i find this very hard to believe. it seems obvious to me that smartphones and tablets have completely filled the niche invented by the HUD glasses of yesteryear's science fiction. they will never be popular, because they are too invasive. people like to be able to put the internet in their pocket and take it out again when they need it.
i wouldn't be surprised if google has a bunch of engineers working on the technology that could be used in HUD glasses, but i would be very, very surprised to see anything ever come to market. google will not enter the hardware market with such a risky product.
They'll never be popular? I think the main impediment to wearable computing has been how socially awkward it is. If someone actually came up with a discrete, well-designed glasses-based computer, I think it would be immensely popular.
AR won't really come into it's own until such a platform exists. Holding a phone in front of your face is just too awkward.
- read any language
- never forget names
- navigational aids (obviously)
- identify any bird, plant, etc.
- a whole raft of products just geared around augmenting the museum experience
- look at a printed equation and see it solved
- look at a printed question and see it answered (within certain constraints obviously)
- look at binary, hexidecimal, etc. and see it converted to decimal
- look at a color and see pantone and hex color codes
- read existing printed books, but with access to immediate dictionary lookup, references, etc.
I could go on and on... if this ever hits, the ramifications will be extraordinary.
Your second-to-last point seems like a wonderfully simple, life-changing application- you can negate many of the problems of colorblindness by textually identifying the colors of objects and selectively enhancing the contrast between objects. (Perhaps overlaying textures or something?)
i thought the same of hands free cell phones... and I found people all day long with headphones, sometimes listening music, sometimes just in case the phione rings.
On a second thought. Some people already use glasses all day long. It would be great for most of them to have a little display with the current time, mail status, incoming calls, and along... At least, for me sounds nice.
i wouldn't be surprised if google has a bunch of engineers working on the technology that could be used in HUD glasses, but i would be very, very surprised to see anything ever come to market. google will not enter the hardware market with such a risky product.