Google Glass was released to quite a bit of fanfare four years ago but the excitement faded. Initially envisaged as a consumer product, Google Glass has been re-released as an enterprise product focussed on delivering AR and other information in work environments were access to data and keeping your hands free are important.
Google has a reputation for developing products and then abandoning them when they don’t deliver on their potential or revenues; think of Reader, Wave and Buzz (there’s a list of all the products Google has available and has closed down here). So, when Google Glass faded into the background, many thought it would quietly disappear – at least from the company’s hardware ambitions.
But a report at Wired says that when the first release of Google Glass didn’t deliver on its promise, a small team was assembled to work on the project with a view to making a viable enterprise product. That lead to the development of the Glass Enterprise Edition.
The new version of Glass is available through official partners who marry up the hardware with custom software for your specific requirements. According to the list of offical partners, there’s no one in Australia yet with most of the partners being US based with another in Hong Kong and a couple in Europe.
Wearable technology like Glass has struggled to find a consumer use-case but there are some clear applications in manufacturing, repair services and sports such as cycling where a wearable heads-up display could deliver real-time data without needed operators to take their hands off what they’re doing.
If you could get this new version of Google Glass, what would you use it for?
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