Glass and the Outside World

Well, what else can you expect from wearing Glass on your head? People stare at you as you walk by. After a week I got used to it, but the first social experiment was when I wore Glass at the mall. I entered with the thought of people will stare and some will ask about it. That's exactly what I got, but I discovered something else as well. When you enter a store (as a normal human and not a cyborg) you are usually met with an employee to say, " Welcome to (insert obligatory clothing store here), if you need any help, let me know!" But as I entered a clothing store, the employees went out of their way to ignore me. I was met with no "hello" but instead silence and awkward stares. The only time an employee would interact with me was when I actually bought something and they had to do the usual check out conversation. The man at J.Crew seemed interested in Glass and asked about it, but the conversation quickly died. Side note, I got 3 shirts on sale for $26, which was kinda cool. Glass made it an interesting trip to the mall.
A lot of people did double takes, with one instance where a man walked in front of me to get a better look and then report back to his friend. So after walking around, I decided it would be a good idea to go into the Apple Store to be around people who may know about Glass or be interested. I've had a history of going into Apple stores and convincing customers to go buy an Android phone, but today I had the goal of going to look at the miraculous design of the new Mac Pro. The same thing happened as before, the employees completely ignored me. Even as I was playing with the computer and looking around the store, not a single employee asked if I needed help.

So I left the mall with 3 observations...
1) People go out of their way to ignore you
2) People will stare and whisper if they know what Glass is
3) Old people give you death stares (I think they were just really confused)

As I find more places to take Glass, I will report my findings.

The First Few Days

The first days with Google Glass were spent indoors due to a snow storm. So I did what any explorer would do, ran around the house trying to figure out everything I could use Glass for. I took videos and pictures and, for the most part, was having a grand ol' time. I googled "what's the weather for tomorrow?" about 100 times. I watched some YouTube videos and was amazed that I could watch DanIsNotOnFire in the right corner of my eye. Glass was an amazing piece of hardware that was very fun to use. But my first concern with it was, "how do I look in these things?" I know what you may be thinking, "how vain of you, Brian." But it's true. What if I looked absolutely horrible and people were completely turned off to even looking at me. Google Glass is a very stylish piece of face tech, but in all reality, I've been told I look like something out of Star Trek about 12 times... and it's only been a week. The pair of shades Google Glass comes with aren't for everybody. They're a bit large and if they extend over the side of your face, you look like a kid trying on your parents sunglasses. Without the shades, you look like any normal person... from the year 3000. But, fear not, I did look good in Google Glass. Well, good enough that my girlfriend wasn't embarrassed to be seen in public with me wearing them. Going out into public is a different story. For the first few days of playing with Google Glass and getting familiar with them, I noticed the bugs. I can clearly see why this is still a beta program and why Google didn't meet their "end of 2013" launch date. There are many things to be fixed. For instance, anyone within ear shot can say, "okay glass," and activate your Glass. Also, Glass has separate contacts for Google+ and your Google Contacts. So I keep trying to send a message via text, but has the name twice, one for Google+ email and the other for their actual number. Those are just two examples, and trust me when I say these are completely "first world problems." Over time I will report back my findings of issues or improvements in software. But those were the first few days of using Google Glass. Check back later for my first public outing with Google Glass and my experience. It was definitely an interesting one...

Day 1!

Here are some shots from the first day unboxing!