Back in Glass Again

As of last week, my Glass has returned home to its original home in Boise, ID. It had been on loan to some app-developer friends who are getting their solution ready for the broad consumer release of Glass, thought to be sometime in early 2014.

I am up to Operating System version 11 (XE11), and enjoying some new and improved features on Glass. Stay tuned!

Google Glass Printing

Winding down #HPPrintDay- great event! A highlight? Making #throughglass Greatest Photo Hits poster #glassexplorer pic.twitter.com/O4VmjmIl0W
— Jim Lyons (@jflyons) November 13, 2013

I am still processing all the interesting information gleaned from the HP Print Tech Days which took place in Boise this week, and am confident my article pipeline is well stocked for the coming weeks and months.

There is one thing I will immediately highlight here (and those on my Twitter feed will have already seen it, and may recognize the screenshot above) - that was the creation of a #throughglass 2013 poster, including a number of my still photos captured since become a Glass-wearing Explorer in mid-August. (And truth be told, there is one photo included in the collection that depicts a colleague borrowing my Glass, but taken with another camera.)

My hands-on poster creation was part of our visit to the "HP Oasis", a center at HP's Boise site (as well as others around the world) where HP's vast lineup of photo and photo-related devices are available to use, free of charge, for employees and special guests (like retirees and members of the press, which hits me twice!). (The Oasis is worthy of a post in itself, which will be coming along here, along with the rest of the aforementioned pipeline.)

(This post also appears on jimlyonsobservations.blogspot.com)

Google Magical Mystery Barge - part of Glass commercialization?

I have been fascinated over the last few days, reading about the "Google mystery barge" in the San Francisco Bay, and found it almost eerily coincidental that that same Bay was my outlook during the time in August I was picking up my Glass. In fact, it's the Bay and Bay Bridge in the background, right outside, prominent among the first photos and video I shot during my Glass training. (Example above.)

(Now that I think about it there WAS excitement right out there in the Bay that day, but it had to do with the America's Cup and not barges!)

A tweet about this coincidence ended up in a short interview with Brandon Bailey of the San Jose Mercury News, and an even shorter quote in his article (screenshot below) on the barge (which actually may be part of a fleet!). It was great meeting Brandon this way and it will be fun to track the barge story, ongoing!

Google Glass economics update

From http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/supplyshock.asp

On October 28, Google announced two initiatives involving its 8,000 Google Glass Explorers. One is an upcoming "swap" allowing existing owners to get upgraded hardware over the next several months. The other is an opportunity for existing Explorers to extend Explorer invitations to up to three friends (at the same price as before, $1,500, but with mail order delivery available, as an alternative to the exclusive pickup-by-appointment terms of the past.)

The press has covered the two programs in detail (for example, see Techcrunch), but my interest, as a student and teacher of microeconomics, is what this does to the Glass "after market". By the terms of Google's agreement with Explorers, resale is not allowed, but many Glass units have appeared on eBay since I've been watching, beginning well before I picked up my Explorer unit in mid-August. The listings are replete with warnings of potential bricking of the device along with an "as is" caveat, and from what can be observed without being a direct party to the transactions, have sold (at least auctions have closed) with prices between the high $3,000's up to $5,000.

So what will this "supply shock" do to the market? After all, the imminent quadrupling of the Glass installed base is quite a "supply shock" and as the graph and short note above indicate (courtesy of Investopedia, one of my students' favorite sources), we would expect, given an unchanged demand curve, for the "equilibrium" price to decrease.

 A quick look at eBay today makes it hard to tell so far, but the "invitations" are out there, at prices ranging from $100 to $1,000 or so. Twitter also includes a number of requests/offers for the invitations, as well.

One more fun thing about being a #GlassExplorer!

Demo Conference #ThroughGlass

A walk in the woods #ThroughGlass - JJ Audubon State Park, Kentucky

Wow - it's been two weeks since my last "Half Full" post. I've been busy, including some experiences with Glass away from home (see above) but just haven't had the chance to summarize here.

Now I am at high-tech conference Demo, in Santa Clara, CA, with - drum roll - lots of Google Glass discussion including from developers and one of the leading evangelists for Glass. So stay tuned!

Exploring fall colors #throughglass

I took on some near-home exploring this afternoon, walking the neighborhood. As October arrives and the colors start to change, it is a great time of year to do some photography.

I am still getting adjusted to the lack of a rangefinder and not knowing exactly where I'm pointing with my Glass lens. I am still ending up with too many shots that are "off line" or "bottom heavy" (see below). The example below (taken on last week's field trip to the World Center for Birds of Prey) ends up with the cage bar in front of the bird. It also exhibits another frustrating element to Glass photography, which is the difficulty of getting close-up shots.

Where's the bird? - far away and behind the bar!

On a more positive note, I found that my "Post to only me on Facebook" function that is one of the Glass "share" options for photos and videos is working now, as the screenshot below shows. I had tried it a few times previously to no avail, but starting yesterday, it just seemed to work. (And it' easy to change to broad sharing.)

Shared from Glass to Facebook

Glass connections

During the last week, I've spent much some major time off exploring in Oregon, driving through the desert east of the mountains as well as the Columbia Gorge, en route to visiting Portland and Corvallis. It's been a lot of fun, with Glass and otherwise, and then on my return to reality, had to spend a few days catching up on professional deadlines, so left the Glass alone.

In addition to my own experiences during the last seven days, I really enjoyed the finding the new George Takei video on Glass, the first in his new AARP-sponsored series on technology (see above). And I also discovered the professor for my new Coursera course, from Northwestern University, "Understanding Media by Understanding Google", is a fellow #glassexplorer! Dr. Owen Youngman blogs about his experiences, too (example - http://owenyoungman.com/2013/06/20/throughglass/).

And now on to more adventures #throughglass!