Google Glass: Glass goes to a party

Took Google Glass out to Patrick Swenson’s birthday/holiday party.  Here is a brief summary:

It didn’t feel as weird to be wearing Glass as I thought it would.  A number of people were interested in seeing Glass, which makes sense since it was a room full of science fiction writers and tech geeks.  I did not leave it on all of the time. It is comfortable to wear for an hour at a time (I didn’t try longer).

I was the only one with Glass there – not surprising since I haven’t seen it in the wild in Seattle much.

Almost everyone wanted/expected Glass to do more than I could make it do without better connectivity. I MUST tether – buy an Android or give up my unlimited data plan.  It might actually be cheaper to add an Android phone (to tether I apparently need to buy the most expensive data plan AND add tethering, which adds $35 a month to the phone bill).  Two phones would solve another problem — I like to walk with my wireless headphones and listen to podcasts or books or music.  I also want to walk with Glass.  But I can’t synch two handsfree devices to one phone (duh!).  It turns out this is why I couldn’t pair Glass to the iPhone for two days – my wireless headphone set is always paired.  No way I can switch from the wireless headphones  to Glass with Glass’s battery life.  Glass made it through three hours of party.  I am already “girl with two pairs of glasses” and I’m not certain I want to be “girl with two phones.”  But if I take my headphones and Glass for a walk, Glass will be a brick unless I have ubiquitous wireless. Or unless when I tether it I don’t also need bluetooth.  Need to explore that.   I suspect ubiquitous wireless is a pre-requisite for wide-spread and easy wearable computing.  I knew that, but this Explorer experience is an underline.

All I know how to do so far to take a picture is to go through the verbal commands, which in a crowded room means loudly saying “OK Glass.  Take a Picture.”  Kind of distracting, and not very social.  I will have to learn the other ways to do it.  Currently practicing my right-eye wink and still failing.  I also can’t get Glass to stop insisting I try to make wink work, which is a distraction.

I did manage to get a couple of pictures (poor ones) and a decent video of Ken Scholes and Nancy Kress doing music, but the video turns out to be an animated GIF and appears not to play in WordPress or on FB.  So I haven’t posted it anywhere.  Note to self:  taking a really good video of a subject that’s sitting down requires not moving one’s head!  This is an inside bad-light Glass photo of Ken and Nancy (and Christy – which I might have spelled wrong).  The video-as-x-seconds of animated Gif is too distracting to post.

Funniest comment?  Nancy Kress thought I should name it something different than “OK Glass.”  Not a bad idea to have a configurable trigger phrase that would allow us to personalize Glass.