Google Glass Fail!

Not a total fail but I would classify it as a Segway type fail meaning that while society on a whole will shun Google Glass there will be a number of teksters that will keep the technology in circulation. Teksters is a word I just made up and submitted to the Urban Dictionary. Kind of like hipsters, teksters is a subset of counter-culture people bound by technology for no good reason. For those of you, like my beautiful wife, who don’t know what Google Glass really does here are the main features and applications according to Wikipedia, which I trust more than company websites:

• Touchpad: A touchpad is located on the side of Google Glass, allowing users to control the device by swiping through a timeline-like interface displayed on the screen. Sliding backward shows current events, such as weather, and sliding forward shows past events, such as phone calls, photos, etc.
• Camera: Google Glass has the ability to take photos and record 720p HD video.
• Google Glass can be controlled using “voice actions”. To activate Glass, wearers tilt their heads 30° upward (which can be altered for preference) or tap the touchpad, and say “O.K., Glass.” Once Glass is activated, wearers can say an action, such as “Take a picture”, “Record a video”, etc.
• Google Glass applications are free applications built by third-party developers. Glass also uses many existing Google applications, such as Google Now, Google Maps, Google+, and Gmail.
• Third-party applications announced at South by Southwest (SXSW) include Evernote, Skitch, The New York Times, and Path.
• Many developers and companies have built applications for Glass, including news apps, facial recognition, exercise, photo manipulation, translation, and sharing to social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, reminders from Evernote, fashion news from Elle, news alerts from CNN, TripIt, FourSquare and OpenTable, translation app Word Lens, a cooking app AllTheCooks, and an exercise app Strava, and notifications from Android Wear will be sent to Glass.

As interesting as I find Google Glass and today’s wearables in general, I will need a pretty strong ROI to integrate one into my daily life. For example, once my personal data heads into the cloud I would like to get paid in terms of lower medical or auto insurance. Right now my wife and I get reduced auto insurance rates for good driving. I would be happy to share the GPS details of just how good of a driver I really am for some cold hard cash. My wife and I also get reduced medical insurance rates for taking yearly preventative medical diagnostics. We also live a very healthy and fitness oriented lifestyle which I would happily share the details of for some serious ducats.

Let’s face it, Google, Amazon, Apple, FaceBook, and other cloud savvy companies stand to make trillions of dollars by collecting our online DNA and commercializing it. Enough is enough! It is high time we get paid for our lack of privacy! So I say to all wearable companies SHOW ME THE MONEY!

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