Googlers in Glasses, left to right: Steve Lee, Isabelle Olsson, Babak Parviz, Sergey Brin.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)
In a press conference at Google I/O, Google’s Sergey Brin said the idea of Google Glasses was to make users, “less a slave to your device.” You won’t have to reach into your pocket for simple notifications or to take a picture, he said.
“It’s not for reading a book,” he said, “although you could do that. It’s for catching a text, or a picture… I just took one of you now.”
While a pair of Google Glasses will be tethered to a smartphone when out and about, Brin said that “at home or work you don’t need it,” implying that the headset could also work as an accessory on a WiFi network.
He said that the Explorer Edition for developers, announced today, is “not the consumer edition.” When the product ships, he said, it will be at a “significantly lower cost,” than the $1,500 developers’ product. But it won’t be a commodity product, he said, “hopefully not something ending in 99.” The final price has not been set, “but we do view this as a premium thing. Our focus is the quality of the experience, more than making it as cheap as possible.”
Brin said there would be two ways for developers to interact with the product when they get it. There will be a cloud-based API, which is “far along,” he said. Brin added, “We’re going to let you go crazy on the device. Flash it. We’re going to take those experiences and develop the right APIs and extensibility.” He also implied that Google would not license the hardware for sale with flashed or modified code, however.
More to come…
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via CNET Latest News http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57462165-93/sergey-brin-google-glasses-will-free-you/?part=rss&subj=latest-news2&tag=title
