TechStuff sees through Google Goggles

it's the third short one in a row. Right. For people who are listening to these podcasts out of order, that's going to be confusing. But we record a whole bunch at once and then we parcel them out over time and we giggle. So today we are talking about a topic that has been in the news a little bit right about the time that we're recording this UM in mid to late February. UM. It'll be really funny in the future when people come back, because we we

do get from time to time people listening back. Uh, they'll say, oh, I'm gonna start from the beginning. Yeah, it's fantastic. When they listened to that old episode where we were talking about whether or not Apple was coming out with a tablet, Yes, and we did do that. It was really funny. Yeah, it funny in retrospect. Yes. Um. And this may be another one of those things, because it's talking about a product that it has not technically been announced, It's been speculated upon a bit and leaked,

supposedly leaked. Yeah, we're talking about a pair of glasses engineered by Google that would give you a an augmented reality view of the world around you. And h and the fact that this, according to the reports that have been published in places like The New York Times, this would come to market by the end of Heck, by the time this podcast goes live, we may know more about it. It It may there may be a public announcement. Well, as it turns out, Tim buck three was right, the

future is so bright, you're gonna have to wear shades. Yeah. Well, and here's the other thing is that with all the information this will be giving you, I'll be wearing these sunglasses at night. Alright. So so what what is it about this now? Um? We should talk for a moment. I guess about a heads up display. Yes, because that's the idea here, the HUD. The HUD that's housing in urban development. So the heads up display. Um, This is the kind of thing that people have been expecting in

cars for a really long time and it just hasn't happened. Yeah, there there are a few cars that do have these sort of things, but they're pretty limited, and it's more about stuff like a showing you a projection of what's in your what's behind the car, that kind of stuff.

But yeah, the heads up display does. Anyone who's played video games, especially first person shooters, is familiar with the heads up display because in in video games it gives you vital information about how you are doing, like whether you have any bullets in your gun or possibly in your chest. Well, it's it's probably due in part to the fact that heads up displays are used in military

aircraft and have been for quite some times. Essentially, what we're talking about is if you if you still have no idea, um, information is projected upon the in an aircraft, the glass canopy within your field of view, and so you're you can see through it to whatever happens to be on the other side, clouds, enemy aircraft, mountains. Yeah, okay, so you know you could see the information. Um, it's useful for targeting other aircraft. I mean, hey, I've seen

the documentary Top Gun. Um. Look, it only took three three episodes before I got into say that. Um. So you know, the technology has been around for for quite some time, but in in some applications like uh, you know, regular cars just hasn't taken off, so to speak. Um, but this is more or less what Google is proposing to do, assuming that this is this leaked information is

actually true. Um, it would be sort of a headstup display that you carry along with you in a pair of glasses, so you know, you and overlay of information about the world around you, which we know by the term augmented reality augmented and that it's augmented by data. So this augmented reality could take many different forms. It could be something like, let's say that you're wearing these glasses and you're using an application that that lets the

glasses display information provided by something like Google Maps. So let's say you're walking through a strange city, you're visiting a place you've never been before, and you've got to pair of these glasses on and you you're actually on your way to a specific location, but you've never ever gone there yourself before, and the glasses tell you which way to turn. M hm. You're just wearing the glasses.

You're looking at the world around you, and as you come up to where you need to go, the glasses indicate through this heads up display that you need to take a left at the next intersection, and so you are navigating your way. They're using the glasses as a tool. It's sort of it's taking really taking the place of smartphone and in a lot of ways, augmented reality. When we first started talking about augmented reality, a lot of people were imagining it as something that you would wear,

like a head mounted display. Uh, so it would be some sort of special goggles that would put this information on top of the world around us. We've been talking about this for years, but the actual implementation we have seen, at least in recent years, has been handheld devices like smartphones. Yes, and as as useful as that's been in in certain circumstances, it's also sort of inconvenient to hold the smartphone up in front of your face while you're trying to navigate

a city. Yeah, and it makes you look like a weirdo and you're likely to hurt yourself. You're looking like a smartphone wielding weirdo, like a smartphone wielding zombie with one arm extended out in front of you. Because yeah, if you're if you're trying to if you're trying to get both a look at the world around you and get a look at the information that's being president on your phone, then you kind of have to hold it up so that your eyeline is still looking out straight

ahead of you. Right, most of us don't do that, I think I think most of us. What we're doing is we're looking down. We're holding the phone at around at the level of our stomach or so, and we're looking down at it and we're walking anyway, which means that we can have close encounters with things like telephone polls or other pedestrians, both of which I have done. I've also tripped over curbs. I have nearly stepped upon a baby. Uh that I wasn't didn't even have a

phone in my hand. That was just me being mean. But uh yeah, there are a lot of opportunities for mishaps, like getting hit by cars and stuff. So the idea is, why don't we put this stuff in, this technology into a different form factor where we can still look around at the world around us and react to it, get the information we want and we that we sometimes we need, but not have it be an experience that puts us

or other people in danger. Now, of course, this will also make it easier for for you to be mystified when people from New York come up to you and ask you if you need help finding something in particular, and you go, how did you know? And look, you know this is this is just gonna be another way for them to pick out the tourists. Well, that's all right, and and again it's not just something you would wear

in a strange city. No, I just but I was just thinking about it in that context because I've always had trouble figuring out how they knew. But they just know. Well, anyone who looks up in New York City is obviously a tourist. I'm guilty. So let's talk about some of the hardware that this would have to have in order for it to work. Alright, So we don't know the specifics because this has been stuff that has been leaked

to the media. There's been no official as of the recording of this podcast, there's been no official announcement from Google to tell us what this stuff is Yeah, the the Google spokesperson said something to the effect of, hey, look, there goes the lock Mass monster, and when everybody turned to look, he ran off. Yeah. This was part of a Google X, which is a top secret research and development facility within Google which people work on in Yeah.

But anyway, So, so the what these would have to have in order for this to work is the glasses would have to have a camera, because you would have to have some sort of If you're overlaying information on top of specific things, then you want the the glasses to be able to look at you through the camera, look at a in a direction, and overlay information on

the proper stuff. So let's say that you're looking at a building and uh or or a collection of buildings, and you're looking for a specific restaurant and you're scanning from left to right. Then the name of the restaurant pops up when you're looking at the right store or front, let's say, or even a menu for that restaurant perhaps, So there's that needs the camera for that visual acuity. It also probably has some sort of GPS sensor in

it so it knows where you are geographically. Um, it's got to have some sort of of of transceiver in it. It has to be able to receive information exactly. So it's going to be either it's gonna it's either it's going to have WiFi or maybe Bluetooth or maybe cellular or maybe some combination of those three, uh, in order for it to send and receive information. So that because obviously you can't store the world's information on a pair

of glasses, it would never fit. You would have to have the world's longest chord connecting you to whatever computer database had all the information. So this information is stored in the cloud, So you have to have a way of getting the information to and from the glasses, otherwise they're just gonna be this heavy pair of glasses sitting on your face. I was trying to get to the to the opera, but it's still two blocks away and my extension cord won't let me travel any farther, so

I guess I'll have to go home. Bumm, the what's that giant backpack on your Most of the batteries, you also have to have the actual display, which, according to the information I've seen, is set a set to the side for one eye only, so that one of your eyes can just quickly glance over and see what the information is. Uh, it's not something that's overlaid over both lenses of the glasses themselves. That I imagine would be

very distracting and would make things very difficult to do. Yeah. Uh, there needs to be some sort of user interface so that you can actually navigate through things, because it may be that there are multiple levels of information you could overlay on a location, and you you have an interest in a very specific subset of information, but you're not interested in the rest, So how do you navigate through that?

According to what I've read, it looks like it's done right now through little subtle head motions, like you tilt your head a certain way, and that lets you scan through items or select a specific item, And like clicking on a link, you might have to tilt your head just a little bit in the direction. And according to what I've read, it sounds like these are pretty subtle movements. That's not something where you're gonna be sitting on the train and you look across and there's someone head banging

away as they're trying to navigate Wikipedia. That's not what this is all about. It's more very it's very subtle movements now that you may still find that person. You know, they might still be there, but you it won't be necessary to head bang in order to navigate Wikipedia or any other website like how stop works dot com. Um, yeah, I hope it wouldn't be like a touch screen because I have enough problem with fingerprints on my glasses. Right.

There was talk that there could be some voice activation stuff added in at some point, and even that this could ultimately take the place of a smartphone where you would have an earpiece that would be part of this so that you could make calls and you can you know,

you could replace it. There are other reports I've seen that no, this is really going to be paired with smartphones, where you might use your smartphone as the the device that actually connects to the Internet, and then the glasses connect to your smartphone and use it as essentially a hot spot. Um, that's a possibility, although most reports I've seen say the glasses themselves are going to have the capability to either use WiFi or three G or four

G connections in order to get data. Of course, if it is using WiFi and you can use your smartphone as a WiFi hot spot, that's still a way that you would use your phone to actually grab the data and then it would send it to the glasses. UM. There are a lot of interesting uses for this, so lots of information about the world around you. You might be able to find out things like historical information of sites that you're visiting. You might be able to find

recommendations for restaurants or shops or movies. You might even be able to do things like navigate and purchase stuff before you get to places. Um. Like, let's say you look at a movie theater and it pulls up the movie listings for that theater while you're looking at it, and then you decide, Hey, that movie sounds interesting, I've been meaning to see that. I'm already in the area. I'm just gonna go and buy tickets through here. Like

these are all things that might be used with the glasses. Again, since they don't actually exist in a way that we can play with them right now, we can only imagine they're the use case scenarios right well. Of course, uh, Google has Google Latitude UM, which is sort of a competitor to some of the other location based services out there in a way that your Google account kind of like four square. Yeah. Um, and uh so you know you could you could also do things like check into

a location. Um, you could go to a restaurant, for example, and and uh uh you know, you know you've you've navigated there, and once you're there, Uh, you would maybe be able to read tips from other people, you know, stay away from the lasagna, don't eat the fish. Um we had two choices, chicken or fish. Oh yes, I had the lasagna. Um, so so yeah, I mean it could be used for all kinds of things like that. Um. Google doesn't expect people who are going to wear these

all the time, at least according to these reports. Of course, again Google hasn't said, but but let me tell you there will be some. If I get a pair of these glasses, I will wear them all the time. Yes, he will, because guys, to me, this sounds super cool and it's something I've wanted to play with for a long time. And I love augmented reality applications. I've got some of my phone I use a lot of the

ones that you know have augmented reality features built into them. So, Google, if you're listening, I am more than happy to be a beta participant in this classes program and I will I will wear the heck out of them, because this is exactly I love the idea of information being everywhere, right, having having a a geographic element to information, so that it almost gives information more of a sense of permanence to me, like you've associated it with a place. It's

not just data. There's a physical location that you have been to. And when you combine the two, to me, that makes the information more meaningful and relevant to you from a personal experience. And being the nerd that I am, I love information anyway, So this is the kind of thing that just gives me like, who I want one? Maybe you could build ghost detector apps into them, and then you don't play with me, Palette, We're not gonna

go into that. I will have a will have a van and oh man, it's so easy to get me upset about that. Let's let's talk about quick quick aside. Ghost hunting is bunk alright, alright, God, that was such a fun episode. Um yes, that we do have an episode about ghost hunting technology and what it does and what it does not do. Um I e. It does not ghosts. So if you want to on its own, if you want to learn You don't even start Pette. If you want to, If you want to learn more,

go and check out that episode. It's actually a fun one. It was one of those where it was there was a bet on whether or not I could finish the episode without having some sort of aneurysm or something. I made it. Yeah, No, it was. It was a razor's edge. So let's let's talk about whether. Okay, let's we're on the the the rumor mill here, so it could or could not happen. Let's let's talk about the technology too. I mean, could this happen. We've got small cameras that

are built into our cell phones. I mean they're it's receivable that you you could have something small enough to put in a pair of glass. Um you've got um, you know, you've got the Oakley Thump MP three player that's built in the glasses. And supposedly these these uh devices look a lot like the Oakley Thump glasses, according to one report I read. So you know, we know that you could put a battery and some audio technology in there. YEA a question, But the question I have

really is what would the battery life be like? Because um, you know, I mean I've and also we don't know for sure that would be running the Android operating system. I've seen a lot of of Yeah, that's the assumption that it would be running Android, which makes sense. I mean, that's your mobile platform. And you would think if this is sort of a either either a split from smartphone

technology or a compliment to smartphone technology. However you want to look at it, if it's parallel or if it's splitting off, you would imagine that would probably use a similar operating system, although I'm not sure where the processor is gonna go. Yes, that's the thing is that it's gonna it's gonna need a processor, it's gonna need the battery, it's gonna have all these sensors in it, it's gonna

have the display technology in it. Uh So you start wondering how bulky is it gonna be, how heavy is it gonna be, how hot is it going to get as it's running, and how long will the battery life last. Now, if my Android smartphone is anything to go by, and I have I have one of the bulkyear Android smartphones, And to be fair, the reason for that is because it's one of the ones that has a physical quirity keyboard. So that's that's adding quite a bit of bulk to it.

But if we look at a smartphone and we look at how heavy it is and and the size of it, part of that is because the displays tend to be pretty big. In this case, the display can be much smaller because it's gonna be really close to your eye, so you don't need to make it that big. You know, it's gonna it's gonna cover up a good amount of your field of vision when you look a certain direction, so you don't need it to be huge. So that's gonna cut down a little bit on on the size

and weight. But yeah, I'm curious to see, like, is it gonna feel comfortable? Maybe that's one reason people wouldn't wear them all the time, because if they're if they're heavy enough, you might not want to wear them for more than, you know, a few minutes. But if you're not wearing them all the time, where the heck are you putting them? Yeah? Well, you also have to be concerned that people who need prescription vision correct action like me, uh,

might have difficulty reading it. Now for people who are are near sighted, maybe not as much of a problem. As people who are far sighted. Although people who are near sighted who are not wearing contacts and put these glasses on, are not going to really be able to see the world around them. They might be able to read the information about the world around them, but then they look at they actually look at the building that they're reading about, and that just as an indistinct blob. Yes,

that's how it would be for me. Yeah. No, That's the thing is that if I were wearing these glasses, I would also need to wear contacts in order to really experience it the way I would want to. You are about to fall in. Uh course you pay the platypus man. I wonder how many Phineas and ferb references we've had since I started watching that show. And he doesn't even have kids, ladies, And it's a lot. No,

I'm just a big kid myself. But yeah, yeah, there there are a lot of other questions too, like, uh, from what I understand, Yeah, the big one they guess work right now as they think that it will probably cost around this bay being the media. Yeah, well I should identify they like New York Times and blogs and like like a wireds blog, Engadget and other blogs like that.

The best guess right now is that would fall into the smartphone range, so probably between two and fifty and six hundred dollars for a pair of these, which you know, that's that's that's a luxury item. That's something that early adopters will probably be more than willing to pay, assuming

that they have that kind of money laying around. But your average consumer would be like, well, that's just a curiosity, and they may very well be correct, because the other thing I've read is that apparently Google doesn't have any plans on how it would monetize this, that this would just this is almost like it's just an experiment to see, you know, hey we can do this. Let's do this

and show that we can do it. But there's no real plan on making that like a core part of their business because there's not really a money generating part of that right now. Although you could imagine that advertising would very easily fall into their you know, location based advertising would obviously be a source of revenue if this thing were to progress beyond you know, the the initial phase.

So it may be that Google doesn't really pursue this as an actual, like, you know, broad consumer product, but really just something for a group of people who are really passionate about the idea, so that it might fuel the next generation or maybe two more generations down the road, where it becomes something more of a of a consumer product and less of a of a hobbyist kind of product, especially for people who are interested in not just using

it but developing for it. Right. So there's that, um, and then there's UH questions about when it will come out right now, the the most information I've seen is before the end of UH. And then there there are some guesses that there may be some beta programs between now and then where normal schlubs like I don't know Jonathan Strict and co host of popular podcast tech Stuff, could get their hands on a pair of these and try them out. And he is more than willing to

do that. From what I understand, he and I are really close. Don't make him big, No, no, please, don't, I'll do it. I'm not I'm not a proud man. But yeah, So there are a lot of other questions about this, uh, you know, if it if it does come out, because sometimes these projects pop up in Google and then never really go intwhere outside the company. UM, So, if it does come out, will it take off? If it even if it does take off, will Google continue

to pursue it? You know? These questions also come into play with things like the when Google did the whole driverless car thing, right, that was a super cool project, really interesting, and it may very well be that certain car manufacturers will end up utilizing some or all of the technology that Google created as part of that project. But as of right now, there's no way for the average person to experience that technology. So is this going

to become something like the driverless car? Is that going to be where we're gonna have, you know, years between when we find out about it and when something actually tangible to us happens. Yeah, well I bet you'd be willing to have beta test that for them too. Yes, if you want, Google, if you want to give me a pair of those glasses and a car that will drive me around, I will. I will be more than happy to test out both of those things. I do not you know a little bit of trivia about Jonathan.

I don't drive, so so a driverless car would be incredibly useful for me in the city of Atlanta, where cars are almost a necessity the humans. Yeah, that's true. That's depressing, but true. So yeah, give me a driverless car and I can add to the problem. Well, it's uh, I'm interested to see whether or not they're they're ready to rule something like that out. Um, I just I just don't know. It seems like something that's not going to be a mainstream product, at least not for years. Yeah,

but I'm not it's done. I'm not sure that the average person has any desire for this sort of product. You know, it may just be something that they're like, No, that's such a nerdy thing. I can't imagine it. See for me, it's just it's so compelling that it's something that I'm very eager to to check out. But yeah, I could. I I'm not. I am not the average person.

I am. It's total total geek. So a person who is not as geeky may look at this product and just say, wow, I can't imagine ever wanting to use that. I mean, I I use my smartphone to play you know, angry Birds or fruit Ninja. I don't use it to look up information about the world around me. I'm not

interested in learning or exploring or broadening my horizons. I'm happy in my insular a little world where I've created this, this compartmentalized existence that is completely cut off from everything else. And really I'm fine with not learning and being an ignorant person and just kind of wallowing in my ignorance celebrating it really is what I like to do. That that, to me, is what existence is all about. You know, those people are cool. You know. Do I need to

take the soapbox away from you again? Because I'll do it. I'm done with it anymore. I'll turn this podcast around anyway, Nick, and I was being facetious everybody. Anyway, My my wife would never want a pair of these glasses, and she's completely justified in that. Me I am. If these come out, I will get a pair, that's just it's I know I will. He doesn't need a tablet, but he does need a pair of augmented reality. That's not true. I do need a tablet. There's just not a tablet out

there that does what I needed to do. I need a very specific tablet that hasn't been made yet. Maybe you could attach it to your face and then you can use it like AMA. That's not that, it's not the form factor. That's the problem. It's not the form factor of the tablet that I object to, it's the it's the use cases that you know, I don't need it. That's a different podcast. We should do a podcast why Jonathan wants a tablet and why he's not gonna buy one.

All right, and I'll be just five minutes of me explaining myself. Yeah, just like a typical text of episode. All right, guys, that wraps up our discussion on this theoretical piece of technology that may very well be on the market by the time of this episode goes live. If you, guys have any topics you would like us to talk about, please let us know. You can send us an email or address is tech Stuff at Discovery

dot com and that email address works now. Some of you may have tried to email in the past and had a little bit of a problem. We have fixed that problem. Please email us, or you can let us know on Facebook or Twitter or handle at both those Text stuff h s W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon be short at check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising

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