notifications to watches and users to take simple actions without having to access their phones. Google Glass will soon be integrated with Android Wear, giving Glass developers more capabilities and allowing Glass to be compatible with every Android application. This is a big step toward Google platforms working together as applications interact with Glass, phone or watch without any issues.

3.    Chromebooks Run Android Applications

Chromebook is beginning to adapt android applications, allowing users to move from their phones to Chromebooks seamlessly. This is significant because Android applications provide richer experiences than web applications. Having Android applications available on Chromebooks makes them far more appealing.

4.    Google’s Future at Project Tango

Never failing to impress its attendees, Google’s Advanced Technology and Products keynote had the participants riveted with Project Tango. The demonstrations included 3D room mapping as the tablet's sensors took 3D measurements in order to update its position and orientation. The early prototypes are still experimental, but it opens up new possibilities of reimagining recorded space.

5.    #Cardboard

Facebook bought Oculus Rift. Google made #cardboard. Once assembled, the corrugated cardboard becomes a Virtual Reality headset allowing you to put an Android phone inside and load up the companion Cardboard app. The virtual reality experience is complete with head tracking and exploring 360-degree panoramic photos. Integrating efficiency with simplicity makes #cardboard the most accessible Virtual Reality device in an otherwise fringe technology market.

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Google Glass, Wearables & the Future of Video

Antonio Zugaldia, our CTO, attended Kaltura Connect - the Video Experience Conference. The event was the fourth of its kind comprised of speakers, workshops and a weekend hackathon held in New York City. The event featured discussions on building video technologies, web video experiences and shaping the future of web video.

As one of the keynote speakers, Antonio joined dozens of inspiring leaders in digital media and discussed endless possibilities to improve video uses. He used Google Glass as an example of a wearable device that can capture and share video in unique ways.

As an experienced developer for wearable technology, he exposed several challenges when you design applications for wearable devices. He demonstrated that it is important to be “wearable first” in that you have to rethink and redesign your application to fit the wearable device. User expectations for the new device will be different, and therefore your design must meet those expectations.

Another challenge that he mentioned is that wearables are truly fragmented. Smart watch, google glass and other wearable devices do not have a common platform requiring further adaptation to accommodate the technology.

Antonio illustrated that wearable technology is newly emerging, but it is here to stay. The new technology has the potential to enhance video experience to be a more personal one.

Link to the full slide deck here. 

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Moto 360 Design Face-Off

Motorola launched the Moto 360 design Face-Off contest for their iconic round smartwatch. Check out our designer’s submission:

The device set to be released this summer is powered by the new Android Wear, a fully customised version of Android specifically developed and designed for wearable technology that leans heavily on the updated Google Now system. The Moto 360 will connect to your android device and provide intelligent updates. We visualized how a navigation app could be displayed on a smartwatch. See images here: (1) https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/WMZB2L7y_eISM8zxBGnhBYkRw4ORA-U8ddrZhZNsxaou=w271-h207-p-no (2) https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/O3YEqZKdvioQxbm9y8KZ2FRXXjHLvRgQ-rH-74WgjC-Z=w276-h207-p-no

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Finding Confidence in Crowds: YCombinator's Female Founders Conference

I often wonder why I didn’t choose to pursue a startup sooner. I think through the obvious challenges: the fast pace, steep technological curve, demand for creativity, and realize those don’t stack up to the hardest thing I face everyday: having confidence in myself.

I am a young, female, first-generation Vietnamese American. I’m used to not feeling successful because no one ever told me I was. Perhaps this feeling is amplified compared to most of my female peers because with immigrant parents, it is hard to find praise and support for pursuing anything but doctor/lawyer dreams. Women in general, are hyper-aware of how they are perceived in any sort of leadership position. The media portrays women in leadership as unnatural and extraordinary in some sense. Perhaps we are trained to think of ourselves that way because we often see upper-middle class white men holding those positions.

When I got the acceptance letter to the YCombinator Female Founders Conference, I had a bad feeling in the pit in my stomach just asking my two male co-founders for $430 from the startup budget for a plane ticket to California. Instead of jumping at the opportunity, I hesitated and wondered if I deserved to go. I didn’t want to be a financial burden. The reality is, not only did my co-founders strongly encourage me to apply, they reminded me that every minute of the trip would be worth it once I got in. And it was.

Unlike most conferences, the keynote speakers felt less like celebrities and more like human beings. This was the first time I felt that I could comfortably wear the title ‘co-founder’. The conference was a pivotal event for me because I realized it was okay to be a quiet leader. It was okay to ask questions, seek advice and not worry about coming off as naive.

The YC Female Founders Conference created an environment where I could feel confident about what I’ve achieved and what I am capable of. Having networks for support both professionally and personally is empowering. The event was a monumental step in the right direction-- I realized that self-confidence is key but confidence in numbers is what awakens a community.

Stephanie Nguyen Silica Labs cofounder & Lead Designer @nguyenist // [email protected]

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Half-Life Inbox: A Realistic Way to Tackle E-mail

Far too often, you go on vacation or take a few hours away from your digital device to... well, live your life. Quietly, while you were away, your inbox exploded with hundreds of messages. Once you get back from relaxing, these unread emails harass  you all week, just waiting to be answered.

At the beginning, it's easy to clean up messages (weekly newsletters, outdated notifications, conversations you are Cc-ed in). As you get closer to 0, simply archiving messages gets a little harder. You have emails you actually need to think about or that require you to do something, like pay a bill or (for me) redesign a website.  

What you’ve never seen (left) vs. Something we find more useful (right)

We’ve all been trained to believe the utopian “Inbox Zero” is a good thing, but it's unrealistic. There's always a minimum amount of emails flowing in your inbox and it’s too distracting to clean them up as they come in.

To catch up, it helps setting smaller goals and deadlines.

That’s why we’re introducing a little tool we called Half-Life Inbox. It’s a tool created by our CTO based on the “exponential decay model”  (yes, he is a physicist). The exponential decay model is typically used with radioactive materials.  Larger material decays more quickly at first and then the decay slows down--just like email.  Check out the Wikipedia chart to get a visual idea. Interestingly enough, the same half-life rules govern chemical reactions, electrostatics, fluid dynamics, geophysics, heat transfer, pharmacology and toxicology, and thermoelectricity. We are applying it to email.

Here’s how our Half-Life Inbox works. Input the number of emails you currently have, the number of emails you would like to have by your deadline and the number days you would like to take to reach your goal. Half-Life inbox uses the exponential decay model to map out the number of emails you need to get to by the end of each day until your deadline. You’ll be able to manage incoming emails as well, without feeling the pressure of a Zero inbox. (Our tool does not even provide an answer for getting to zero inbox, partly because of the good fortune that the exponential equation has no answer for zero.)  

Not only does Half-Life refer to the scientific model, it refers to the feeling that we spend half our lives on answering e-mails. Let’s change that and make realistic productivity goals in 2014. Hopefully this little tool can help with that. Enjoy.

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Announcing Wearab.ly

A few months ago, we released SimpleWing.com, a site enabling anyone to create an app for Google Glass with all the same functionality as the existing Glass apps for New York Times, CNN, or Elle. Except you wouldn’t have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to a developer and designer to build the apps. All you needed was an RSS feed--the same feed you used to power your iPhone or iPad apps. Or you could send an email or use our publishing studio to create and deliver Glass timeline cards.  

We launched with National Geographic, Techdirt, and the New America Foundation as partners. Over 100 organizations and individuals signed up and sent content to Glass through SimpleWing, including the CEO of Betaworks John Borthwick (creating a Digg app), the well-known foreign policy journalist Steven Clemons (creating the Washington Note app), the most popular political publication in Mexico (Animal Politico), and several football fanatics distributing news about the Ravens and Bills. A few journalists noticed us, announcing that we were “democratizing” apps for Google Glass and making Google Glass “as easy as an RSS tap” for publishers.  

Despite the positive feedback, we were always a little embarrassed by a few things. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's Executive Chairman, famously said, "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." So at least we didn’t launch too late...

Here are a few of the things that embarrassed us and that we're changing today to make our service better for our users:

1. The name: from SimpleWing to Wearab.ly. It’s hard to find a good URL. SimpleWing.com was the best we could do. Since then, after lots of brainstorming and searches on NameBoy.com and elsewhere, we found something we liked: wearab.ly. It combines wearable and technology into one lovely word. It also happens to follow the trend of startup names ending with “ly.” (A recent article was called: “Why the trend for misspelled words and -ly won’t go away.”) Since our product helps media companies, bloggers, and others get their content on wearable technology like Google Glass and smartwaches, the wearably name makes more sense.

So, today, we’re rebranding, changing our name to Wearably and our domain to http://wearab.ly.

2. The design. When we launched SimpleWing, our lead designer had not joined the company yet. The CTO and I were more focused on making the backend work with Glass than making the frontend look pretty on the web. People told us they thought the website looked nice, but we were never happy with it. Plus, Google has not yet announced an app store for Google Glass apps, so we had to build something like a Glass app store within our website so people could subscribe to different publications.

Over at wearab.ly, you’ll see that we now have a designer and the site looks much prettier and simpler. Also, because Google has made recent announcements moving towards an app store for Glass apps, our web presence can focus on helping publishers get on wearable devices, rather than also ensuring that users can subscribe to those publishers’ new apps. Instead, we will be able to provide embedded code and links to app stores that the publishers can include on their own sites. We only list a few featured apps at wearab.ly.

3. The pricing. We launched SimpleWing as a free service partly because we wanted to test user-interest for publishing on Google Glass and our main goal was to enable users to contribute and consume content on a new wearable device. We have now tested our software for a few months with many different feeds; we even rewrote much of our software recently, to make it pretty insanely reliable. As for pricing, we’re still a little confused, but all the startup advice out there points in the same direction: pricing a product is important to test the business model. Plus, we wanted to offer an enterprise version for large publishers, and have tested our software to ensure we can. We considered a few different paths for pricing--a set-up fee, a monthly software-as-a-service-fee, or some sort of fee for usage.

We have decided to go with a monthly, software-as-a-service fee. We will continue improving the service based on API changes, SDK features, and new devices, so delivering the software-code to a media company seemed less important than the monthly maintenance and improvement. Plus, we will be improving the service and adding new devices. Since it’s early in the evolution of wearable technology, we offer a few different plans, which are far, far less expensive than hiring an agency to build the apps for you. We are also grandfathering our current SimpleWing publishers (and their users) for three months, as a thank you to our early adopters, and migrating their accounts. If you are one of them, you received an email, and should let us know what you think.

Beyond the rebrand, we have some other big news.

More brand name users. We are now working with NPR (yes, that NPR) and Atlantic Media (yep, that one) distributing their content to wearable devices through our platform. We couldn’t be more excited to bring them to Google Glass.

Smartwatch integration. If you want news on your smartwatch, we’re working on it, and will release this functionality soon. We demoed an integration with the Sony SmartWatch 2. Sony even showcased the demo in its booth at Berlin IFA, which is essentially the European CES. We are working on integrating content onto other devices too, including the Pebble and, soon, the Samsung Gear watch.

If you would like to learn more (or otherwise say hi) just email us here: [email protected].

Love,

The Silica Labs Team

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Silica Labs CTO's European Tour Teaching Google Glass Development

Our CTO Antonio Zugaldia is very active in helping to build the software-ecosystem for Google Glass and wearable devices. To that end, he gives talks often about how to develop for Glass, from teaching a General Assemb.ly class to co-leading the DC Google Glass Meetup. 

Because we have trouble keeping up with him, we asked him for a list.

Antonio is speaking today in Tysons, VA at UberOffices at the Google Developers Group of DC on developing glassware for Glass.

He goes international and is speaking in Madrid, Spain, at GDG Devfest, a Google sponsored event for developers onSaturday November 9.  He is one of the keynotes and will discuss how to develop for Glass.

Organized by GrinUGR, he speaks at the University of Granada, his alma mater, in his home town, on Wednesday November 13. He is booked for the Aula Magna in the Faculty of Science. He will discuss Google Glass & Entrepreneurship in the US, something that he discussed on the largest news channel in Spain.

He then speaks in Barcelona on Sunday, Nov 17 at the CitiSense 2013 Conference, a WorldBank forum on SmartCities. He will discuss Wearable Devices and Smart Cities. He will discuss the role of software for smartwatches and heads up displays from law enforcement to citizen engagement to emergency response (his expertise at the World Health Organization for many years).

Finally, he speaks in Brussels to the BetaGroup, an community of entrepreneurs and co-working space, on Wednesday Nov 20. He will discuss development for Google Glass and how to make a business out of apps on wearable devices. Visit them at: http://www.betacowork.com

Antonio is also in San Francisco (the most European of American cities!) this coming week October 28-29, for the Samsung Developer Conference, where he’ll be wearing a Samsung Gear on his wrist and carrying the Note 3. If you’re there, let us know, because you should connect.

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Thursday's #WearableDigest: Wearable Devices to Watch!

What’s new in wearable technology news this morning!

Market and Competition

Who will wear wearable tech? (Brand-E) “Wearable computing is still in its infancy,” says Tom Buehrer, the senior vice president of TNS Global, . “The main challenge lies in convincing people of its value and developing a device with mass appeal."

8 Wearable Tech Devices To Watch (InformationWeek) InformationWeek goes beyond Google Glass to explore ground-breaking new wearable tech devices, "from a wristband that replaces passwords to a device that helps you read on the treadmill."

In Search of the Next Boom, Developers Cram Their Apps into Smart Watches (MIT Technology Review) What clever apps are needed to persuade people that they need a wrist-worn computer?

Future of Wearable

Hands-on with Google Glass: The developer perspective (VentureBeat) Google Glass developer Greg Kostello praises the social aspects of Glass, which he says is perfect for "geeky extroverts" like him.

My First 100 Days With Google Glass (ReadWrite) Google Glass developer Joshua Merrill asks important questions about the promise and shortcomings of Glass. He ends with the question, "So is Glass the future? Yes and no."

Xerox Corp. developing flexible technology (Democrat and Chronicle) Xerox is developing "electronic circuits...printed directly onto thin substrates durable enough to protect delicate circuitry from the stresses of being stretched and folded," which could be used in wearable tech.

Privacy and Security

Step Away from the Phone! (New York Times) Technology enthusiasts find ways to integrate devices into their lives in appropriate ways: "As smartphones continue to burrow their way into our lives, and wearable devices like Google Glass threaten to erode our personal space even further, overtaxed users are carving out their own device-free zones with ad hoc tricks and life hacks."

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How will technology change the future of education?

Every year technology reinvents the way in which teachers and students interact. It has been close to 30 years since computers began to be integrated into the education curriculum and since then they have become staples of the education system. Administrators, teachers and students rely on computers to create a dynamic learning environment. Recently, tablets have begun to gain a foothold within the education system. Some schools are requiring students and teachers to use tablets to enhance the curriculum by tracking student schedules, creating interactive lesson plans and providing environmentally conscious and up-to-date textbooks. The next step in this progression is wearable technology. Google is bring in some new ideas to education by hoping to provide it with a way to shape teacher and student interactions in ways never thought possible.

Join us on September 4th, for the Google Glass Washington DC Meetup “Wearable Technology and Future Education”. And what better place to continue to foster the conversation about technology and education than at Blackboard Headquarters? In 1997 Blackboard began filling the gap between technology and education by using technology to reach more students in immediate, personalized innovative ways. Our discussion at Blackboard will be moderated by Marvin Ammori, co-founder of Silica Labs, and includes the perspectives of ed-tech entrepreneurs, local teachers and school board members.

Panelists include:

John Fontaine: VP Glassware, Social Radar & Former Senior Director Platform Evangelist at Blackboard

Garren Givens: Presidential Innovation Fellow working on Open Data Initiatives at the Department of Education

Elizabeth Hoover: CTO, Alexandria City Public School, Guest panelist on WAMU 88.5 radio station on “Technology in the K-12 Classroom”

Ryan McElveen: Member At-Large of Fairfax County Public Schools, Researcher at The Brookings Institution

Madeline Pongor: President of Ed-Strong Foundation, Masters in Business and Public Policy Candidate at Georgetown

We look forward to seeing you on September 4th and if you’re interested in receiving updates on the wearable tech industry please sign up for our wearable tech digest [here].

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Demo Kit: Presenting Glass to Developers (Part 2)

One of the questions you’ll get often when demoing Glass is whether you personally believe Google is going to succeed with Glass. This is a good moment to share with the audience a few key ideas—useful as an introduction to explaining the Mirror API, the GDK, and Glassware in general:

Google Glass is an open platform for any developer to create the glassware they want. When the iPhone was released we needed to wait a year for an SDK. With Google Glass, the device hasn’t even been released and yet there’s an API, and there’s a SDK in the works (GDK).

Glass will succeed if the users find it useful, and for that, a fair part of the responsibility is on us, third-party developers and early adopters. If we can come up with Glassware people love, Glass will be successful. Otherwise, it might not be.

Importantly, there’s a growing community of users and developers in the US and internationally. Whenever possible, remind your audience of engaging with the local groups and contribute in whatever way they see fit. In DC, for example, the Google Glass meetup has over 350 members already and holds monthly meetups and happy hours.

    But what is Glassware exactly?

Many people have heard, and this is especially true for technical audiences, that Glass is an Android device. Because of that, they tend to think that developing glassware is like developing for yet another Android screen resolution. However, this is not the case with the Mirror API. That’s why it’s usually worth mentioning the following:

Developing Glassware for Glass using the Mirror API is closer to developing a webapp than an Android app. In fact, there is an advantage to having web-development knowledge to create your own Glassware.

The Mirror API is a RESTful API you can use from Python, Java, PHP and other well known server-side languages. Libraries are readily available.

To underline this point, it is always useful to show the communication diagram (below) between Glass — Google’s cloud — and your Glassware. Something I used to do but that doesn’t seem to help is to show an actual REST request. Most developers use a library to encapsulate this behaviour and showing a raw request is confusing at best.

Mention that a GDK is in the works. At that point, developing for Glass may be more like developing for Android.

Getting Glassware

Now that we’ve discussed an overview of developing Glassware, let’s dive into a demo. There’s nothing to install in Glass and at this point there’s no “app store” for Glass. I like showing the New York Times authorization process as an example of getting basic Glassware.

  Native glassware and the Glass Development Kit (GDK)

Many developers are doing really cool stuff with Glass by hacking its core, replacing the OS or simply sideloading APK packages. This is the beginning of what we’ll be able to do with the GDK in the future.  Check out the Voiding Your Warranty: Hacking Glass session for a really cool demo.

Obviously, some of this Glassware is getting a lot of attention from the press. However, most Glassware is actually Mirror API-based and only a few adventurous developers are doing native Glassware at the moment. It’s important to let developers know that, at this point, they have a better chance at getting their Glassware used by Explorers if they use the Mirror API than going native or side-loading packages.

If you need some more technical slides for your next presentation, feel free to recycle this one I used for an introductory Glass class with General Assembly.

  Final words 

I hope this series is helpful when preparing your next demo. Whether you use some of this material or not, I’d love to hear from anyone demoing Glass and showing the world what this amazing technology is capable of.

Antonio is an experienced developer and CTO of Silica Labs in Washington, DC. He is a Google Glass Explorer and a winner of the Glass Foundry hackathon organized by Google in New York. He co-organizes the Google Glass and GDG meetups in DC, taught the the Google Glass class for General Assembly in NYC, and has presented Google Glass to numerous audiences, including recently the Federal Communications Commission, Kaiser Permanente, and National Geographic.

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Google has new patents, facial apps and space in Best Buy

Today in Glass: 

Market and Competition 

Google Acquires Wearable Tech Patents (CIOToday) Google acquired patents from Foxconn and Hon Hai for head mounted displays, projecting computer images, and gaming and training simulations.  We should see these patents result in hands-free interactions like we have with smartphones, which will really open up the opportunities for applications. 

Google Glass Coming to Best Buy in 2014 (TechCrunch)  Google will rent out space in Best Buys to showcase Glass in 2014.  The cost will be not be $299.

Future of Glass  

Glass Apps Reads Human Emotion Could Improve Lives of People with Autism (DailyMail)  Sension calculates facial expressions using 78 points on the face that come together to form expressions.  Despite Google shying away from facial recognition software, the feature is proving an important aspect of Glass for enhancing the lives of those with autism and Alzheimer's. 

Privacy and Security  

Google Glass Security and Privacy Worries Complicate Wide Adoption  (eWeek)  A system presented at Black Hat in July called CreepyDOL highlighted how much information people leak into the digital world just by walking around with a smartphone or tablet.  

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How to Demo Glass to Glass Developers

Antonio is an experienced developer and CTO of Silica Labs in Washington, DC. He is a Google Glass Explorer and a winner of the Glass Foundry hackathon organized by Google in New York. He co-organizes the Google Glass and GDG meetups in DC, taught the the Google Glass class for General Assembly in NYC, and has presented Google Glass to numerous audiences, including recently the Federal Communications Commission, Kaiser Permanente, and National Geographic.

Demoing Glass

You are in front of an expectant audience, your Glass screencast is ready and projected onto the big auditorium screen. You can’t wait to fire up Glass and start impressing everybody with its features. Hold on for a second.

    What Glass Is Not

  As important as showing what Glass can do, is explaining what Glass does not do. There are many misconceptions around Glass and it’s important to address them up front:

  Explain the screen is above your eye and normally turned off. This means that Glass is not always-on virtual reality and you keep eye contact with the person you’re talking to.

If you get a notification you get a ping behind your ear through bone conduction audio. There’s no earpiece. You can choose to ignore the notification and the screen won’t even turn on.

By default Glass is doing nothing. In particular, it is not taking pictures, video, or collecting any personal data. We cannot see you naked either. You know Glass is being used if the screen is on.

After pointing this out, a good segway into the next section is to turn on the screencast and take a picture of the audience (preferably using voice commands), they love seeing it appear on the big screen.

  What Glass Is

  Before jumping into demoing third-party glassware (the focus of the next post in this series) it’s good to describe the physical features of Glass. That way, the audience will understand the common features of Glass devices and what functionality glassware can leverage.

  Describe its main components: the display, the photo/video button, battery and audio, on/off button, USB charger, and so on. If you’re in front of a large audience, you can use an app like Photo Booth (Mac) to use your webcam video feed to show Glass in greater detail.

  When explaining the basic use, I have learned a few things from experience:

  A great way to start a demo is explaining that you can control Glass fundamentally in three ways: gestures, touch, and voice.

You should show that you can wake up and sleep Glass by lifting your head, gently.

Google searches are great if you have an Internet connection available. Some examples you want to try:

  Translations: “How do you say hamster in Japanese”, or “How do you say peacock in Italian?”

Facts: “Who is the President of the United States?” [wait for the response]. Then Google again “How old is he?” to demo conversational searches.

Weather: “Do I need an umbrella today?” or “Do I need an umbrella tomorrow?”

Know your audience: Prepare one question your audience is gonna be personally interested in, for example: “Who are the founders of the National Geographic Society?”

Use the browsing capabilities to show, for example, a Wikipedia article. Then, use two fingers on the right side to select a link to click as you look around. Pro tip: YouTube videos work as well!

Directions are always a winner (make sure wifi and GPS are on in your connected smartphone). Look around to update the directions on the map.

If you want to show an example of the sensors in Glass, modify the wake up angle in front of your audience. Generally the audience won’t forget this and talk about it afterwards. If you have enough time you could alternatively show the 360 easter egg picture of the Glass team.

    To show slides or not to show

  I recommend avoiding slides whenever possible. The demo will flow much better if you just focus on the device and project the timeline onto a screen as the main thread of your story (demo). You can even use the Glass Playground to create your own slides within Glass (no need to be a developer for this).

  For those situations where it is absolutely necessary to have some slides it’s a good idea to keep them to a bare minimum. In this case, use the slides to go through some specifications or to address some frequently asked questions early on. Feel free to use these slides any time you want.

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Apple is Coming. Winter is Coming. Then We Get Glass.

Yea I overplayed the Game of Thrones theme but let's be honest we are all missing Game of Thrones a little.  If not, guess I dropped the ball on that one!  But seriously, pieces in the wearable world are moving and they are moving fast.  If you don't believe me, read the signs below. 

Market and Competition 

Apple is Coming The wearable market is exploding and Apple is gearing up for battle.  Who's on the team: Jay Blahnik, who was behind the design for the Nike FuelBand, and Paul Deneve, former Yves St Laurent executive.  This is looking like a formidable team to bring fitness and design together under Apple's simplistic innovative vision.  

Future of Glass

Google Glass Isn't Coming Until 2014  Glass is waiting for the winter thaw. A report ComputerWorld says 2014 is the year for Glass. We were just hopeful for a Christmas #throughGlass.  

Privacy and Security 

Google Glass Patent Tracks What You Watch  Google's Pay Per Gaze patent will allow a new advertising platform that will thereby allow Google to track which ads capture your eyes the most.  Here's the answer to monitizing ads on Google Glass. 

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Tuesday's Wearable Digest: When and Where Can You Wear Glass?

What's new in wearable technology news this morning!

Market and Competition

Sorry, no Google Glass this holiday season (CNBC) Reports indicate that Google Glass's release date has been pushed back to 2014, so gadget lovers everywhere may have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on a pair.

Why Microsoft needs to worry about Google Glass (ComputerWorld) A blogger makes the case for why Microsoft should expand into wearable technology for the workplace.

Future of Glass

Theater of the Streets, Shot On Google Glass (Time) Emmy award-winning producer and photojournalist Richard Koci Hernandez has used his Google Glass to post "noir-style street photos" to his Instagram account (koci_glass) with nearly 5,000 followers. Hernandez thinks that Glass is the "newest tool in the arsenal" for photographers and photojournalists.

Privacy and Security

Google Glass is officially unwelcome at Guantánamo Bay’s war court (Quartz) Google Glass and other "visual enhancement devices" are not allowed inside Camp Justice at Guantánamo Bay.

Inspiration of the Day

Explorer Story: Alex Blaszczuk (YouTube) After a car accident paralyzed her from the chest down, Alex Blaszczuk partnered with Google and is using Glass to regain her independence. She says,"Google Glass doesn’t somehow 'fix' a disability. But, it is a more accessible tool for self-expression. The more we enable people with disabilities to share their stories and passions, the more they become people, rather than tragic or heroic stereotypes. And while I am still fighting my own battle to get back on track, I look forward to being a lawyer, activist, and voice in the push to end marginalization."

[silicalabs]

Let's Talk about Advertising on Glass

Pay Per Gaze Will Create Personalized Advertisement on Google Glass

Initially, Google said they weren't going to do advertisements on Glass but, they filed a patent in May 2011 for a gaze tracking technique implemented with a "head mounted gaze tracking device that communicates with a server." This patent is behind Google's possible "Pay Per Gaze" feature which could expand revenue through advertisement for Glass.  So it seems Google's commitment to 'no ads' was just in regard to the way we know advertisements today.  

Wearable technology is a new challenge for advertisers and for technology creators since advertisements often translate into huge portions of profit for companies, big and small.   Pay Per Gaze would track how many times a consumer looks at a branded content and could use that information to tap into a users interest in a brand.  

Using Glass is a personal experience and with the limited screen real estate and close proximity to the eye, traditional advertising techniques weren't going to cut it.  I can imagine being at the mall and passing by a shop which happens to be a brand I frequent when online shopping.  An advertisement pops up for 20% off that day. Sold! My shopping experience has been made easier, I saved some money, and the ad wasn't obtrusive or irrelevant.  And that's not even the best example out there.  

How would you feel about an automated and personalized advertisement system?  

Soucrce: TheDroidGuy

Market and Competition

Google Glass Opens New Doors for Mobile Payments (MontgomeryAdvertiser) Mobile payments on Glass...imagine the possibilities with Pay Per Gaze!  

Why Microsoft Needs to Worry About Google Glass (ComputerWorld) Glass has big potential in the big enterprise space and who is looking to capitalize in that market?  Microsoft.  Time to get working. 

Future of Glass 

Google Glass Reborn as Something You'd Actually Want to Wear (Wired) Meron Gribetz wants to Glass to look like a pair of Ray Bans and is the man behind Meta, a company building glasses to connect to your technology and enable your creativity. 

Glass Hack for Prescription Lenses  (PSFK) Now for one of the last pieces that kept Glass from working like an actual pair of glasses. 

[silicalabs]

Wearbale Daily Digest - 2013 Is Shaping Up to be a Big Year in Wearables and Tech

Let's Look at Smartwatches and Apple's New OS with Biometrics

Samsung will introduce their Galaxy Gear next month, a smartwatch that can make phone calls, browse the internet and support email.  The Galaxy Gear will run on the Google Android OS in a competitive attempt to beat out the Apple Watch.  

With no release date for the Apple Watch, Samsung may be able to get a head start on capturing the niche market of the global watch industry which is set to generate $60 billion in sales in 2013.  

So, you've probably heard the rumors buzzing about the new iPhone 5S coming out this fall which could feature a home button fingerprint scanner. We don't want to belabor the excitement but a biometric kit on iOS 7 may create a flurry of security and privacy concerns.   Remember when everyone realized Facebook was using biometrics in their photo-tagging feature?  And when Google Glass was hacked to support facial recognition apps?  These types of announcements typically lead people to imagine a world where they are never alone and always being watched.  But really, are our lives that interesting... 

Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook, among others, have had run ins with privacy and data protection but yet consumers increasingly trust these companies to provide cutting edge technology and products that make our daily lives easier and more connected.  So, despite the "creep factor" surrounding biometrics, Apple's foray into the space could make a huge step in consumer trust thereby opening the door for wearable technology. 

Want to know more about biometrics?  Here's a detailed overview of biometrics - page 7 looks into privacy and other concerns.  

In other news: 

Mercedes is Testing Google Glass Integration (Wired) It works!  Now that Tesla in your garage has to make space for your new Mercedes-Benz!

Meditate With Glass (wildmind) Wildmind's Bodhipaksa finds that Glass is great for recording guided meditations and sees potential for sharing mindfulness practices throughout your day with others in the community using Glass video and audio.  

Google Glass is So Vogue Right Now (Mashable) Who has a 12-page editorial and is the hottest new accessory for fashion models?  That's right, Google Glass is - Vogue hits stands this week!

[silicalabs]

Thursday's Wearable Digest: Searching for the Middle Ground Between Innovation and Privacy

Today's wearable technology news explores a lot of important questions around the proliferation of wearable devices.

Market and Competition

What Wearable Technology Means to the Future of Marketing (Clickz) Marketers looking to improve their mobile strategies are betting on the future of wearable devices. With a market likely to produce "several winners and many niche players," wearable tech is an exciting new field for marketing opportunities.

Future of Glass

A look into the mind-bending Google Glass of 2029 (CNET) Though the Google Glass of today seems pretty futuristic already, what will Glass be able to do in 2029? CNET takes a look and makes some predictions.

The Next Big Thing In Enterprise IT: Bring Your Own Wearable Tech? (Forbes) As wearable technology proliferates, we will inevitably see more of it in the workplace, which presents new challenges and opportunities.

Privacy and Security

Google Glass sees all— and that raises privacy concerns (Phys.org) Glass's "in-your-face quality" is waking up people to their privacy sphere in the advancing digital age.

Privacy: Google Glass and other technology bring new concerns (San Jose Mercury-News) Silicon Valley legislator Nora Campos writes that she's "searching for that middle ground where we allow innovation to thrive because we've done enough to allay privacy concerns."

Inspiration of the Day

How Google Glass Lets a Half-Deaf Person Hear (Fast Company) David Trahan, a Google Glass explorer who is half-deaf, discovered that he was able to hear the sounds emitted by Google Glass due to its bone conduction audio technology.