Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who’s lately morphed into the chief evangelist for the company’s forthcoming new hi-tech computerized glasses product, Google Glass, has promised that Google will soon share more extensive demos of the glasses’ capabilities with the public.
Brin, posting on his official Google Plus page on Friday, first promoted Google’s new video shot entirely through Google Glass, an unlikely collaboration with fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg that took place at New York Fashion Week on September 9.
Brin’s message Friday also appeared to acknowledge recent confusion and complaints from Web users about the capabilities of Google Glass, which Google initially promoted as offering an “augmented reality (AR)” experience, that is, the layering of digital information — such as real-time directions and weather forecasts — over a user’s eyes. As Brin wrote:
+Project Glass has been making great progress. I know many of you are interested in some of the functionality in addition to the camera. It is a bit trickier to demonstrate online because it is hard to convey the feeling of wearing it — light and out of the way and yet so easy to see. Nevertheless, we are excited to share it with you so please stay tuned.
Google executives including Brin have lately backed away from the idea of an immersive AR experience, saying Glass is now being developed to provide a more unobtrusive way of taking photos and video and pulling up other information. However, a recent account of a test run of the Glasses by New York Times tech writer David Pogue describes an immersive, interactive 360 panorama view of a jungle piped through the device’s tiny screen, which sits in front of a wearer’s eye.
