AllThingsD » Sergey Brin http://allthingsd.com Sat, 18 May 2013 13:09:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 How to Make Your Own Google Glass http://allthingsd.com/20130508/how-to-make-your-own-google-glass/ http://allthingsd.com/20130508/how-to-make-your-own-google-glass/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 16:43:05 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=319507 Stephen Colbert asked Eric Schmidt to get him Google Glass. But, so far, no dice. So he made his own. Pretty sweet:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130508/how-to-make-your-own-google-glass/feed/ 0 Google Breaks Up Mapping and Commerce Unit http://allthingsd.com/20130314/google-breaks-up-mapping-and-commerce-unit/ http://allthingsd.com/20130314/google-breaks-up-mapping-and-commerce-unit/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:20:27 +0000 Amir Efrati http://allthingsd.com/?p=303643 Google Inc. executive Jeff Huber stepped aside as head of the Internet giant’s mapping and commerce unit on Wednesday, in a two-part management shift that also saw the chief of the Android unit, Andy Rubin, leave his position, said people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Huber will move to Google X, the unit run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin that’s working on projects such as self-driving car technology and the Google Glass wearable computing device, these people said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130314/google-breaks-up-mapping-and-commerce-unit/feed/ 0 Moon Shot: Earthbound Investor Milner Talks About Origins of the Universe at SXSW http://allthingsd.com/20130309/moonshot-earth-bound-investor-milner-talks-about-origins-of-the-universe-at-sxsw/ http://allthingsd.com/20130309/moonshot-earth-bound-investor-milner-talks-about-origins-of-the-universe-at-sxsw/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:18:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=301943 yuri

There were, of course, the questions on his famously huge Facebook investment many years ago, and why he’s put money in Y Combinator to spur startup innovation.

But it’s clear from his mainstage interview at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin this morning that high-profile Russian investor Yuri Milner of DST Global has been striving to think much bigger thoughts of late.

While he’s gotten a lot of attention for his big bets in the social networking site, as well as with Twitter, Spotify, Airbnb and many others, he’s slowed his investing in the U.S. considerably to focus more on what he and many others in Silicon Valley are calling “moon shot” ideas.

“Somehow, we have lost interest in big ideas,” said Milner, in an onstage interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean about shifting away from thinking — which he has funded, in part — that has gotten more short-term and pragmatic. “I think we still have a destiny as human beings.”

That has included starting up his Fundamental Physics Prize, which has now become the priciest academic award, last year. And, more recently — with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Genentech mogul and Apple Chairman Art Levinson, among others — the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation.

As Mike Isaac wrote when that initiative was announced less than a month ago:

“The first round of prize recipients includes 11 scientists from a range of research disciplines, including studies in genetics, cancer research and neural behavior. Each of the 11 prize winners will receive a $3 million award for their work, and Brin, Zuckerberg, Milner and the rest of the sponsors have agreed to a five-year commitment to awarding prizes.”

Milner, who was a physicist in his early career, said onstage that he has been disheartened to see that not enough younger people choose to go into fundamental science anymore. Thus he is aming to make it more attractive via his prizes.

“We don’t have enough heroes who are admired by a large portion of the population due to their scientific achievements,” he said, noting that it will require rewarding individuals in a “disproportionate manner.”

Still, in the Q&A session, the crowd in the Austin Convention Center wanted to know mostly about more earthbound questions, such as what tech company would last 100 years, as IBM has.

According to Milner: Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, due to network effects.

Another attendee wanted to know what he thought it takes to be an entrepreneur these days.

“It’s almost a heroic effort, and kind of goes against set ways of doing things,” answered Milner.

Then someone wanted to know how the political arena could be similarly transformed.

“That, I don’t know,” said Milner.

Moon shot, indeed.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130309/moonshot-earth-bound-investor-milner-talks-about-origins-of-the-universe-at-sxsw/feed/ 0 The Disappearing Interface http://allthingsd.com/20130304/the-disappearing-interface/ http://allthingsd.com/20130304/the-disappearing-interface/#comments Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:30:03 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=299937 Where static computer screens and smartphones suck in our gaze and extract us from the world around us, many of the most interesting new tech gadgets and ideas move us back out into the open.

A blind beta tester of Le Chal navigates an open space via vibrating insoles.

A blind beta tester of Le Chal navigates an open space via vibrating insoles.

Instead of all-purpose, full-focus devices, these new tools are migrating outward, on and around our bodies, to our fingers and heads and wrists and ears, and even feet. From there, they can be ready to help us the moment we need them, in a manner that’s less abstracted and hard to talk about without referencing science fiction.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s becoming more and more accessible and interesting. You might glue together a bunch of these ideas by thinking of them as the disappearance of the interface.

At the TED Conference this past week in Long Beach, Calif., a number of the talks and demos showed off ways for interfaces to melt away so both inputs and outputs can adapt and be more accessible.

For instance, an eye surgeon from India named Anthony Vipin Das has created vibrating insoles that help blind people navigate the world by gently buzzing their feet with directional cues.

The company manufacturing the shoe, Ducere Technologies, is based in Hyderabad, and the product, which will cost about $40 and is set to go on sale in India in about six months, is called Le Chal (“take me there” in Hindi).

So, for instance, 20 meters away from a left turn, a Le Chal wearer would feel a calibrated buzz in his left shoe. Then, 10 meters away, a longer duration. And at the turning location, a persistent buzz until the turn is successfully completed.

And all this without a cane or a companion, or any indication to others that the sense of direction is coming via haptic signals to his feet.

In the coming months, Le Chal expects to add obstacle detection and indoor navigation, Das said. The company is working on a sort of Morse code vibration language to communicate more complex directions and warnings.

Das noted that it’s not just blind people who could benefit from subtle navigation signals. “There are implications for sighted people, as well,” he said.

SergeyBrinTED

James Duncan Davidson/TED2013

Meanwhile, Google’s co-founder/resident mad scientist Sergey Brin took the TED stage to talk about Google Glass, using a strangely gendered choice of words to call smartphones “emasculating” because “you’re standing around and just rubbing this featureless piece of glass.”

The exciting Project Glass aims to make people whole again (I suppose) by enabling them to take hands-free photos and videos, so they can be more in the moment, and by displaying phone notifications. In some ways it’s similar to the new Pebble watch, but rides on the eyebrow instead of the wrist.

But it’s hard to imagine wearing these glasses not being completely strange — the “Segway for the face” metaphor goes a long way. Concerns about distraction and privacy are more than valid.

Still, these ideas do tickle your imagination. In another talk, Mary Lou Jepsen, who works with Brin at Google X, spoke on her personal exploration of high-resolution brain-scanning systems that would allow people to decode brain waves to see the live images playing in their own heads.

Jepsen said she thought in the near future it will be possible to do a sort of live brain simulcast. Imagine remembering your dreams when you wake up in the morning, or helping translate what’s going on in the brain of someone with an injury or disease. Studies have already shown that brain scans can find images — albeit very blurry images — that correspond to photos and videos we are watching or imagining.

“We’re going to be able to dump our ideas directly to digital media,” Jepsen said.

DolphincommunicationThink that sounds crazy? There are so many directions the disappearance of the interface can go. Another speaker, marine biologist Denise Herzing, presented on her efforts to improve dolphin-to-human communication through wearable computers that decipher dolphin sounds (including the ones humans can’t hear) and translate them for the wearer.

The system, called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT), also helps divers generate dolphin calls so they can talk back to the dolphins while swimming.

But wearable smart devices are not that weird. Sensors in and around people’s bodies are already part of many geeks’ lives. Throughout the week, hundreds of TED attendees were contributing data about their activity levels via complimentary Jawbone Up wristbands. (But this is still pretty blunt. The biggest trend at TED: Less sleep per night as the week elapsed.)

And the disappearing interface trend is obviously not restricted to any one conference. Elsewhere last week, Leap Motion announced that its Windows-compatible motion-sensor device would start shipping in May. Leap wants to remove a layer of abstraction from computing with its extra-sensitive system where users manipulate virtual objects by literally waving their hands around in front of a screen.

In many ways, these ideas are already in the mainstream through gesture-driven gaming devices like the Wii and the Xbox Kinect — and now the ubiquitous high-quality touchscreen devices like the iPad, where we start to forget we’re sending signals to an impenetrable system and feel that we’re interacting with it directly.

Back in 2010, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie described these ideas as the “NUI” — that is, the natural user interface, instead of the more well-known “GUI,” or graphical user interface — that “embraces gestures, anticipatory computing, expressive response, contextual and environmental awareness, and 3-D or even immersive experiences.”

“You won’t necessarily sit down at a computer terminal,” Mundie said. “Computing will be all around you, and you’ll basically converse with that pervasive intelligence.”

Mundie was definitely on to something, and soon enough the rest of us may be, too.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130304/the-disappearing-interface/feed/ 0 Sergey Un-Emasculated (Comic) http://allthingsd.com/20130301/sergey-un-emasculated-comic/ http://allthingsd.com/20130301/sergey-un-emasculated-comic/#comments Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:21:36 +0000 Nitrozac and Snaggy http://allthingsd.com/?p=299808 sergey

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130301/sergey-un-emasculated-comic/feed/ 2 Why We Must Think Bigger http://allthingsd.com/20130222/why-we-must-think-bigger/ http://allthingsd.com/20130222/why-we-must-think-bigger/#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:01:12 +0000 Charles Moldow http://allthingsd.com/?p=297508 woodstock380One day, about six billion years from now, the sun will burn out.

This cataclysmic inevitability was brought to my attention over the holidays by my 6-year-old son. Far off though it may be, he believes our solar system’s imminent demise is cause for alarm sooner rather than later. (For him, that means sooner than getting a flu shot — but later than downloading the most recent service pack for Minecraft.)

Of course, I recognize my 6-year-old is thinking too far ahead. Too big.

But he did get me wondering, are the rest of us thinking big enough? Especially those of us who develop — and invest in — new innovations.

If not for being stuck on an antiquated United Airlines plane unequipped with Wi-Fi (is there any other type?), I may not have found the time to commit this thought to paper — I would likely have been overwhelmed by the next flurry of emails or meeting requests. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. In fact, as I survey the current startup landscape and consider the kinds of companies attracting VC dollars, it seems like the investing community isn’t thinking of the big picture at all.

Today, investors are less interested in transformative companies and more interested in trendy ones. Funding is flowing — and flowing fast — toward “quick-response startups.” These companies, more often than not, are launched during all-night hack-a-thons. They’re the wired brainchildren of eager coding buddies and Costco-like volumes of Red Bull.

Do many — or even any — of these startups, still in incubation, believe they can create a billion-dollar company on the heels of a market that’s already matured? No. And we don’t expect them to.

Because typically, companies like these aren’t founded to solve big problems — but rather immediate, narrow (and sometimes trivial) ones. For example, we now have dozens of VC-funded apps that help friends share photos, plan their weekend activities and order drinks more quickly in a bar. Yes, the first mobile photo-sharing app leveraged the social graph in unique ways and was — without a doubt — transformative. Three years later, however, startups continue to evolve the concept, but to what end?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a cool app as much as the next guy. But we can’t continue funding the companies that produce them at the expense of companies that produce truly breakthrough technologies and experiences. It’s bad economics, and, to the extent that this mindset pushes out true long-term transformative thinking, bad for humanity as well.

Indeed, these quick-response startups reflect — and perhaps are causing — a new and worrying trend: As a recent article in the Economist — “Has the ideas machine broken down?” — points out, today’s inventions are producing far less “economic impact” than inventions of the past. Progress actually appears to have slowed since the early 1900s.

It seems, in short, that we have reached a plateau when it comes to the more recent megatrends that stimulated great innovation: Games, social, local and mobile. Now that these digital revolutions are maturing, we’re just tinkering around the edges. Making marginal improvements. Tweaking the charger ports on our iPhones.

This trend, by the way, is not all that different from what happened in the late 90s — when the spread of the Internet was followed by VC investment in every dot-com commerce play imaginable, including dozens of pet-related dot-com startups. (In retrospect, one may have been too many.) In some ways, the early aughts saw a dearth of fresh ideas, too — right after the Web 2.0 innovations hit the market.

Now, we seem to be trapped by the narrowness of our own thinking again. And we have to ask ourselves: What will it take to buck this worrying trend, to push past this period of creative stagnation?

The answer? The same thing it took in the 90s and the early aughts: more companies like eBay, Google and Facebook — startups that brought to life world-changing and enduring ideas.

These companies may have been founded by “hacks” like the ones portrayed in “The Social Network.” But they were hacks that created massive waves of innovation, as did the founders of Yahoo!, Amazon and Twitter. They pioneered at the front end of huge emerging trends, from Web to commerce, from social to mobile.

Today, there aren’t enough of these front-end innovators. Years after these companies created new markets and experiences, we still have startups paddling out into the surf, hoping to catch the big tsunami that long ago passed them by.

What we need, in other words, are more wave-makers. More pioneers. More Yangs, Bezoses, Zuckerbergs, Brins and Pages, not to mention more Jobses, Fords and Edisons.

And make no mistake, the investor community — especially the VC investor community — has a role to play in encouraging that level of genius. In many ways, we just have to return to our roots.

It used to be that venture capital was the most ambitious kind of capital there was. Investors like me would fund startups, and not expect to see the payoff until five to 10 years down the line. We did so because we chose companies of extraordinary promise that trafficked in big ideas — businesses that, with enough time and money, could create products that changed the way humans interact on a day-to-day basis. Microsoft, Google and Apple — these are companies built with long-term VC investment. And they gave rise to the Age of Information.

So, going forward, let’s be as ambitious and smart with our capital as we once were. Let’s take more risks and be more encouraging of big ideas and bold leaders. We can’t get trigger happy with our funding dollars and settle for a quick fix or a “me too” idea.

Let’s also remember that innovation can benefit those living in the developing world. After all, innovation brought automobiles to India that cost less than $2,000 — and stoves to Africa that also charge cellphones.

And, most importantly, before we invest, let’s ask ourselves some crucial questions:

  • Will this startup change the world — not just my world? Is the problem it solves large enough and its appeal wide enough?
  • Does this company meet a critical, unmet need — or does it just bring simplicity or efficiency to an already-tackled issue?
  • How difficult is the problem I want to solve? And is my solution unique, based on strong intellectual capital or a patentable idea? Or is it a piece of Web functionality that could be easily and quickly cloned, copied and resold?

In the past, investors haven’t always asked these questions. But if we start now — and answer them honestly and correctly — then we can unleash a new era of greater creativity and better returns.

If my tenure at Foundation Capital has taught me anything, it’s that investing in truly meaningful companies pays off. There are startups with world-changing ideas out there. And discovering what they are — and bringing their ideas to life — will require each of us to slow down and devote some time to big thinking.

If my 6-year-old son can do it, so can we.

Charles Moldow is a general partner at Foundation Capital, focusing on consumer Internet companies. He was previously a founding executive at TellMe Networks and at @Home.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130222/why-we-must-think-bigger/feed/ 8 San Jose Airport Searches for Google Boost http://allthingsd.com/20130221/san-jose-airport-searches-for-google-boost/ http://allthingsd.com/20130221/san-jose-airport-searches-for-google-boost/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:30:29 +0000 John Letzing http://allthingsd.com/?p=296886 Mineta San Jose International Airport has been losing commercial traffic and carrying a heavy debt burden, but a potential new revenue stream from jets owned by top Google Inc. executives and others could give the city-owned facility a lift.

On Friday, San Jose officials will publicly review a plan, backed by airport management, for the construction of a private facility that would house jets belonging to Google Chief Executive Larry Page, his co-founder, Sergey Brin, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The city council is expected to vote on the project in the spring.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130221/san-jose-airport-searches-for-google-boost/feed/ 0 Zuckerberg, Milner, Brin and Other Tech Titans Donate Millions to Science http://allthingsd.com/20130220/zuckerberg-milner-brin-and-other-tech-titans-donate-millions-to-science/ http://allthingsd.com/20130220/zuckerberg-milner-brin-and-other-tech-titans-donate-millions-to-science/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:17:19 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=296569 Zuckerberg_millnerWhen you’re as rich as some of the Silicon Valley elite, most anything is at your fingertips. Jetpacks, yachts, skydiving while wearing augmented reality headgear. Oh, and there’s that whole philanthropy thing, too.

A few are opting for that last option with the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation on Wednesday, a non-profit organization drummed up by a handful of tech billionaires.

“I think that our society needs more heroes, more scientists, more researchers, more engineers,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the sponsors of the foundation, at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday. “The things that we can do from the sidelines are build institutions that celebrate your work.”

The prize aims to spur innovation in the field of science research and is backed by tech luminaries including Russian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, who reached out to Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin months ago to talk about launching the foundation. Art Levinson, Apple chairman and former CEO of Genentech, will act as the chairman of the board for the foundation.

The first round of prize recipients includes 11 scientists from a range of research disciplines, including studies in genetics, cancer research and neural behavior. Each of the 11 prize winners will receive a $3 million award for their work, and Brin, Zuckerberg, Milner and the rest of the sponsors have agreed to a five-year commitment to awarding prizes.

For now, the group’s board intends to remain small. Milner said the design of the five-person board — which also includes Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan and Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki (a biology analyst and co-founder of 23 and Me) — is purposely small, targeting research on five specific diseases chosen by the board members. Wojcicki’s donation will go to supporting Parkinson’s research; the other sponsors haven’t named their chosen diseases yet.

At the same time, Zuckerberg said there’s room for expansion. “We specifically said we weren’t going to name the prize after a specific person,” he said, in order to potentially attract more sponsors in the tech industry.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130220/zuckerberg-milner-brin-and-other-tech-titans-donate-millions-to-science/feed/ 1 Sergey Brin Takes His Google Goggles for a New York City Subway Spin http://allthingsd.com/20130121/sergey-brin-takes-his-google-goggles-for-a-new-york-city-subway-spin/ http://allthingsd.com/20130121/sergey-brin-takes-his-google-goggles-for-a-new-york-city-subway-spin/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:12:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=287163 sergey brin subway google glassesjpegCelebrity billionaires are just like us! They take the subway, too!

But when they do, some of them wear their personalized virtual reality goggles.

Here’s the now-famous picture of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, wearing his Google Glass augmented reality specs, riding the New York City subway. It’s from Noah Zerkin, who says he snapped it after chatting with Brin on a downtown-bound #3 train.

Double-bonus for Zerkin: He happens to be an “Augmented Reality enthusiast/hardware prototyper” who plays with this stuff at SuperTouch Group. (Sure hope he hasn’t Lennay Kekua’d us!)

For a not-totally-safe-for-work interview with a Googler who also wears his Glasses out and about in New York City, check out this Gothamist interview.

 

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130121/sergey-brin-takes-his-google-goggles-for-a-new-york-city-subway-spin/feed/ 1 Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe on One Million-DNA March and More (Video) http://allthingsd.com/20130114/anne-wojcicki-of-23andme-on-one-million-dna-march-and-more-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20130114/anne-wojcicki-of-23andme-on-one-million-dna-march-and-more-video/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:00:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=284541 23andMeLogoMagentaLime

Last week, I paid a visit to the Mountain View, Calif., offices of personal genomics company 23andMe, which just raised more than $50 million in a new funding round, to add to the $68 million it has garnered since it was founded in 2006.

The new financing includes Russian investor Yuri Milner, as well as existing ones including Sergey Brin of Google, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital.

While there, I interviewed CEO Anne Wojcicki about what she plans to do with all that money, including the company’s effort to get one million people to get detailed information on their DNA by cutting the price of its tests to $99.

23andMe’s Personal Genome service now offers 244 reports on health and personal traits, as well as genealogy and ancestry information that people can share socially. That’s down from the original $999 price that provided only 14 reports.

Wojcicki said she hopes that will spur more interest about from whence we came, and also how important it is to know your own genetics, to be aware of, prepare for and also prevent diseases of all kinds.

(On a personal note, that is exactly what happened to me after Wojcicki contacted me in China, after I had a serious stroke, to give me critical info from my own 23andme profile about a blood anomoly I had that was key to my care.)

Here’s the video of my interview:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130114/anne-wojcicki-of-23andme-on-one-million-dna-march-and-more-video/feed/ 0 23andMe Raises $50 Million in New Funding, Adding Yuri Milner as Investor http://allthingsd.com/20121211/23andme-raises-50-million-in-new-funding-adding-yuri-milner-as-investor/ http://allthingsd.com/20121211/23andme-raises-50-million-in-new-funding-adding-yuri-milner-as-investor/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:21:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=276811 Personal genomics company 23andMe said it has raised more than $50 million in a new funding round, a near doubling of its investments so far. 23andMe has already raised over about $68 million since it was founded in 2006. The new financing includes Russian investor Yuri Milner, as well as existing investors Sergey Brin of Google, 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital. The money will be used by the Mountain View, Calif., company to grow to one million customers and also to cut the price of its Personal Genome service to $99, which offers 244 reports on health and personal traits, as well as genealogy and ancestry information. That price was originally $999 and provided only 14 reports.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121211/23andme-raises-50-million-in-new-funding-adding-yuri-milner-as-investor/feed/ 0 Google Founder Calls U.S. a "Bonfire of Partisanship" http://allthingsd.com/20121107/google-founder-calls-u-s-a-bonfire-of-partisanship/ http://allthingsd.com/20121107/google-founder-calls-u-s-a-bonfire-of-partisanship/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2012 08:05:10 +0000 Amir Efrati http://allthingsd.com/?p=267491 Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin cast his vote Tuesday for a different kind of political approach: Going independent.

In a blog post on Election Day, the 38-year-old Silicon Valley billionaire decried the fierce partisan battles in Washington and called on Tuesday’s victors to withdraw from their political parties and to govern as independents.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121107/google-founder-calls-u-s-a-bonfire-of-partisanship/feed/ 0 Better Than a Poke! Here's Like-A-Hug, the Vest That Lets Your Facebook Pals Reach Out and Touch You. http://allthingsd.com/20121007/better-than-a-poke-heres-like-a-hug-the-vest-that-lets-your-facebook-pals-reach-out-and-touch-you/ http://allthingsd.com/20121007/better-than-a-poke-heres-like-a-hug-the-vest-that-lets-your-facebook-pals-reach-out-and-touch-you/#comments Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:48:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=257654 If Mark Zuckerberg is ready to move beyond the hoodie, this may be the thing: A “wearable social media vest” that hugs you when your pals give you Facebook props.

Creepy? Sure! But people thought Google Glass eyewear was nuts too. Now Sergey Brin is showing them off at fashion shows, and getting ready to sell them to the general public.

But Like-A-Hug seems less likely to end up at a store near you, since it is still partially theoretical.

Artist Melissa Kit Chow built one along with classmates Andy Payne and Phil Seaton as part of a MIT Media Lab course. “While the wireless, inflatable vest does exist,” she tells me via e-mail, “we never fully realized the project and did not connect it to Facebook.”

Maybe Zuck can work something out with Kickstarter?

More here, via CNET.

And here’s the video “like a hug HR 1 2” from Chow on Vimeo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121007/better-than-a-poke-heres-like-a-hug-the-vest-that-lets-your-facebook-pals-reach-out-and-touch-you/feed/ 0 Google's Self-Driving Cars Now Legal in California http://allthingsd.com/20120925/googles-self-driving-cars-now-legal-in-california/ http://allthingsd.com/20120925/googles-self-driving-cars-now-legal-in-california/#comments Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:25:58 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=254200 California governor Jerry Brown stopped by Google Tuesday to sign a bill that explicitly legalizes self-driving cars like those company co-founder Sergey Brin is so hot on.

The bill — SB 1298, sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-L.A.) — essentially establishes safety guidelines and performance standards for autonomous vehicles operating on California’s roads and highways, the first step in their public deployment. Self-driving cars can now be tested on public roadways — as long as a licensed human driver is seated at the wheel and able to take over in the event of a malfunction.

“Today we’re looking at science fiction becoming tomorrow’s reality,” Gov. Brown said. “This self-driving car is another step forward in this long march of California pioneering the future and leading not just the country, but the whole world.”

Fantastic. Soon we’ll be referring to Mountain View as Orbit City and Cosmo G. Spacely will be mayor. But what can we expect from this effort practically? Well, according to Brin, autonomous vehicles could vastly improve public safety. “These cars have the potential to avoid accidents. … They can save lives and reduce congestion. I expect that self-driving cars will be far safer than human driven cars.”

That may well prove to be the case, but we won’t know for another few years. The vetting process for self-driving cars — not to mention policy issues like liability and insurance — is likely to be quite complex. That said, Brin seems confident we’ll be seeing driverless vehicles soon.

“We hope to have employees testing it within the year,” he said. “And my hope is that people will more broadly use this technology within several years. … Now I don’t want to overpromise. We have fairly ambitious goals. But you can probably count on one hand the number of years until people can experience this.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120925/googles-self-driving-cars-now-legal-in-california/feed/ 0 Google Welcomes Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's "The Internship" on Campus http://allthingsd.com/20120920/google-welcomes-vince-vaughn-and-owen-wilsons-the-internship-on-campus/ http://allthingsd.com/20120920/google-welcomes-vince-vaughn-and-owen-wilsons-the-internship-on-campus/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:46:10 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=252768 You wouldn’t know that relations between Google and Hollywood are testy by the week they’ve had together.

Google has taken in movie stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn with open arms, lending its campus as the set for their upcoming film “The Internship.”

I’d previously written about the project coming to the San Francisco Bay Area this week, but hadn’t realized the extent to which Google was cooperating.

It wasn’t feasible to let the 20th Century Fox-produced film take over its entire campus for months, but Google’s marketing team consulted on the creation of “Google office” sets at Georgia Tech, and opened up its actual Mountain View, Calif., headquarters this week to shoot some external scenes.

Not only that, but Eric Schmidt interviewed Vince Vaughn for an employee talk (the video is not online yet, that I can see), and many Google employees (including Android guru Hugo Barra, I’ve been told) were extras on the film. Plus, Google co-founder Sergey Brin hosted part of the crew for dinner at his own home, and his Google[x] projects Google Glass and driverless cars are set to be featured in the movie.

Unlike some other Hollywood representations of tech companies, like the Facebook creation myth “The Social Network,” it sounds like this movie might as well be a Google advertisement.

Those last few details about the Google campus shoot come courtesy of Bloomberg TV reporter Jon Erlichman, who spent some time on set yesterday during the last day of filming at Google.

Vaughn told Erlichman that he wrote the first draft of the screenplay about an unspecified tech company, and later ended up making it explicitly about Google after meeting with people there.

Here’s a video of Erlichman’s time on the set, where he watched Vaughn and Wilson film a scene that involved arriving at campus on a Google shuttle bus:

And here’s Google’s statement on the film: “We’re excited that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson chose the Google campus as a backdrop for their first film together since ‘Wedding Crashers.’ We’re sure they’ll have a humorous take on life in Silicon Valley and look forward to seeing the result.”

Also, while they were in town, Wilson and Vaughn shot scenes on the Stanford campus (check out the great paparazzi shot taken by a professor) and showed up at a 49ers game, where Wilson committed a major local faux pas in admitting he was a Cowboys fan during a broadcast postgame interview.

Photo credit: San Francisco 49ers

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120920/google-welcomes-vince-vaughn-and-owen-wilsons-the-internship-on-campus/feed/ 0 Hype and Hope: Test Driving Google's New Glasses http://allthingsd.com/20120911/hype-and-hope-test-driving-googles-new-glasses/ http://allthingsd.com/20120911/hype-and-hope-test-driving-googles-new-glasses/#comments Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:16:13 +0000 Spencer E. Ante http://allthingsd.com/?p=249707 Google’s glasses are escaping from the laboratory. But they aren’t ready for the real world yet.

I had the opportunity to test-drive the eyewear on Monday with Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin at the company’s New York office. The glasses are one of the projects Mr. Brin is overseeing as the head of Google X, a research lab for the Internet search giant.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120911/hype-and-hope-test-driving-googles-new-glasses/feed/ 0 VF's "New Establishment" List: Apple's Cook and Ive Knock Facebook's Zuckerberg Off No. 1, While Yahoo's Mayer Debuts at No. 7 http://allthingsd.com/20120906/vfs-new-establishment-list-apples-cook-and-ive-knock-facebooks-zuckerberg-off-no-1-while-yahoos-mayer-debuts-at-no-7/ http://allthingsd.com/20120906/vfs-new-establishment-list-apples-cook-and-ive-knock-facebooks-zuckerberg-off-no-1-while-yahoos-mayer-debuts-at-no-7/#comments Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:03:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=248138

Vanity Fair magazine published its annual “The New Establishment” list, out now in its October issue, and Silicon Valley disruptors dominate again over media mavens.

In fact, the top 10 selections of the 50 overall are all from tech, with Apple CEO Tim Cook and head product design guru Jonathan Ive in the No. 1 slot, up from No. 4 last year.

In 2011, that first slot was held by Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who this year was moved to No. 4, which is certainly not as bad a drop as the stock of his social networking site of late.

In the other slots: No. 2 is Google’s twin search engine founders, Sergey Brin and CEO Larry Page; No. 3 is Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos; No. 5 is Twitter and Square impresario Jack Dorsey; No. 6 is venture capital’s Batman and Robin, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz; No. 7, on the list for the first time, is former Googler and new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer; No. 8 is Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann, also new; No. 9 is SpaceX and Tesla Motors kingpin Elon Musk; and No. 10 are LinkedIn’s dynamic duo, Chairman Reid Hoffman and CEO Jeff Weiner.

Singer extraordinaire Adele clocks in at No. 11, the first media appearance on the list.

The rest of the list is chock full of the usual tech suspects, including my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg and me at No. 34. (There is also a very nice portrait photo of me with a group of much more accomplished tech women, photographed at Buck’s in Woodside — in which I appear to be oddly staring at something besides the camera lens, while all the rest behave.)

You can peruse the whole list here.

(Full disclosure: Readers who look closely at the list will notice that ATD senior editor Peter Kafka is listed as a contributor, as he was last year. This is true! Also true: Peter wrote biographical entries for several people on the list, and had some input on its composition, although not about us. In addition, I have been asked to write some freelance articles for Vanity Fair going forward, but have not started as yet.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120906/vfs-new-establishment-list-apples-cook-and-ive-knock-facebooks-zuckerberg-off-no-1-while-yahoos-mayer-debuts-at-no-7/feed/ 0 Google's Brin Gives Los Altos a Lift http://allthingsd.com/20120829/googles-brin-gives-los-altos-a-lift/ http://allthingsd.com/20120829/googles-brin-gives-los-altos-a-lift/#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:56:00 +0000 Amir Efrati http://allthingsd.com/?p=246360 Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin has quietly become a power broker in this Silicon Valley city, in a bid to beautify and transform its sleepy downtown.

Mr. Brin, who lives in nearby Los Altos Hills, which doesn’t have a downtown but shares a border with downtown Los Altos, is bankrolling a real-estate investment firm that has bought local properties, renovated them and attracted new tenants, according to people briefed on the matter.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120829/googles-brin-gives-los-altos-a-lift/feed/ 0 Google Glass Skydiving Stunt Gets an Encore at I/O on Thursday http://allthingsd.com/20120628/google-glass-skydiving-stunt-gets-an-encore-at-io-on-thursday/ http://allthingsd.com/20120628/google-glass-skydiving-stunt-gets-an-encore-at-io-on-thursday/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:15:14 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=225742 After a strong response to Wednesday’s skydiving-infused demonstration of Google Glass, the company decided to talk more on Thursday about its high-tech specs and reprise the stunt.

Co-founder Sergey Brin, who made a surprise appearance to talk about Google Glass during Wednesday’s keynote, told people on his Google+ page that he would be back on Thursday with more details on the glasses.

Brin took to the roof of the Moscone West convention center on Thursday to go over the details of how the company pulled off its stunt to use the Google specs even while skydiving. The company pointed RF antennas at the skydivers, and also had to work with city officials and the Federal Aviation Administration, Brin said.

To show how it was done, the company repeated Wednesday’s effort, where three Google Glass-equipped skydivers jumped from the Airship Eureka. (That’s the same airship that AllThingsD took a spin on two weeks ago.)

“For those of you in downtown San Francisco, this would probably be a good time to peek out your windows,” Brin said, ahead of the Thursday skydiving attempt.

The skydiving was followed by a repeat of the other stunts, including glasses-wearing bikers and a glasses-wearing rappeler swooping down the side of the convention center.

“I’m hoping this is going to lead to something really exciting, going forward,” Brin said of the Glass project.

Google said on Wednesday that U.S.-based attendees of the I/O conference would be able to preorder a $1,500 early version of the glasses, to be delivered early next year.

The company didn’t give out a ton of details, but that didn’t seem to slow enthusiasm. More than 1,000 developers had taken Google up on its offer by late afternoon on Wednesday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120628/google-glass-skydiving-stunt-gets-an-encore-at-io-on-thursday/feed/ 0 Google I/O Day 2: Chrome for iOS, Cloud Computing and More Skydiving http://allthingsd.com/20120628/liveblogging-google-io-day-2-chrome-cloud-skydiving/ http://allthingsd.com/20120628/liveblogging-google-io-day-2-chrome-cloud-skydiving/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:51:34 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=225663 Google introduced Chrome for iOS, offline editing for Google Docs, retail selling of Chromebooks at Best Buy, and Compute Engine on the second day of I/O 2012. And it reprised its ridiculous Google Glass live video skydiving stunt from Wednesday.

10:05 am: Things still haven’t quite kicked off yet, but ATD is here in force. Liz Gannes is on keyboard, with Mike Isaac on vocals and Ina Fried on bass.

10:06 am: Okay. Here we go. Google has a fun one-minute countdown, with numbers flying out at the audience.

Vic Gundotra takes the stage, wearing Google Glasses and another preppy sweater.

He says 2,600 people downloaded the new Google+ Android app, more than 1,000 activated “party mode,” and they contributed 13,700 photographs of Paul Oakenfold, Train and the revelry last night.

By the way, Sergey Brin is expected to make another appearance today to talk more about Google Glass. That’s slated for around 11 am PT.

10:09 am: Now for Sundar Pichai, SVP Chrome and Apps. He says his team’s recent releases have been Chrome for Android, Google Drive and Samsung Chromebooks. What’s coming next are cloud products and developer tools.

For context, Pichai says: There are 2.3 billion global Internet users, and the big growth is coming from mobile. And 20 billion network connections are projected within four years.

As of today, there are almost 310 million Chrome users, with 60 billion words typed per day, 1 terabyte downloaded, and 13 years saved per day by typing in the “omnibox” to go directly to pages. That’s up from 160 million at I/O last year.

Pichai says there’s every indication that Chrome is now the biggest browser in the world.

Pichai: “For today’s Web, we want to make sure Chrome acts as a layer so that your Web is personalized, consistent and works seamlessly across devices.”

10:14 am: Now Brian Rakowski, VP Chrome, is up to talk about using Chome between all his devices. In the morning, he reads from a bunch of Chrome tabs on his MacBook; then he runs out the door; then at work he’s testing a Chromebook that he has never used before, and can sign in to start up with his settings and his bookmarked work tabs. (For some reason, the loading of the work tabs gets a small cheer from the crowd.)

Now Rakowski has — continuing with his hypothetical retelling of a day — looked up a lunch place, and is walking over, but forgot where it is. So, on his Android phone, he launches Chrome, opens a new tab, and it shows all his recent pages. If he opens the restaurant page, the back tab still works to the page he was on back at his desk.

For a bit more on where Google is taking Chrome, check out this post.

Now Rakowski is reading on his Nexus tablet at lunch, and he shows that pages are loaded in the background so they open quickly.

10:20 am: Here we go — news! Chrome is coming to the iPhone. Later today, Chrome will roll out in the App Store. Rakowski demos features like closing tabs with a swipe, and dragging tabs from side to side.

And Chrome is also coming out for the iPad, with tabs on top because there’s more space on the tablet.

He shows that his credentials — in this case, for the New York Times — are synced across devices, even though he’d never been to nytimes.com on that device before. Nice.

Also, Incognito works on iOS. Rakowski: “I hope you’ll find that using Incognito on a touch device is a great experience.” That gets a giggle.

10:24 am: Pichai back to talk about Apps, says Gmail has 425 million users. Ten million people are using Google Drive.

Consumerization of businesses is a powerful trend, Pichai says. Many businesses are “going Google” — governments in 45 states, 66 of the Top 100 U.S. universities and more than five million businesses.

The PC architecture is about the individual workspace, not collaboration, Pichai says. “You’re just not going to get there by using SharePoint or TPS reports.” Another giggle.

Interlude for some funny videos of people writing over each other in Google Docs.

10:30 am: Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Apps, up to talk about Google Drive.

The point of the product is to make it easy to live your life in the cloud, he says. Starting today, Google Drive is available for Chrome OS and iOS.

He’s showing off searching through scanned documents with OCR. This is getting applause, but it was a feature of Google Drive at launch.

Bavor searches for “pyramid,” and gets a personal picture from a vacation to see pyramids, even though it wasn’t titled. More applause.

Drive on Chrome OS, meanwhile, is the file system, Bavor says. Everything is synced silently. He pulls up the same document on a smartphone, tablet and Chromebook, adds a lolcats pic and shows it popping up on all the devices. Couldn’t they have given him a demo buddy or two for this part?

Which brings him to a launch announcement: Starting today, Google Docs are available for editing offline.

He’s getting feedback from someone backstage in the body of his document, which is cute: “Once you’ve shown the feature, move onto the next thing!”

Now Bavor is showing apps in Google Drive. So far, this is all stuff that has already been announced, or that Google had said would be coming soon.

With the Google Drive integration that launched 10 weeks ago, Lucidchart users are creating three times more diagrams, HelloFax users are sending 25 percent more faxes, and SlideRocket users creating 3.5 times more presentations.

10:40 am: Pichai is back. He says end-to-end computing is what the Chrome OS journey is all about. A new operating system version comes out every six weeks. The newest Chromebooks are fast and smooth, with a new user experience. Again, we’ve heard all this before, but apparently Google thinks nobody was paying attention, and wants to remind its captive audience of 6,000 at Moscone.

As of today, Chromebooks are available in physical retail in 100 Best Buy stores across the U.S. Pichai had also said this was coming, but we didn’t know the retailer.

Still, we’ll take it: News!

10:43 am: Extremely early Googler Urs Hölzle joins to talk about infrastructure.

Google wants to share its network and datacenters, and launched App Engine in 2008.

App Engine now handles 7.5 billion hits per day. It’s the largest public NoSQL DataStore in the world, Hölzle says.

During a huge Japanese broadcast recently powered by App Engine, there was no impact on service.

You’ve told us you want virtual machines to run, Hölzle says. So he’s announcing Google Compute Engine, infrastructure as a service.

Institute for Systems Biology was a beta tester, Hölzle says. In its work to find relationships between genes, ISB wrote an App Engine app that connected to Compute Engine virtual machines. This kind of gene analysis requires a tremendous amount of computing. It used to take 10 minutes to see connections, but now every few seconds.

When Invite Media ported their ad server from “another cloud provider” to Compute Engine, they were able to reduce connection errors by a factor of 10.

As for the pricing: It’s 50 percent more computing per dollar than other cloud providers. That’s not very specific.

“10,000 cores — I think that’s really cool. But you know what’s really cool? We know that some of you need more scale. For computations that don’t need much I/O, we can scale much, much higher.”

In the ISB case, for example, there are 771,886 cores available to the app, as has been live-counting through the presentation. “What would you say to 770,000 cores available to your app?” Big cheers.

Hölzle shows the same ISB genome explorer computation on 600,000 cores. It’s really fast.

10:55 am: The Web platform is evolving faster than ever before, says Pichai.

Pichai is showing a high-performance, visually intense game being streamed live online to show the potential of Chrome Apps. Many gamemakers are participating, he says. The Angry Birds Chrome app alone has 140 million users.

Pichai invites two people from Cirque du Soleil onstage. It’s not skydiving, but that sounds pretty fabulous.

Oh, they’re in street clothes.

They talk about a project to bring Cirque du Soleil online to be interactive and immersive and to evoke emotion.

This is called Movi.Kanti.Revo.

The world is created in HTML, positioned in 3-D space using CSS, and very fast because of hardware acceleration, says the designer. What we’re watching is running on a Chromebook. Now we’re looking at the source code, which can be manipulated in real time as it’s running. The developer crowd here loves that we’re seeing some actual code.

You can manipulate the world just by tilting the Chromebook.

No word about when this will be available.

After a video that makes you feel all happy-sappy about the potential for the world and Chrome, Pichai says everyone here gets a Chromebox.

11:10 am: And … Sergey’s back on the roof.

He has his Google Glass on over a pair of sunglasses. There are bikers behind him doing tricks, and the airship is up above. Wait, are they just going to do yesterday’s trick again?

Brin says it’s hard to keep every camera in the Google Hangout because of the “challenging wireless environment.” The crowd laughs.

He notes that the Google Glass he’s wearing actually has “shade clip-ins.” (It is so awkward not to just write Google Glasses.)

So basically, we are reliving yesterday’s stunt with a behind-the-scenes view.

Brin is totally natural emceeing this bizarre and complicated sequence of events. Why isn’t he the public face of Google?

“Yesterday was really fun, but I was down in the auditorium,” Brin says. So, basically, we are reliving this so he can get a bigger thrill.

11:18 am: The wingsuits have opened into parachutes, and they’re about to land on the roof. Wow, that’s a tight landing.

When I wrote the intro to the liveblog, I said today’s keynote was “unlikely to match the aerial stunts of yesterday’s keynote,” but it turns out I was exactly wrong. They are just redoing everything step by step. Now onto bikes doing backflips on a ramp to get to a higher part of the roof.

(For a recap on Google Glass and what Google has and hasn’t said, check out our several posts on the topic.

Now we are watching extreme live footage of Sergey climbing stairs to get to the other side of the roof. Really.

11:25 am: At this point, I’m wondering how Google was planning to use this keynote time if its whole X Games/Rube Goldberg machine had been a failure. Would we be sitting through more recaps of products they launched in the past?

11:27 am: And that’s it. We were expecting more news about Google Maps — I guess not for today!

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120628/liveblogging-google-io-day-2-chrome-cloud-skydiving/feed/ 0 More Details on Google's Project Glass General Availability, Pricing and Features http://allthingsd.com/20120627/more-details-on-googles-project-glass-general-availability-pricing-and-features/ http://allthingsd.com/20120627/more-details-on-googles-project-glass-general-availability-pricing-and-features/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 01:15:23 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=225425 I’ll admit that Google’s Project Glass is totally ridiculous, but it’s also the most exciting thing the company demoed today at Google I/O.

At the conference, the company disclosed a bit more about what we can expect from the “glasses,” far away though they may be from launching.

Here’s what we know:

  • The device includes memory, a processor, a touchpad on the side, a button for taking pictures, microphones, camera, speaker and sensors like an accelerometer, compass and gyroscope.
  • An “Explorer” edition was made available for preorder by U.S. I/O attendees today for $1,500, and from what we could see something like a thousand people signed up.
  • The developer version will come out early next year, and the consumer version will be out less than a year later, according to Google X leader Sergey Brin. The consumer edition will be sold for a “significantly lower cost” than $1,500, but it won’t necessarily be cheap. Brin doesn’t anticipate including any advertising in the interface.
  • There’s no 3G radio in the glasses, so when users are outside they have to tether through their phones.
  • Battery life is a significant issue. Right now Glass prototypes last about six hours, but Google wants it to be a full day.
  • Photos are stored locally, but users can opt to automatically share them to the cloud, like Instant Upload in Google+.
  • Besides the exterior button or tethering to their phone, users can tell the device what to do with their voice. In testing, this has been the most effective input, Brin said.
  • Yes, Google is aware that it needs to develop the product to work with prescription glasses.
  • As for what you can do while wearing Glass, some of the big activities are getting notifications and texts, and taking pictures. The team has also played around with voice-to-visual search, and time-lapse photography. “So far what we’ve been trying to do is really cover your bases for things you want to do often that are not a very involved interaction,” Brin said.
  • Brin doesn’t think Web browsing is a likely activity for the device. He also said he didn’t think facial recognition was particularly compelling. “Not to say we’ll never support it but we’ve not been quite as excited about it as science fiction might be,” Brin said.
]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120627/more-details-on-googles-project-glass-general-availability-pricing-and-features/feed/ 0 How Google's Project Glass Might Avoid Disrupting Its Users' Lives http://allthingsd.com/20120627/how-can-googles-project-glass-avoid-being-an-even-greater-tech-distraction-to-human-interaction/ http://allthingsd.com/20120627/how-can-googles-project-glass-avoid-being-an-even-greater-tech-distraction-to-human-interaction/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:42:12 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=225275 Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s favorite moment using the futuristic Project Glass prototype was taking a hands-free picture of his son in a moment of joy when he threw him in the air. Glass project manager Steve Lee said he loves that he can see text messages from friends who are meeting him while he’s biking to work without taking his phone out of his pocket.

Because it’s worn on your face, Glass has the potential to let information flow in, or capture a moment, with perhaps less interruption than pulling out a camera or a phone.

But what about when you’re trying to have a real interaction with someone, and you have a display screen popping up notifications in between yourself and them? Google Glass may be hands-free, but it’s also right there in front of a user’s eyes — how can that not be a distraction?

Today at a Google Glass press conference I asked members of the team how Google Glass can exist in the real world without being a hindrance to real human interactions. As they were testing the device, did their families and friends get annoyed about interacting with them through a wacky gadget?

“I’m optimistic,” Brin said. “I think it’s ultimately less disruptive than [phones] can be, because you end up holding [a phone] and looking down and taking you away from the environment around you.”

In testing, Brin said, the biggest problem has been when he notices the early software is buggy or badly designed — that’s when his wife has asked about being distracted.

If Glass software fails, “it’s much more intrusive,” Brin said. “But in the past month as we’ve refined it, we don’t have that issue.”

It has also been helpful to be more selective about triggering notifications. For instance, Brin now only gets notified about email messages in his Gmail Priority Inbox. “It tends to show me only when opportune,” Brin said. “I hear a ding, then look up and see it.”

Glass is focused on improving quick and basic interactions, Brin said. So it’s unlikely that the company will include something more involved like Web browsing.

Others from the Glass Project team replied to my question in keeping with their responsibilities.

“My aspiration is not to interrupt people, but if they need access to information then give them access to information. They’re in charge,” said Glass leader Babak Parviz, who’s the visionary.

Lee, the product manager, said he thought it’s about changing people’s expectations around using the devices. He said he thought social etiquette would evolve around things like someone with Glass on alerting the people in front of them that they’re about to be captured in a picture through a button press on the device, even if that simple action is subtle.

“While today, when people first see something on your head, it might be unusual; in three to four years, watching people holding an object in their hands, looking down at it — that will be awkward,” he predicted.

“The guiding principle is keeping people in the moment,” Lee said.

Meanwhile, device designer Isabelle Olsson said she thinks it’s about Glass becoming as minimal as possible. She said she obsessively weighs each new prototype, looking to shave off even fractions of a gram.

One improvement has been moving the display higher up, she said. “As long as you can look into people’s eyes, I think that’s baseline.”

And indeed, in the minute or so I had to try Brin’s prototype Glass on, what was most striking was that the device wasn’t immersive at all. It was a tiny screen, there if I wanted to look at it and otherwise kind of oddly blocking part of my view.

(See above picture — there’s a cord attaching the Glass to an external charger because the prototypes have only six hours or so of battery life, and his had run out.)

Olsson also said that recent improvements have been significant. “Today I was like, ‘Shit, I need to put my device on.’ And I was like, ‘No, I’m already wearing it,’” she said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120627/how-can-googles-project-glass-avoid-being-an-even-greater-tech-distraction-to-human-interaction/feed/ 0 Google I/O Attendees Get First Crack at Buying Google Glass -- But Not Till Next Year http://allthingsd.com/20120627/google-io-attendees-get-first-crack-at-buying-google-glass-but-not-till-next-year/ http://allthingsd.com/20120627/google-io-attendees-get-first-crack-at-buying-google-glass-but-not-till-next-year/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:42:35 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=225175 Google’s Sergey Brin stole the show at Google I/O today with a ridiculous scheme to get a Google Glass prototype delivered to him on stage.

AllThingsD.com

An airship hovering about Moscone Center in San Francisco dropped off the prototype via an elaborate pass-off between extreme athletes, who jumped out of the airship in wingsuits, parachuted onto the roof, biked to the edge, rappelled down the side of the building, and hopped on another bike. And this was all filmed from their perspectives with Google Glasses, streamed to a Google+ Hangout.

Brin also revealed that U.S.-based developers attending I/O will be able to preorder Google Glass for $1,500, shipping early next year. He warned that this “Explorer Edition” would not be a polished consumer product.

“You have to want to be on the bleeding edge,” Brin said.

Google Glass creator Babak Parviz and industrial designer Isabelle Olsson described the justification for the project, which they said began two-and-a-half years ago, and showed off a ton of footage from Google Glass team members playing with babies, running races and even sitting in the dentist’s chair.

The devices include memory, a processor, a touchpad on the side, a button for taking pictures, microphones, camera, speaker and sensors like an accelerometer, compass and gyroscope.

The idea is to make using technology more natural, said Olsson. “If this is not ridiculously light, both physically and visually, it doesn’t belong on your face,” she added.

Google Glass enables people to communicate through images and get rapid access to information, Parviz said. It’s a first-person point of view, through your eyes, as you see the world. It doesn’t require disengaging from the physical world.

Though it’s harder to show off the information retrieval aspect of Google Glass, Parviz talked of its potential. “We would like it to be so fast that you feel you know it,” Parviz said. It’s a long-term goal to have information that close. “That day may not be today. That day may not be tomorrow.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120627/google-io-attendees-get-first-crack-at-buying-google-glass-but-not-till-next-year/feed/ 0 FTC's Summer Grilling Menu: Google Guys http://allthingsd.com/20120608/ftcs-summer-grilling-menu-google-guys/ http://allthingsd.com/20120608/ftcs-summer-grilling-menu-google-guys/#comments Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:33:09 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=218324 The Federal Trade Commission plans to question Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as part of its antitrust inquiry into the company’s business practices. People familiar with the matter tell Bloomberg that the Google executives have already lawyered up for the depositions by retaining Williams & Connolly LLP, the Washington law firm that once represented President Bill Clinton. The agency is believed to have deposed Google Chairman Eric Schmidt earlier this week.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120608/ftcs-summer-grilling-menu-google-guys/feed/ 0 Steve Jobs's Lesson for Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg (Video) http://allthingsd.com/20120530/steve-jobs-lesson-for-larry-page-and-mark-zuckerberg/ http://allthingsd.com/20120530/steve-jobs-lesson-for-larry-page-and-mark-zuckerberg/#comments Thu, 31 May 2012 01:03:34 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=214897
Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Tech moguls like Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg run public companies that are essentially private fiefdoms — they’ve structured their corporate control so there’s no way that investors or board members can unseat them.

Thank Steve Jobs for that, says Larry Ellison.

The Oracle CEO, speaking at a D10 panel dedicated to the late Apple leader’s legacy, says the current generation of tech giants has taken notice of Jobs’s early career, when he was elbowed out of his own company in 1985. John Sculley, the Apple CEO Jobs had recruited from Pepsi and the Apple board, pushed Jobs out because he was “not politic,” Ellison said.

But that can’t happen to people like Zuckerberg, who controls more than half of his company’s voting shares, or to Page or Brin, who have similar control.

That’s no accident, Ellison argued. “Apple dismissing Steve Jobs in favor of a guy whose only track record was flavored water was such an incredible mistake,” he said.

For better or worse, you won’t see a repeat of that scenario at Google or Facebook.


[ See post to watch video ]

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