Tag: smart glasses

Snapchat may soon be offering wearable technology in the form of glasses

| March 15, 2016

The company behind the popular app is reportedly hiring experts in the field of wearables.

Some of the latest reports about Snapchat are now revealing that the company has started hiring wearable technology experts not for the purpose of creating a mobile app, but that are instead focused on the creation of hardware.

This is interesting because it would take the company well out of the current limits of mobile software.

While the initial assumption had been that Snapchat was looking to create mobile apps that would be supported by wearable technology, the discovery that the hires they’re seeking are not necessarily focused on software, but that are actually in the hardware category, has changed this prediction altogether. This has sent the rumor mill spinning and many speculations are that the company is seeking to make its own device, more specifically in the form of smartglasses.

The Snapchat app is exceptionally popular and using it through wearable technology could be interesting.

Wearable Technology Future - Image of woman wearing glassesAt the moment, this social network boasts more than 100 million daily users that make up its user base. By adding wearables to the mix, it could break away from its current format in quite the unique direction.

Among the more notable hires that have already been made in the wearables hardware category are: Mark Dixon, who was a Microsoft HoloLens recruiter; as well as Eitan Pilipski, who had been a part of the Qualcomm Vuforia team that was focused on creating augmented reality computer vision tech. He was hired in January as the engineering director.

While this strategy by Snapchat is quite interesting and will be new to the company, it won’t entirely be a first in the social media world. Facebook did, after all, make the $2 billion acquisition of Oculus in 2014. Still, the willingness of Snapchat to take a new direction with wearable technology that remains primarily untested is quite a striking move and is one that is quite likely to keep the social app in the spotlight for quite some time. These rumors are further supported by indications that Snapchat would be making moves in the wearables market for some time now, through research and startup acquisitions.

Augmented reality glasses from Sony, SmartEyeglass, hit the shelves

| April 6, 2015

These wearable devices have now become available in ten countries for an official price of $840.

The SmartEyeglass from Sony, that brand’s augmented reality glasses, have now officially received their rollout for consumers to purchase them in any of ten different initial countries.

The smart glasses were first unveiled last year, but they hit the store shelves at the end of March.

At the moment, what is available is the Sony SmartEyeglass Developer Edition (SED-E1). Those augmented reality glasses also include an additional controller and come with a price tag of $840. That said, if the nerdy appearance of Google Glass was a put off too much of the market, then they may not be impressed with the far less sophisticated looking wearable technology that Sony has now released.

These augmented reality glasses have been designed to provide the wearer with a pure AR experience.

They use hologram optics tech in order to be able to superimpose images, symbols, and text overtop of the natural field of view of the wearer. This idea is not unlike Google Glass, in that sense, as Sony’s version is able to place an overlay of digital information over top of the real environment of the wearer. For instance, it could add directions and arrows on top of the actual street view being seen by the person wearing the device.

At the moment, these AR glasses are available only in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany are able to buy these wearables, no matter who they are. However, in the other countries in which the devices are being sold, there are certain limitations, such as the fact that only business customers will be allowed to buy them, at least for the first wave of the rollout.

At the time that this article was written, Sony had not yet announced how it intended to move forward with the rollout of these augmented reality glasses beyond the initial ten countries. It is unclear whether there will be a global release or whether the device will ever become available to all consumers.