Name that tune on Google Glass

Google Glass has a new trick, and it has turned into a game for me—name that tune. It’s simple. Ask Glass to identify the song you are listening to right now.

Yes, Glass can name the tune and artist and display the cover art often in four seconds or less. Sometimes, obscure songs take a few seconds longer, but those are the ones you could never come up with yourself at all. It’s impressive. The technology is Google’s Sound Search, an Android offering that recognizes music playing around you.

After the novelty wears off from asking Glass to listen to the music, what’s left? A deeper appreciation of contextual sensors. Cell phones have taught us that computers we carry around with us at all times can sense our location. Embedded GPS tells us where a photo was taken, which direction to head for a burger, and how to avoid traffic.

Glass will build on that concept with not only the ability to listen but also to see your surroundings from your point of view, knowing exactly where you are. It’s that complete context that will bring us a whole new level of computing power.

Wow. Whoa. That’s a lot to get our heads around, considering how easy it is to wrap Google Glass itself around our heads with a powerful computing device resting at eye level.

Thanks, VentureBeat, for showing Glass at work

Since the point of this blog is to consider how wearable computing like Glass will change the workplace and the way employees communicate in it, it’s an exciting time to just imagine what that might mean. Could Glass hear a conversation with a customer and offer prompts or reminders about a product feature for a salesperson to mention right then? Might Glass recommend someone who could answer a question that two people are discussing? Imagine an audio and visual roadmap that guides you through a cubicle maze, where everything appears the same to you, so you quickly reach the exact spot you will find the person you’re looking for.

Listing possibilities…this could go on all day, and we still wouldn’t think of them all or the long-term, valuable ones, for that matter. We have an early opportunity to start shaping wearable computing uses. Think how can it be developed at your company so that it contributes to the way employees understand company goals and news, work with colleagues toward innovation, and celebrate how the work they do each day contributes to success. Let’s name that tune.

Your company may equip you with Google Glass for your job

Business use for Google Glass—as opposed to personal perspective video of sporting events or your baby’s first steps—is gaining momentum. Google even held an event for interested businesses recently, recognizing that manufacturers like the idea of Glass for inventory programs. Glass could easily read serial numbers or barcodes with the eyeglass camera on an employee’s face, and that data could go directly to a central computer to monitor stock of just about any kind of product.

Hospitals are interested as well, not only to keep track of medicines, but also to aid in on-the-spot training, to send urgent notifications to staff, and for physicians physically present or at a distance to participate in surgery and care. Information, instruction, or notification pops into the field of vision of the Glass wearers, even as their hands are free to continue their work. It’s a new playing field for creative people, who are suggesting and developing apps, called Glassware.

Fidelity Investments has already jumped in. It has developed an app for its customers who wear Glass—granted, a limited group—to monitor the stock market in their field of vision as they go through their day. Do watch the video from Fidelity Labs that previews what it sees in your near future. And then watch it again, paying attention to the voice interactions and Glass notifications. Visually, it’s stunning, revealing to all corporate communication professionals what Glass-type technology can bring to our craft.

For workers always on the go, or hands-on something other than a keyboard, Glass offers completely new employee communication opportunities—especially if companies bring in Glass for other purposes, and employees become used to its features and delivery of content. Tool use does progress. Do you remember email before anyone was doing email newsletters?

3 ways to improve content creation with Google Glass

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That’s right. They’re blank—for you to fill in. Haven’t given much thought to how Google Glass can make any difference? Kristin Bassett has.

1. Expedite research.
2. Make tasks easier.
3. Skip unnecessary processes.

Bassett works as a marketing content specialist at a tech startup, and for fun, she is editorial director for BeautyXpose.com.  Either place, she’s surrounded by blogs and videos and technology—and now she’s testing Google Glass.

“We’re working to come up with some great plans for how we can utilize and leverage the Google Glass to create new content and expedite our content creation for the marketing department,” she said about her tech startup role.

“Currently, it takes a lot of effort to make videos about what our CEO thinks,” she explained, something marketers and communicators can identify with. Glass may become an effective way to videotape a conversation, as the interviewer/wearer can maintain eye contact with the CEO throughout—one on one, not one in front of an interviewer, a camera operator, and technicians.

Yet it’s not only streamlining CEO interaction that has Bassett thinking. Could Glass help with efforts to get content from people that can be used as blog posts? “We see it being easier to sit down with them and just have them talk to us and just report it, without having to have someone come in and set up video cameras.”

It just might work there, because the company’s CEO is the one who suggested the idea for applying for the #ifihadglass program in the first place. “Our CEO had sent out an email when the Glass Explorer program had launched. He said, hey everyone, I think this is an awesome program. I think everyone should enter. If anyone gets picked, the company will pay for it. You just have to bring it in so everyone can play with it, because we want to see it,” Bassett recalled. And, yes, everyone wants to try it out. “I’m much more popular now at the office,” she joked.

Outside of work, Bassett has used Glass for sending a quick email to friends. She’s also hopeful it will help her develop video blogging—vlogging—for her “for fun” work on BeautyXpose.com.

“Right now a lot of our entries are written. Photography and videography just take up so much time normally. Having this Glass on makes it much easier to record videos than it has ever been before. I think that will help us ramp that up,” she said.

Go ahead—tell us the three ways you would want to use Glass for content creation.

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What problem are we trying to solve with Google Glass?

“I’m paid to think deeply,” said Thad Starner, a founder and director of the Contextual Computing Group at Georgia Tech and credited with coining the term “augmented reality.” He thinks deeply at a computer screen mostly, often writing code or programming, and he works hard at controlling his attention.

You might think he would be annoyed by the notifications that pop into his view on Google Glass. In fact, he appreciates them. As a pioneer in wearable computing, he welcomes how it changes the way he can interact with the world without having to keep checking his phone.

Glass offers what he calls micro interactions. He likens it to the dashboard of the car you are driving. You can look down for brief moments without careening off the road.

There are a lot of reasons why he calls this “revolutionary,” but he also astutely notes that we can’t know how Glass is going to be used just yet. “Our perceptions of what you are going to be using it for are probably wrong—until you get to something in your everyday life, actually get to a stage you can experience it and you understand the problem you are trying to solve.”

Does that seem backwards? In a sense, perhaps. But thousands of testers are determining what in their lives need solving and seeing if Glass can do it. And to that end, Gaze Further will continue to explore wearable computing at work, particularly how communication professionals can employ Glass for the benefit of people interacting at work.

Starner thinks one answer to the question, what problem are we trying to solve with Google Glass, lies in reducing the time between your intention to do or see or think something and the actual action. Glass can offer split-second notification. “The time between my first thought of wanting information and having it in my eyeballs,” he said, “is a few seconds.” 

Google Glass might save your life

Health care and emergency medicine are topping the list of ways people hope to improve their work with Google Glass.

Imagine an emergency medical professional arriving on the scene of a terrible car accident. He’s running, lugging equipment, assessing the crisis to get to injured passengers. Without interrupting his standard and precise routine, he’s already sending images to emergency doctors and hospital staff. Based on that sharing of information, he can listen to a physician—located just about anywhere—talk him through any sensitive care procedures appropriate for that moment. The emergency medical professional never has to pick up a camera or put a phone to his ear. His hands are free to save lives. As this is going on, nurses and emergency room staff get notification to prepare for a patient to arrive by ambulance, with a clear understanding of the patient’s condition.

Even for more routine medical care, not a crash scene, doctors are testing ways to improve patient care with Google Glass, and specialized apps are in development for physicians. Doctors capturing images and sharing information? How could that possibly comply with strict HIPAA laws around health information privacy? One physician who used Google Glass during actual surgery got consent first, and then, while wearing Glass, he gave full attention to his patient and the procedure. He proved that live monitoring could be done. “Specifically for surgery, this could allow better intra-operative consultations, surgical mentoring and potential remote medical education, in a very simple way,” the surgeon explained. He did it without showing the patient’s face or revealing personal health information. (And, software developers are tackling the privacy issue to take away that problem in the future).

Forget the ER or OR. How can Glass help a person on the street? An app in development would talk you through CPR if you find yourself in a situation to help someone having a heart attack. The technology of Glass with interactive instruction seems almost too easy. Glass’s camera would detect the strength of the person’s pulse. Then music would start—“Staying Alive,” which offers exactly the right pace for chest compression. The gyroscope in Glass would determine whether compressions are adequate. While all this is going on, Glass would call 911 for you with your GPS location and also send a message to the nearest hospital to be prepared.

That’s impressive, but that’s not all. Glass could live-stream the resuscitation effort to medical professionals from the point of view of the person administering CPR, and they could provide that person coaching and direction until help arrives.

And then, it’s only a matter of time perhaps before all hospital staff would be wearing Glass, too, for information exchange and notification. For the rest of us, doing perhaps less intense daily work, we can consider that the same technology that makes such a difference at a hospital will be in our own hands at minimal cost. What will you do with Google Glass at work? 
 

Will employers say, “OK, Glass”?

People exploring ways to use Google Glass have to face the question: Can I use it at work? Companies big enough to have codified their HR policies or industries with privacy regulations are having to ask the other side of the question: Should Glass be allowed in the workplace?

Clay R. went straight to the human resources department at his company the first day he had Glass. He wanted to let HR know he had them and warn them that some of his coworkers might complain. “Their response was, ‘Why would anyone complain about THAT? It’s so cool!!!’ And then they all wanted to try it.”

Homer G. asked and received permission from the legal department where he works to wear Glass around the office on the basis that there is no policy to prevent people from carrying cell phones around the office. However, he had to agree not to record any meetings. The company actually has legal policies in place that prohibit recording devices in meetings.

Nick S. actually wrote out a six-page document to address each privacy concern he thought HR might have to his wearing Glass at work. “In the end, they stated it wasn’t the privacy issue. It was the unknown liability if I were to fall down a flight of stairs while using it.”

So consider these lessons:

o   Ask first. 
o   Share coolness.  
o   Follow rules.
o   Don’t fall.






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See what it does, then put it to work

Let’s be honest. Not all the buzz about Google Glass is good. That camera above the right eye—that’s just weird. “Can you really X-ray my purse?”

The reality is that Glass is monumentally less damaging to privacy than most smartphones at this point. People, though, are used to phones with cameras, while this—it’s an invasion of privacy.

Chris F. was told Glass wasn’t allowed when he entered a store in downtown Grand Rapids. “The kid working there seemed really surprised and super nervous about telling me they were not allowed,” he said.

With edginess like that, it’s time to explain. “After showing him that he could clearly see if I was recording by looking at the [eyepiece] prism, he dropped the subject and we continued on with our business.”

A restaurant manager asked Brian K. to take off his Glass. Brian pushed back: “I asked if she could disable the security cameras while I was in there, as it only seemed fair. She told me that turning off her cameras wasn’t an option she wanted to discuss.”

He switched his approach to one of informing and offered to show her everything that Glass could do besides video, even attracting people who may be in the neighborhood near her restaurant. “She was amazed,” Brian reported. “I think I am now her favorite customer.”

It wasn’t just a place of business but his own employer where Jared H. faced apprehension. “Some co-workers tried to prevent me from wearing them at work altogether. Luckily, one of my co-workers took up the cause and politely explained they were no different than a smartphone, and smartphones were perfectly fine to have at the office,” he recounted.

It’s logical that people who have seen impressive photos and video taken with Glass could think that’s what it exists to do: video surveillance. Right now, one by one, Glass wearers are disproving that concern. Next step: Make it easy to share information at work with wearable computing. That will really catch people’s attention about Glass on the job.