Google is giving more people a chance to pay $1,500 for a pair of the
Internet-connected glasses that the company is touting as the next
breakthrough in mobile computing.
The product, dubbed "Google Glass,"
will be offered to "bold, creative individuals" selected as part of a
contest announced Wednesday. Participants must live in the U.S. and
submit an application of up to 50 words explaining what they would do
with the Google Glass technology. Entries must include the hash tag
"ifihadglass" and be submitted through Google Plus or Twitter by next
Wednesday. Google did not say how many glasses it will sell this way.
Winners
will receive the "Explorer" version of Google Glass, a forerunner of
the product that is expected to be released to the mass market next
year. Google Inc. already sold an unspecified number of the glasses to
computer programmers who also paid $1,500 apiece at a company conference
last June.
The people picked to buy this next batch of glasses
will be notified in mid- to late March. They will have to travel to New
York, Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area to pick them up.
Google
Glass is supposed to perform many of the same tasks as smartphones,
except the spectacles respond to voice commands instead of fingers
touching a display screen. The glasses include a tiny display screen
attached to a rim above the right eye and run on Google's Android
operating system for mobile devices.
Because no hands are required
to operate them, Google Glass is supposed to make it easier for people
to take pictures or record video wherever they might be or whatever they
might be doing. Online searches also can be more easily conducted by
just telling Google Glass to look up a specific piece of information.
Google's Android system already has a voice search function on
smartphones and tablet computers.
In the latest demonstration of
the product's potential, Google posted a video showing people wearing
the glasses while skydiving, riding a rollercoaster, skiing, riding a
horse and even swinging on a trapeze. The company, which is based in
Mountain View, Calif., also posted photos of the glasses in five
different colors: charcoal, tangerine, shale, cotton and sky blue.
To
gauge how people might use its glasses, Google is encouraging entrants
in its contest to include up to five photos and 15 seconds of video with
their applications. The company doesn't want to see any nudity or
violence. "Basically, don't add anything you wouldn't be OK with your
Mom seeing," Google advised.
Google Glass is at the forefront of a new wave of technology known as "wearable computing."
When
he demonstrated the glasses at last June's company conference, Google
co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the company was still working out
bugs and trying to figure out how to extend the product's battery life.
Brin has been overseeing the work on Google Glass, which the company
first began developing in 2010 as part of a secretive company division
now known as Google X.
Now that Google Glass is no longer a
secret, Brin is often seen wearing the product in public. He sported a
pair of the glasses during a Wednesday appearance at an event announcing
the creation of a $3 million annual prize for outstanding achievements
in medicine and biology. Brin, who owns Google stock currently worth
nearly $20 billion, is helping to fund the annual awards.
Brin has said the mass-market version of Google Glass will cost less than $1,500, but more than a smartphone.