Twitter's Vine could be the killer app for Google Glass. They (should) go together like strawberries and chocolate.

Yes, Google Glass needs a killer app. Beyond the breathless hype by white guys in Silicon Valley, what exactly is the mass market supposed to do with Google Glass? The most talked-about Glass uses, like augmented reality and instant data presentation, don't have obvious appeal outside of the early adopter community. 

(See also 10 Compelling Ways People Plan To Use Google Glass.)

Vine on Glass, however, could be something almost everyone could get into. Vine on Glass would let all your followers - and potentially the whole world - see what you see, almost as soon as you see it, in an easily digestible form. While you could do much of this with a smartphone, when you see something you want to record, you need to pull out your phone and power up the video camera. Not so with Glass, which promises an almost frictionless experience. If you are wearing Glass, you could Vine, effortlessly.  

This has never been possible before. 

Making The Vine-On-Glass Match

The six-second limit on Vine videos also means that Glass wearers don't need to constantly stream everything they see, allowing Glass users to maintain full control and ownership over what they record, and what they share. Six seconds is long enough to capture the moment - the feel of an event or experience - in a way that is powerful, easy to record and share, but not so long that viewers get bored or creeped out. And Vine videos don't require the kind of editing and composition skills that it takes to make watchable longer form movies.

I suspect both Twitter and Google are already working on a partnership - though neither responded to my request for comment. Venture capitalist John Doerr has hinted that Twitter is already working on a Twitter - Glass app. First stop tweet, next stop picture, then... Vine: Hands-free, real-time, short videos, shot instantly with Glass, distributed instantly to the world via Twitter. And the companies are hardly strangers: Google used Twitter to help choose who would be first to own Glass with its #ifihadglass promotion.

Sure, Google would rather users share their videos on Google+. But Twitter has proven that no one does real-time sharing better, and the short, bursty Vine format combines the best of Twitter and Glass. 

How Would It Work?

Admittedly, there are some issues with creating Vine videos on Glass. Do you move your head? Stand still? How many taps to initiate recording and/or uploading? Based on the latest Project Glass "how to" video, however, even those minor barriers appear to be falling. 

Vine On Glass Use Cases

Unless and until we actually get Vine on Glass, we won't know how the combo would be used. But here are some likely scenarios:

• Ask your followers if the awesome shoes you are trying on are right for you.
• Impress followers with your amazing view of the San Francisco skyline - or just tease them with what you see in real, physical space.
• Show them how the guy three persons ahead of you in line is being a total jerk.
• Let them cry with you as you hold your newborn for the first time, or coo with you when you take your new puppy home - all while your hands remain completely free and in the moment. 
• You witness a traffic accident and immediately report all details, including video and audio of the aftermath. 
• POV video from sports events - as a spectator or even a participant.

The Vines embedded below offer more examples of Vines that would work even better if they had been recorded with Google Glass instead of an iPhone:

Stephen Wolfram believes that we may have already discovered the fundamental Unified Theory of Physics, and that he may able to write it down via a language that his company, Wolfram Alpha, has developed.

That's just the beginning for the man some believe to be the smartest person on the planet. Wolfram also plans to extend the power of computations to messier subjects, revolutionizing everything from law to medicine.

Best In Show At SWSW?

At his talk Monday at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas (Stephen Wolfram: The Computational Future, #wolffuture), Wolfram revealed that he

• Is working on an augmented reality version of his Wolfram Alpha "computational engine."
• Has plans to place the pioneering mathematics program Mathematica in the cloud (and make it accessible via iPhones).

Wolfram plans to more closely tie Mathematica to other data sources to simulate the interaction of complex machinery. The idea is to be able to answer questions like: "Would an SU-48 Flanker fighter jet be able to fly within the atmosphere of Mars?"

He will do all this, he told attendees, by opening up the fundamental language that his company created — one he calls, with characteristic modesty, the Wolfram Language — to the world at large. Eventually, he added, we'll probably use the Wolfram Language to unify all of physics, too.

Smartest Person On The Planet?

Wolfram won the award for Speaker of the Event at the 2012 SXSW conference, and he seems ready to contend for the crown again. There's no disputing his smarts — this is, after all, a guy who dropped out of Oxford at age 17 only to earn a doctorate in particle physics from Caltech three years later. But at this stage in his career, Wolfram seems obsessed with accumulating, picking apart and then weaving together disparate sources of data, such as basic rules that can be used to achieve complex results.

Wolfram's science of Computational Equivalence holds that we may have already discovered the interrelationships that will help us solve the universe's fundamental problems. If we continually automate and improve the process, we can build a framework that will not only allow computers to process the necessary data, but determine the best way to build and refine that process as well.

"We will define a purpose or a goal and the machines will determine how best to achieve that goal," Wolfram said. "But will it be wonderful or boring or terrible?"

Wolfram never mentioned the "singularity," the term popularized by Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, which suggests that generations of machines will constantly improve themselves until their intelligence far outstrips our own. Wolfram took a different tack, suggesting that all intelligence — our own, alien and machine — was entirely based on computation. Computation, he said, was "the main event." Fortunately, he said, there's a place for humanity in such a world, as the purpose that drives machines to complete their tasks.

(See also: Ray Kurzweil, Father Of The SIngularity, Is Going To Work At Google)

At this point, Wolfram's interface between man and machine is the Wolfram Alpha computational engine, which curates, parses and assimilates as many sources of data as it can. It basically allows users to ask for comparisons between 2-bedroom apartments in Austin and San Francisco, how much larger than a teaspoon a plain M&M candy is, or something simple, like the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. It can even analyze your Facebook friends.

In part, Wolfram Alpha is built on top of Mathematica, the groundbreaking program that allowed users to input equations and receive meaningful results. (It also provides the factual answers to questions fielded by Apple's virtual assistant Siri, sometimes with less-than-impressive results.)

Wolfram isn't shy in describing his creation, either. In using Mathematica, he told the audience, "you take the knowledge of the world and build up from there."

The Future Of Mathematica

This June, Mathematica will celebrate its 25th anniversary. As part of that event, Wolfram will unveil two things: first, it will break out the underlying language that runs the desktop version of Mathematica — the aforementioned Wolfram Language — and expose it to the world. Second, it will push Mathematica into the cloud. Mathematica is essentially already accessible via the cloud through Wolfram Alpha, but this is apparently paving the way you to tap into it via iOS, Android and a host of other platforms.)

In a demonstration, Wolfram showed how the Wolfram language could not only be hidden behind natural language ("graph a sine wave") but also brought forward and exposed, so that users could construct their own sliders and create variables. In his example, the language created a slider bar that could compress and expand the period of the wave itself.

Wolfram Alpha will also be more closely tied to Mathematica System Modeller, a large-scale modelling and simulation effort that uses Mathematica as its foundation. "I think that Mathematica has been somewhat undersold," Wolfram said. "People think that's a great tool for doing math — and it is, not surprising given the name — but it's actually much more than that."

One area where Wolfram's expertise has seemingly fallen down is in the nature of image recognition: Wolfram can do edge detection on a given image, analyze it chromatically and pick apart its disparate elements, but it can't tell you what it is. That sounds like it may be about to change. "The future will be increasingly preemptive, so that when you see something, we'll tell you the ways we think you should know about it," Wolfram said. But he did not give a time frame on when Wolfram will add that capability.

Algorithms For Everything!

Wolfram's vision extends far beyond math, to include messier human interactions — the legal system, for example. Eventually, Wolfram predicted, legal contracts will become computations, essentially algorithms accounting for the interrelationships between numbers and entities. Mortgages, tax codes and other contracts are "just ways of representing the real world in all of its messiness," Wolfram explained.

Even medicine can eventually be abstracted into computations. Wolfram said that he believed that if software could be analyzed for weaknesses and potential diseases, germs and other "bugs" that live in our body could be algorithmically isolated and eliminated.

Thats getting a bit ahead of Wolfram Alpha's core business plan, however. The plan is to spin off these interesting yet peripheral applications: Computerbasedmath.org is a planned spinoff to focus on improving mathematics education in the United States; a second spinoff will focus on computer-based medical diagnoses, using automated sensors as a supplement to a doctor's own expertise. A third entity would provide methods and procedures to secure outside funding for the Wolfram spinoffs. "We're just leaving too may good ideas on the table," Wolfram explained.

Kickstarting The Unified Theory Of Physics?

And then there's the Unified Theory of Physics, the Holy Grail of the physical sciences. Wolfram said he believes we've already found it. Deep inside the reams of data that scientists have collected about the universe, Wolfram said, should be some basic interaction between the various particles and forces that make up our universe. We have only to identify it. 

It's a scary proposition for physicists, tough, and there many not be much real-world value to knowing. So Wolfram is looking for data indicating how many people really want to know the answer to the fundamental question of the universe — and who might be willing to help pay to find out. "I've been thinking of launching a Kickstarter," Wolfram said.

The nerds are so excited. Our Internet-augmented, face-computer-wearing future is just over the horizon. Leading us there will be Google Glass, the first iteration of this particular sort of wearable, semi-immersive computing experience. If the product is successful, it will merely be the beginning.  

The anticipation is understandable. If having Internet-connected computers in our pockets can transform our world, just imagine what wearing them on our faces will do. The prospect of everything from augmented reality games to futuristic surgery has people pumped for the days head. It's all very cool, but there's another side to Google Glass: the creepy factor. 

See Also: 10 Compelling Ways People Plan To Use Google Glass

For every exciting use case, it seems there's at least one social or policy-related concern. How will this impact privacy? Will we even have privacy in the future? When will we overcome the social stigma of face-mounted computers? Will we?

It will be some time before these questions shake out, a process that will continue as the technology evolves beyond Google's audacious first stab at it. In the meantime, here are five socially unacceptable things we expect some of Glass's earliest adopters to get into. 

1. Surreptitiously Recording the Opposite Sex

Glass will likely be popular among doctors and academics, but there's another class of people just as eager to get their hands on it: Perverts. 

Smartphones already allow us to shoot photos and videos of strangers in public, if we want. But there's a simple social barrier: it's difficult to discreetly aim a phone's camera at somebody. Take the phone out of the equation and you remove that problem as well. 

Now, instead of awkwardly staring at people one find attractive, they can just take a photo or video. The potential examples here range from the relatively innocent to the highly unnerving, with most of them likely falling into the latter category.

Note: As one helpful commenter politely pointed out, the above heading presumes that people are only attracted to members of "the opposite sex." This is clearly not the case.  We fully expect people from all walks of life to do creepy things with Google Glass, regardless of their sexual orientation.

2. Ignoring Your Family At Dinner 

If you thought ignoring your loved ones in favor of scanning banal tweets was easy with your smartphone, just wait until it's connected to a heads-up display. But unlike our phones, Google Glass will at least create the illusion that you give a damn about the lives and feelings of those you profess to love the most. 

3. Watching Porn — And Creating Your Own!

It goes without saying that if you give the population a device with a screen that connects to the Internet, they're going to watch videos of people having sex on it. If those WiFi-connected kitchen appliances and thermostats had screens, people would undoubtedly watch porn there too. With heads-up displays like Glass, it will be easier and more discreet than ever. 

I couldn't find any research illustrating the extent to which smartphones have led to a rise in homemade porn, but there's no way there isn't one. Just look at Vine. The handful of Glass-wearers who do manage to get lucky will surely use the device to make filthy home movies. Just be careful with those unexpected incoming Hangout requests. 

4. Google-Stalking People You Just Met

Even though they have the technology, Google isn't including facial recognition in Glass, because they know precisely what kind of weird shit you would do with it. That, and the massive privacy freakout that would ensue isn't something they (or anybody) are ready for. 

Maybe someday. In the meantime, you'll have to manually Google the person you just met. You'll have to be inconspicuous with the voice commands, but with a Google-connected heads-up display Google-stalking new acquaintances has never been easier.

5. Alienating Your Friends At The Bar

The first person in your social circle to show up wearing Glass will certainly get a lot of "ooh's", "ahh's" and questions about how the device works. They'll wow their friends one-by-one as they allow them to test it out for themselves. 

Over time, those very same friends, one-by-one, will disappear as they realize that this gadget addict is constantly watching YouTube videos, verbally Googling things to settle debates and generally being douchier than anyone can handle. 

Original photo of jogger by Lululemon Athletica

Google Glass is coming. Sure, the early adopters will be viewed as weirdos and the idea of a tiny head-mounted camera raises all kinds of creepy privacy questions, but Glass is cool. 

Google's first iteration may or may not be a slam dunk, but wearable computing is unquestionably the next big thing, and heads-up displays are going to be a part of our future, once everybody gets over the dorky stigma. 

To get the ideas flowing (and promote its upcoming product launch), Google asked its users to propose use cases for Glass and hashtag them #ifihadglass. The campaign, which wrapped up last week, yielded some snarky — and, of course, some truly dumb — responses, but there are plenty of smart suggestions, each of which lets us envision the type of techno-utopian sci-fi future Sergey Brin dreams about every night.  

Yes, it will be awkward the first time one of your friends shows up to the bar wearing a computer on their face. That's not what Glass is for, at least not initially. In general, people seem to be most excited about what Glass will mean for education, medicine, communicating, gaming and getting around. 

1. Enhancing Surgery With Augmented Reality

A number of the #ifihadglass contest respondents talked about how the technology could be use by surgeons as virtual assistants in the operating room. Timothy Lee, a surgical resident at New York University, proposes using Glass to record operations for teaching purposes, enable remote assistance via livestream and show the surgeon vitals, CT scan and other pertinent medical information. 

By tapping into real-time data, reference material and input from live surgeons across the globe, devices like Glass could reduce the number of errors made during surgery. Here's hoping the voice recognition is spot on.

2. Revolutionizing Higher Education 

A great deal of the excitement about Glass is coming from people working in higher education, as well as from students. Ben Foster, a professor at DePaul University, is one of many academics that are eager to augment the teaching experience with Google Glass, pulling up pertinent data without turning his back to students, for example. 

For students, Google Glass could be transformative. Some are even talking about how Glass could potentially aid those with learning disabilities.  Recording lectures, live streaming them for remote access, audio-note taking and supplementing lectures with related data are just the beginning.  Of course, exactly how Glass is used (and how useful it is) will vary depending on the curriculum.

3. Enhancing Less Formal, More Hands-On Learning

While universities and colleges will be among Glass's earliest adopters, the advantages are not limited to formal education. Just like people post tutorial videos to YouTube, a camera-equipped camera you wear on your face opens up new possibilities for teaching people things from a hands-on, first person perspective. Fixing things, cooking meals, learning to play the guitar. Anything you use your hands for can be taught (and augmented with relevant details) via a Hangout or YouTube video.  

4. Augmented Reality Gaming

This is one of the use cases people seem most excited about. And for good reason: Wearable computing and augmented reality open up new doors when it comes to gaming, which is already huge on smartphones and tablets. With technology like Glass, game developers can overlay gameplay over the real world, and plenty of them are already thinking about how to take their Android games to this new, exciting (or creepy) level. 

5. Overcoming Disabilities

Okay, so Google Glass won't cure blindness, but the technology can be quite valuable to those with certain visual, auditory and physical handicaps. At the University of New Brunswick Libraries, Jeff Carter wants to use Glass to make things more accessible to the visually impaired via real-time optical character recognition and text-to-speech translation. 

Navigating the stacks would be a lot easier (for everybody, really) with digital signage overlaying the physical world. Indeed, for the visually impaired, navigating just about anywhere could be made much easier thanks to Glass's augmented reality maps and voice control. 

At Shriner's Hospital For Children in Portland, the assistive technology team is already brainstorming ways that Glass could be used to "unlock their learning potential and access their world."

6. Stargazing 

No, I don't mean surreptitiously snapping photos of Nikki Minaj at the grocery store (although I'm sure they'll be plenty of that sort of thing). Amateur astronomers will be able to look at the sky with a whole new layer of digital insight using tiny, face-mounted computers.  

Mobile astronomy apps have been popular on smartphone users for years, and for good reason. It's pretty neat to hold your phone up to the sky and see information about planets, constellations, galaxies and the like. Now imagine that experience without the smartphone, overlaid directly over what you're seeing. 

7. Healthier Living 

There are all kinds of ideas being thrown around about how Glass could help people better manage their health. First, there's the somewhat obvious example of porting already-popular fitness tracking apps like RunKeeper over to Glass for a more seamless experience. Many of things runners and fitness buffs use their smartphones for now could be simplified by Glass. If nothing else, displaying real-time stats about your run in front of you as you go could be a serious motivator. Also, the bone conduction audio makes headphones unnecessary and reduces the odds of you getting hit by a truck. 

If Santa Clara University student Alexander Vincent Molloy has his way, you'll also be able to return health-related information about foods while you're cooking or even shopping. Using Google Goggles-style image recognition and search, a Glass app could do exactly that, helping the health-conscious make smarter decisions without fiddling with their phones as much. 

8. Reconnecting With History 

One of the most delightfully nerdy Glass use cases being talked about is augmented reality historical tours and museum exhibits. Again, just imagine some of the work that's been done with smartphone apps and remove the phone from the equation (or at least the act of taking it out and holding it up). 

Armed with Glass-supported Android apps, walking through the historical Old City District of Philadelphia or the history-rich parks of Massachusetts could be like taking one of those audio-guided tours on digital steroids. Even if an app is not built specifically to overlay data and imagery on top of historical buildings, the ability to do a quick, relevant voice search without pulling out your phone will make learning about history  more immersive than ever. 

9. Augmented Reality Art 

Like historical tours, the experience of viewing art could be enhanced using augmented reality. Some will undoubtedly balk at the idea of wearing a face computer to the MoMA. Why not just enjoy the art and leave gadgets out of it? Because there's way more information in the world about a given painting, sculpture or design than could ever fit into an exhibit. 

It doesn't have to bound by museum walls, either. European design agency Nuelandherzer says it would use Glass to create an augmented reality experience for viewing and learning about urban street art around the world.

10. Real-Time Language Translation 

Previously the pipe dream of optimistic futurists, real-time language translation is a reality today (even if its accuracy could use a little more polish). Using technology Google already owns (OCR and Google Translate), Glass could translate foreign signs and menus. Even more compelling is the device's theoretical ability to translate spoken language into real-time subtitles, effectively eliminating any language barrier between two Glass-wearing individuals. Lots of people are thinking about how learning and using sign language could change too. Pretty powerful stuff.

Google’s Project Glass deserves plaudits for innovation, not just for the device itself but also for the process by which Google is developing and marketing the product. Studying product strategy and marketing as a Forrester analyst for almost nine years, I have never seen a company do what Google is doing: launch an entirely new form factor in such a transparent, inclusive way.

The Google Glass Rollout

At Google I/O last June, Google demoed videos taken with Glass while skydiving and mountain biking (notably, the top comment on YouTube as I write this article is how Glass will revolutionize POV porn) and offered developers an opportunity to buy an “Explorer Edition” for $1,500.

Google Glass In The Real World

Fast forward to 2013, and real developers, reporters and consumers are using Glass and talking about their experiences. The latest development in the Glass rollout is the #ifihadglass campaign: a contest for consumers to say on Twitter or Google Plus what they’d do with Glass and win an opportunity to participate in the Explorer program.

Glass is still months or even a year away from launching as a consumer product, but its transparent product strategy — exposing the evolution of the product to developers, reporters and consumers — will help Google avoid the pitfalls of its past product launches. Google TV has been an expensive flop. Android tablets took two years to catch on. Chromebooks have not yet been a commercial success.

Google released both of those products (Android for tablets and ChromeOS) and iterated post-launch; with Glass, it is opening the kimono before launch, and that will make a world of difference.

Marketing Hardware Like Software

This is software product strategy applied to hardware. In the software world, it’s common to release a beta version internally and then externally, improving the product before general release. In hardware, some small companies like Pebble are doing this but before Glass, there was no precedent for a major hardware launch to be so transparent. Secrecy is the norm in hardware, lest competitors get wind of what you’re doing and race to Taiwan to copy you.

Apple is the best example of pre-launch product secrecy. Google’s transparent Glass strategy not only helps Google avoid the mistakes of its own past, it’s also Google’s best weapon to compete against Apple. Rather than compete on Apple’s terms, Google invents its own terms. It’s not just “Google-level design,” it’s Google-level marketing. And it’s working. Google received thousands of responses over a weeklong period to the #ifihadglass campaign; tech blogs - including ReadWrite - and mainstream media like The Today Show amplified the story.

Social Market Research

The insights Google gathers from #ifihadglass submissions can help shape product development, app development and product marketing. For example, if you read the #ifihadglass tweets, you see that most of the submissions relate to sharing a point of view literally from someone’s own eyes, whether that’s for charity or sport or shopping. That’s what’s getting people really excited — Glass is tapping into a deep human need to be understood and share experiences with other people. A smaller number of posts relate to augmented reality — having data overlaid on physical space, whether that’s for entertainment or navigation or fixing something. Google product strategists and marketers don’t have to guess what excites people about their product — they already know.

There are several important implications of Google’s transparent product strategy for Glass. First, I think the company will see unprecedented success for launching a pretty futuristic product — Glass will succeed at scale where similar products like MyVu and Looxcie have not. The success of Glass — and the marketing leading up to its launch — will have a halo effect for Google Plus, which Google is using as the hub for Glass conversation. (And I imagine, the default place to share photos and videos taken with Glass will be your Google Plus page.) The bottom line: Glass will be the next great platform to innovate for, and should be on every company’s radar. Glass will be the next Pinterest, Facebook, Amazon and iPhone all rolled into one.

I am not looking forward to Google Glass POV porn, though.

Image courtesy of Google. 

One day you're going to see me walking down the street wearing Google glasses, maybe sporting an iWatch and probably doing something with an overly large cellphone. And you'll probably think I'm a giant douchebag. 

Is it because I'll be just one more over-connected yet socially oblivious American? Will you be jealous of how I have all these great gadgets and am always on top of information? Or is it just that I'll look like a massive tool?

Quite possibly the latter, and it's with that in mind that Google appears to be addressing the style gap raised by its much-hyped augmented reality Project Glass. According to the New York Times, Google is in talks with the boutique e-commerce site Warby Parker, which makes specialized stylish glasses, to produce more fashionable frames for its Glass frames. 

Google has plenty of work ahead of it to make Glass stylish for the masses. Right now, the glasses basically feature a camera-battery-processor rig attached to plastic frames and lenses. As in, yeah, that bulky thing on the left of the frames below. 

The challenge for Google and Warby Parker is to make the functional parts of Glass look cool. Does that mean redesigning how the glasses are put together? Or can Warby Parker find a way to take that existing pack and put it on frames in a chic manner?

The question of style is a new one for Google, which has historically focused on geeks and engineers. What's good for the geek is good for the Google gander.

That's changing with Glass. Google has seeded the devices to both tech enthusiasts and fashionistas. For example, Google has given a pair to Bobak Ferdowsi, the flight director for NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover mission. You don't get much more geek-chic than a NASA engineer. Yet Google also had runway models feature Glass eyewear during New York Fashion Week.

The strategy is almost Apple-esque. Apple has long tried to make sure that its products embraced both functional and aesthetic principles. An iPhone isn't just a cool smartphone, it's a slick status symbol. That focus helped Apple grow into one of the biggest and most successful companies in history.

As Google continues to expand its own lined of devices – such as Nexus smartphones and tablets and Chromebooks – it will need to navigate the function/style divide every bit as carefully as Apple has. Will Warby Parker will be Google’s solution to that challenge? Stay tuned.

What would you do with some nerdy-looking glasses that could show you contextual information right in your field of vision? Search the real world in real time, while walking down the street? Maybe something cooler?

Google wants to give you the chance to find out. 

Google is making its Glass project, the much-hyped wearable augmented reality glasses, available to a select few people outside of its Mountain View headquarters. All you need to do is send an application to Google saying why you are worthy - and include a check for $1,500.

(See also Geek Chic: Why Google Glass Needs A Style Infusion)

On Wednesday, Google announced a Glass campaign, “looking for bold, creative individuals who want to join us and be a part of shaping the future of Glass.” The lucky individuals who are accepted, to be known as Glass Explorers, will be chosen based on applications to Google with the following criteria:

• Application must be 50 words or less
• Include hashtag #ifihadglass in the application
• Include up to five photos in the application
• Include a short video (15 seconds max)
• Be at least 18 years old

Google encourages prospective Glass Explorers to follow the Glass project on Google+ (+ProjectGlass) and/or Twitter (@projectglass). The deadline for applications is Feb. 27. Individuals chosen will be able to pick up their Glasses in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Google is the first to say that Glass is still in its very early stages. The search giant has tried to keep a tight lid on details of the project, from limited developer events to draconian non-disclosure agreements for those who ordered the glasses at the company's Google I/O developers event in May 2012.

What would you do if you had Glass? Would you be the uber-geek on the New York subway, the way that Google co-founder Sergey Brin was the other month? Would you jump giant buildings in a single bound and rescue kittens from treetops? Let us know what you would do #ifihadglass in the comments.

Remember that top secret Google Glass Foundry event?

You know, the one for developers for Google's cool new augmented reality (AR) glasses? The one with the ultra-strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that we'd heard nary a peep out of since the second half of the event wrapped up at the beginning of this month? On its Google+ Developers account, the company that fully intends to whisk us all into a wearable future of computing just gave us a little peek at what went down at the San Francisco and New York Google Glass hackathons. 

Meet The Google Glass Pioneers

The pair of two-day events invited about 40 developers to set up camp at Google's respective bicoastal offices, handed them each a set of Google's AR visors and... well, we're still not exactly sure what took place. But we're betting that the hackathons yielded Google Glass applications far more compelling than Sergey Brin's obsession with live-streamed video stunts from Google I/O last year. 

According to the brief official Google+ recap, Foundry attendees broke into teams and dreamt up more than 80 new tricks for Google Glass. Participants in the hackathons scored special "Pioneer" edition glass bars, like the placeholders handed out at Google's I/O conference.

The eight teams that came out on top won the grand prize of a free pair of the futuristic AR devices, which went on pre-order at Google I/O for $1,500 (though we've yet to pay a dime of that). The Glass API is still on lockdown for the time being, so don't expect to hear too much unless you can get your hands on a Medieval torture device and a Pioneer or two. 

SXSW And Google Glass 

As Google Glass Explorer #961, I can hardly wait to get my hands (ears?) on the things. While no release date is set yet for those of us who pre-ordered at I/O, Google will apparently be holding a SXSW Interactive session for developing for its newest, coolest platform. Here's the description for the SXSW Google Glass event, hosted by Google Senior Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan:

"By bringing technology closer, we can get it out of the way. This is what Glass does. It provides an experience to the user that's there when they want it, and unobtrusive when they don't. In doing so, Glass creates a new kind of computing that's more about people than it is about computers. In this session, we'll look at Glass in people's lives with emphasis on how to use the cloud API to build new experiences and bring people closer together."

Below are more new photos from the Google Glass foundry events. Now that we've got Google Glass "pioneers" my status as a Google Glass "Explorer" suddenly feels a little inadequate. You can view the full album on Google+.

Photos by Daniel Gaines Photography and Philip Montgomery.

On January 28th and 29th, Google is holding a shadowy event for Google Glass developers in San Francisco. There's another on February 1st and 2nd in New York.

It's called a Glass Foundry.

Google will be introducing developers to the Google Mirror API, which will let them start building software that interacts with Google's futuristic augmented-reality glasses. We know from members-only Google+ posts from the organizers that developers will get to play with Project Glass units during the workshop.

According to the document we've got, developers "may" even be getting a test pair to take away. And you won't believe how intense the rules are.

ReadWrite got a look at the non-disclosure agreement — or NDA — for developers attending the first Glass Foundry, and it is a serious piece of work. Google doesn't want anything to leak out about the state of this project.

Google has been pretty ostentatious about its goals for its augmented-reality glasses. Remember the skydiving Hangout stunt? And Google co-founder Sergey Brin was spotted last week riding the subway in New York wearing Project Glass. But now that the first outside people who promised to fork over $1,500 at Google I/O last summer are getting their hands on the things, mum is definitely the word.

Here are some highlights from the NDA on the Project Glass events. We've reordered and paraphrased them in order to protect our sources from any devious wording tricks Google might use to identify them. We've retained the original title and headers for relevant sections, and we've quoted one amazing phrase verbatim.

GLASS DEVICE USAGE AGREEMENT FOR GLASS FOUNDRY DEVELOPERS

1. General

• Google "may" give attendees access to "Glass and other Google products," but it's only for testing purposes and to solicit feedback.
• Only U.S. residents are allowed.
• The Google Glass devices attendees "may" receive can be used only in the U.S.
• No one other than the attendee can wear or use Glass without Google's permission.
• Either Google or the participant can terminate participation freely.
• Everything is covered under Google's overall terms of service and privacy policy, as well as any additional terms for individual products.
• Google warns participants not to use Glass while driving, biking, using sharp objects, or playing sports, and to use caution while walking and crossing streets. If they have any concern about the safety of using Glass, Google asks participants to stop using them and return them immediately.
• Glass has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transmitters/receivers, but since it hasn't been FCC authorized, they must remain in the hands of authorized testers.
• Google will collect feedback from users, including location and usage data, survey responses, and recordings of voice or images taken during in-person interviews or studies. It will all be associated with participants' names and retained by Google.
• Photos or videos taken of Glass devices or at Glass Foundry events, including (but not limited to) images of the participants wearing Glass, are Google's confidential information, and participants can't copy, store, or share them without Google's written consent.
• Participants are not allowed to use their own Google accounts with Glass. They're getting developer accounts to which Google has full access, which will be deleted after the agreement is over.
• Photos taken wearing Glass will all be added to the Instant Upload album of developers' test Google+ accounts, so Google will see them all immediately, as well as their location data.

2. Ownership and Intellectual Property Rights

• Google owns everything, basically. "You waive any moral rights you have and agree not to exercise them." (The term "moral rights" is lawyer-speak for a very specific set of copyright restrictions.)
• Google can only use participants' photos and videos externally with their consent, except photos, audio, and video of or by the participant while using Glass or at the Foundry event. Google can use that internally or externally as it pleases.
• Google "may" provide participants with copies of their photos and videos, but they can use them externally only with Google's consent.
• Software developed by participants is governed by separate terms.

3. Confidentiality

• Participants cannot talk to the media or post publicly about Glass without Google's written consent.
• All information provided by Google to participants, as well as their feedback, is Google's confidential information. If participants are legally required to disclose any information, they must tell Google immediately.

4. Term and Termination

• The agreement goes into effect when signed, and participants have to notify Google in writing to terminate it. Google can suspend or terminate participation at any time.
• Sections 2 through 8 still apply after the agreement is terminated.
• Participants have to return Glass devices and confidential info to Google immediately after the agreement is terminated.
• Google will delete the developer's account information after termination but keep all the photos, videos, logs, and usage and location data.
• If participants breach the terms of the agreement, Google can blacklist them forever from developer programs.

Miscellaneous Bits At The End

• Google is liable for warranty claims in relation to this program only up to $100.
• Google is indemnified against anything participants do in violation of the agreement.
• Google's failure to enforce any provision of the agreement does not constitute a waiver of it.

Lead photo by Eliot Weisberg.

GPS-based Augmented Reality is great for a mobile game like Ingress, but it won't help you fix your car.

New software from PAR Works has a visual take on Augmented Reality, bringing the benefits of the concept to an entirely new class of applications. It might even work its way into gaming, too.

Current implementations of AR usually tie into your phone or tablet's location features (GPS, compass, etc.) to determine exactly what to show you. In some cases, like an interactive subway map, this is exactly what you need, but there are times when you want something more precise – or times when location doesn't matter at all.

Companies like Aurasma have brought some really interesting AR applications to 2D picture recognition, and they have the potential to transform marketing.

But we live in a 3D world. Imagine being able to tag 3D objects and have your overlays viewable from any angle. That's what PAR Works claims its Mobile Augmented Reality Solution (MARS) can do.

What MARS Does

The video above simulates an application an automaker might ship with its cars. Open the hood, start your camera and tap anywhere for support information. Turn the phone upside-down, lean in from the side, or take a shot from beneath the car, and it still works.

There are plenty of applications for this sort of technology, usually centered around large, fixed objects that could be viewed from multiple angles. Imagine a virtual tour for an installation like the Space Shuttle Endeavor that worked from any angle and any distance. Or a construction site that allowed workers to pull specific schematics with a click, regardless of whether they were two blocks away or inside the building.

How MARS Works

MARS' bread-and-butter is the way it translates 2D images to 3D point cloud models (the type you normally get when you put something through a 3D scanner).

Creating a MARS overlay goes like this:

1. Upload 20-30 2D images of a building, object or location, taken from different angles. 
2. In about 2-3 minutes, MARS renders that into a 3D model. This happens on the back end, and you never see the model.
3. Choose one or more of your 2D images and tag as many hot spots as you want with URLs or other data.
4. MARS applies those zones to its model, and the user can now view AR content from any angle.

MARS' Limitations - And Its Potential

For industrial and commercial uses, it's a great idea. For most consumer apps, including gaming, it's pretty limited on its own. In an online scavenger hunt, for example, seers could fake out the system by snapping a picture of a photograph. And if you wanted to create a MARS-enabled version of something like Ingress, good luck uploading 20 or more images for each of your thousands of portals.

Of course, the MARS system isn't designed to stand alone. Developers still have access to all of the phone's other functionality, so they could choose to combine location-based services with PAR Works' visual model. A scavenger hunt or a "sniper" game might require visual confirmation plus physical proximity within a viewing distance, allowing users to find creative ways of targeting a tough-to-find objective.

A tourist app might query your general location, then pull down all visual maps matching "Times Square" so you can search for restaurants by storefront. And for that Ingress-like game, you could always distribute the load, letting users upload photos and create their own hot zones.

MARS' Future?

MARS certainly won't be a cure-all for all developers' AR ills, but it looks like it might be a powerful tool. Until January 31, 2013, PAR Works is running a $25,000 developer contest, and it has some 250 coders in the program. It will be interesting to see where developers take the MARS platform.

Ingress, the Alternate/Augmented Reality (AR) game from Google's Niantic Labs, is a major evolution of mobile gaming. Apparently, it's also a good way to get arrested.

According to a post on Reddit (I know, I know – but stay with me on this), an Ingress player in Ohio was detained by police for his in-game actions. Specifically, he was "hacking a portal" near a police station. His phone had technical difficulties, which led him to linger by the portal/police station for a bit, catching the eye of local law enforcement and leading to the detention.

After the original post, other Ingress players responded with similar stories. One aroused suspicions by wandering around an empty parking lot at night. Another, trying to hack a portal next to an air traffic control station, had to run from the local sheriff. A third was called in for questioning after hacking a portal outside of a "high-traffic drug area."

It's In The Game

As Dan Rowinski mentioned in his earlier post, there's plenty of "creep" factor built into the game. In fact, much like geocaching (Ingress' non-digital ancestor), lurking in strange and hard-to-get-to places at odd hours is kind of the point.

Getting detained (as many Redditors pointed out, the poster wasn't technically arrested) probably adds to the intrigue, and certainly gives a player a certain amount of street cred. It could also call into question the boundary between the First Amendment and public safety.

Legal, But Risky

All of Ingress' portals are on public land. There's no law against walking past a police station, post office or airport. There are, however, very legitimate safety concerns held by the people charged with protecting those facilities and keeping an eye out for potential risks.

As one law enforcement professional joked, "I hope they don't put one of those in front of the White House." In fact, there are apparently a bunch of portals in front of the White House, embassies and other sites that could be high-interest targets for vandalism or worse.

At least Ingress doesn't require players to dig up or bury physical objects, a phenomenon that has caused some high-profile problems in the geocaching community. Still, as similar games take off (and they will), we're going to see more friction between gamers and law enforcement, particularly in full AR environments that use cameras. In addition to trespassing and loitering violations, there's greatly increased potential for distraction, perhaps leading gamers to injure themselves or others. It's all the danger of texting - plus headphones - with the added possibility of being labeled a terrorist by overzealous cops.

The Future

By all accounts, Niantic labs has been responsible about these issues. The game doesn't encourage trespassing or dangerous behavior, like using your phone in a car. Other developers may not feel the same sense of duty, or their goals may encourage "creative" players to take unnecessary risks.

If enough negligence, trespassing, and public nuisance suits (and maybe some claims of police harassment) hit the courts, we'll eventually wind up with legislation governing the balance between gameplay and public safety. We might see an increase of no-device buffer zones around sensitive areas, or certain games limiting accounts to only users of age to accept legal responsibility for their actions. There could even be outright bans on AR games in certain areas.

Until then, it's up to game developers to police themselves and players to stay smart. One dumb move could lead to a ton of regulation that could really spoil everyone's fun.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

It was 10:30pm on a Tuesday in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A slurry of snow and rain fell in clumps as I huddled in front of my local post office, clutching my smartphone and shivering. People walked by, giving friendly nods to me, this creep lurking on the street with no apparent purpose other than staring at my smartphone, tapping furiously, waiting, then listening to the sounds that came of it. What was I doing on this corner at night when I could have been curled up on my couch, reading a book and sipping eggnog?

I was playing Ingress, the new Android location-based augmented reality game from Google’s Niantic Labs. And I was not quite sure what I was doing.

What Is Ingress?

A mystery wrapped inside a riddle inside an enigma. At least that is the way it is being marketed. At its core, Ingress is a game that tries to get you to move around. It encourages you to collect “Exotic Matter” (XM), a mysterious energy discovered by scientists in Europe working with the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator. It is believed to be some sort of structured data. This matter can be found and collected just by walking down the street. It is used, along with a variety of other items that can be gained in game play, to “hack” portals.

In Ingress, portals are areas of interest, such a public park or a federal building. This is what I was doing on that chilly evening: hacking my local post office. In real life, if I said that I was hacking my local post office, the FBI would be knocking down my door in a matter of hours. But Ingress is not reality. It is augmented reality.

The term "augmented reality" typically conjures the idea of using a smartphone’s camera to create visual overlays through the viewfinder. Usually this will lead us to a local business or display some type of deal at a nearby restaurant. The Yelp app does this and so does new features for the next-generation Lumia devices from Nokia. But, augmented reality does not necessarily have to use a smartphone’s camera. This mixture of location, reality, augmentation and mystery are what give Ingress a unique and exciting new angle on the concept of mobile gaming.

In terms of plot, there are two factions in Ingress: the Enlightened and the Resistance. The Enlightened think that XM is a good thing and want to help something called “Shapers” escape the portals scattered throughout the world. The Resistance thinks that these Shapers are here to invade and are out to stop them. In terms of game play, there is no fundamental difference between which side you choose, other than the color (green for Enlightened, blue for Resistance). You can hack portals controlled by your alliance for strength (by adding “Resonators”) or attack those of the opposition to destroy those Resonators. Various items of differing purpose and strength can be found through these acts as gameplay advances. 

The game is inherently social, though not in the familiar status-update manner associated with games like Zynga's FarmVille. Ingress is more of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game a la World of Warcraft, where people in the environment can access a universal chat to talk to each other. The chat works on a sliding scale from local (players within 20 kilometers of you), regional (within 200 kilometers) to global (everywhere) ranges. But instead of a fake world created by designers and programmers populated by role players like World of Warcraft, Ingress is the real world with real people. 

The game is currently in a closed beta, but for the lucky ones with an Ingress invite, there are a couple things to note. Foremost, this is a smartphone-based game, not optimized for Android tablets. Given the nature of location-based games, this is understandable. Also, the map is limited to what is around you on the smartphone. Go the the Ingress Intel Map on your computer to see where portals are located outside of your immediate vicinity.

Ingress Advances The Concept Of Mobile Gaming

Ingress can be a touch confusing at first. By its nature, it is a learn-on-the-fly type of game that forces you to interact with it through real-world destinations (hence, the creeping in front of the post office at 10:30 at night). Yet, once you get the basic concepts down, the game offers a significant potential for addiction. Ingress also has the potential to redefine the nature of a mobile game.

As yet, I have not seen a mobile game that branches into a such variety of technology categories the way Ingress does. There are location-based social games like Foursquare, but Foursquare is more grounded in social than gaming. There is plenty of augmented reality technology in smartphones (usually in a camera-based function), but usually not with an extra layer of augmentation spread across the entire world. I have seen social mobile games, but never anything that adds the element of MMO like Ingress does. 

Essentially, what Ingress has done is take the basic concepts of mobile gaming and advanced them a step further. And it is just getting started.

There is an element of mystery to Ingress. At this very early stage, players are still getting used to the notion of hacking and linking portals together to control swaths of their locales. The linchpin to the operation, Niantic Labs (which is a part of Google but also an element within the game), is gradually releasing new aspects of game play that will double as viral marketing. 

It's not clear when Ingress will be available to the public. It could be weeks, it could be months. Right now you can go to Ingress.com and request and invite and Google may or may not pick you.

I think it's worth a shot. Ingress should be enough of a game to keep the geeks among us interested but simple and engaging enough for the average player. And I am kind of fascinated by the layers of tech involved. In short, Ingress is hip, thoughtful and fun. Hopefully it will provide a blueprint for other games of its type going forward. 

Augmented reality versus Google glasses: Soon both will be on the market. The question for consumers is, "Which one should I buy?"

Details of Google's prototype glasses are still largely under wraps, but what we do know right now is that the glasses consist of a powerful processor, multiple microphones, a small speaker, a camera, wireless radios and senors that make the glasses aware of their physical location. 

For example, if you use the glasses to take a picture of a landmark or a barcode, they will display information about the place or product on the upper part of the right-side lens. That's different from augemented reality, where graphics are layered on top of what you see in real time.

The glasses won't go on sale until next year. They will cost around $1,500 and will only be available in the United States.

If you want to take a step closer to becoming a cyborg, then augmented reality contact lenses could be just the thing for you.

Right now the major player in this space is Innovega Inc, which is developing the iOptik augmented reality contact lens. This device will allow people to surf the Internet unencumbered by glasses (some early detractors to Google's glasses have said smudges may make them difficult to see through). iOptik uses nanotechnology to enhance your vision to see both what's in front of you and information gleamed from the 'Net.

But even more access to the web begs the question: Is...this...a...good...thing? Traffic problems and societal commentary aside, if these contacts can do that, they're sure to be a big hit, and will introduce a whole new technological ecosystem of contact lenses.

And let's not forget the potential military applications — already on the way. In April, Innovega signed a contract with the Defense Department to develop a prototype of its iOptik system. The contacts work in conjunction with special glasses that project images onto the wearer's lens, which could allow soldiers on the ground to see images beamed down directly to them by drones or satellites. Whoa.

Coming soon: Supersoldiers with enhanced battlefield views. Now that's scary science. Check out this video to see exactly what we're talking about. 

Photo by Tom Purves

If you're happy, they wiggle. They prick up when you're excited. And if you're relaxed, they droop. They are, of course, brainwave-operated cat ears. 

Meet the $100 Necomimi, the first (as far as we can tell) neuro-fashion tech.

The Necomimi is a pair of motorized animal shaped ears and a sensor, on a headband, that pick up electrical signals from the wearer's brain.  "Necomimi" literally means "mini cat ears."

Japan's Neurowear makes the Necomimi using sensory-headset technology from California-based NeuroSky.

The ears read the brain's state using the same technology that detects seizures and measures brain activity. More than 400 universities use NeuroSky's hardware to help patients with brain injuries, study sleep patterns, detect Alzheimer's, and create sensory motor controls for devices like wheelchairs. 

But, said David Westendorf, NeuroSky's vice president of marketing, the ears could have a big future with sports fans. "We're trying to establish Necomimi as the platform for (wearable technology fashion) companies to build on."

The Necomimi requires four AAA batteries and, with a new licensing agreement with Emoki, the headset is now available with cat, wolf, fox and bear ears. Emoki's co-founder Hannah Masius says this is just the beginning. 

"It opens up a whole new avenue for different accessories," said Masius. "It's up to your imagination."

Masius thinks the ears could have a win a following with electric dance music aficionados. Artists like Deadmau5 already use  masks to enhance their shows. She compares the ears to SpiritHoods, the hooded animal themed sweatshirts with faux fur that first caught on with festivalgoers. 

"It's like any peacocking device," Masius said. "Having a brain-wave sensor on your head is an attention-grabber."  

Wearable computing is poised to hit the mainstream. Last week, Google demoed its Project Glass prototype, an Android-powered display, camera, GPS locator and Internet node built into a bulky pair of glasses. On Thursday, Olympus announced its own Terminator specs. They may look silly, but they're the beginning of a new era of computing.

Olympus' MEG4.0 connects to smartphones and other devices via Bluetooth, and it displays data and imagery directly on its lenses. It's comparable to what Google demoed last week, except Google Glass packs more computing power and has a camera built in. Olympus' product has a limited feature set compared to Google's and, as VentureBeat argues, is notably uglier. More important than the feature-for-feature comparison, however, is what both products represent in the broader context of how humans interact with computers.

Let's be honest. Even if Google's computer glasses are prettier than Olympus', neither one will enhance your outfit like a pair of Oakleys.

No doubt, a select group of early adopters will snatch up these nerd goggles. They'll surely be spotted on the sidewalks of San Francisco. Outside of the Silicon Valley area, though, the first person to show up to a local watering hole wearing these things can expect to face stares, if not outright mockery. Such is the nature of being an early adopter in the very early stages of a new era in which humans begin to merge with machines.

Not only do they look bizarre, but these gadgets raise a host of social questions. Cell phone addiction is already an issue for many people, often to the point of ignoring companions in favor of peering into tiny screens. When the screens hover over our eyes, does the line between the virtual and physical worlds become sharper or blurrier? What happens to our attention spans? 

As with other advances in personal technology, this one will evolve depending on where and how it's integrated into our lives. We're still figuring this out with smartphones and tablets. For wearable displays, use cases such as navigation and on-the-go communication seem obvious and appropriate. But what about social situations? At the office? The dinner table? 

An Awkward Moment, But Still a Pivotal Era   

Even if it's awkward, we're entering a new and important era in human-machine interaction. Wearable computing joins voice control and gesture-based interfaces in revolutionizing how people interact with data, services and content. 

Google's awe-inspiring demo last week was the first step toward achieving social acceptance of this type of technology. The next steps will necessarily involve the slow proliferation of such devices, as well as refinements in the products themselves. The more these things can be made to look like normal glasses, the more likely your average consumer will consider wearing them. Although there's no hard evidence that it will happen, if Apple dabbles in this space, the design problem may solve itself.

The questions raised by the new era we appear poised to enter are important - and we'll figure them out in due time - but one of those questions is not "Is this going to happen?" It is happening, and it's probably only the next step of many toward a sci-fi-seeming world in which the line between people and gadgets becomes harder and harder to distinguish.

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) didn’t introduce much revolutionary new gaming technology, but it did demonstrate that Augmented Reality (AR) apps are about to go mainstream - and they may spell doom for QR codes.

For the unitiated, AR is the embellishment of reality through virtual additions, or as one E3 attendee described it, “the addition of fake things to the real world.” There are already a number of useful AR applications, such as acrossair’s New York Nearest Subway app, which overlays pop-up signs with directional information on your real-world view through your iPhone’s camera.

At E3, Sony made a push into AR, spending nearly 15 minutes of its press conference promoting the new Wonderbook Playstation peripheral, and a new Harry Potter-themed game to support it. The player controls the action and casts spells by waving a Playstation Move controller over the Wonderbook’s flat control surface. On-screen, the devices appear as a wand and a spell book, complete with various monsters and effects.

Regardless of whether Sony can push the Wonderbook beyond the obvious Harry Potter tie-in, AR is coming in a big way. Aurasma demonstrated some new Marvel-themed advertising content, and it was actually pretty cool for advertising. While Aurasma claims a unique technological sophistication for its image-recognition capabilities (and based on a cursory overview, they do seem quite good), the execution is straight-forward AR: overlay promotional video on posters, artwork and other still images. Check out the demo below.

Beyond the cool factor of Iron Man flying around in your living room, AR presents a couple of huge advantages over current print-to-Web promotional tools, like QR (Quick Response) codes. First, AR uses no print space, so you don’t have to clutter up an advertisement with an unsightly QR tag that will do nothing but baffle most users.

Second – and possibly more important - you can program AR to respond to existing assets already in circulation, like a year-old movie poster, a vending machine or the Empire State Building. Of course, that suggests there will definitely be some conflict-management challenges in networked social environments, where different AR systems try to interact with the same real-world images.

Still, in addition to the huge gaming opportunities (imagine a fantasy game in which real people appear as wizards, warriors and ogres), Augmented Reality opens up enormous real-world marketing opportunities. The first time a Coke machine seems to comes to life and offers you a deal, QR codes will seem positively quaint.

What will this really look like? How will it work? What can we do with it? Is this even a future we want? ReadWriteWeb's Jon Mitchell and John Paul Titlow were joined by Sherilynn Macale in our weekly +ReadWriteWeb Hangout On Air to talk about the implications of augmented reality.

Here are links to some of the posts and topics we talked about:

• Google+: +Project Glass
• Project Glass concept video
• Google Glasses: A New Way to Hurt Yourself (parody video)
• Nokia Morph concept video
• Wikipedia: Hedonic treadmill (aka hedonic adaptation)

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

On the Internet, where variations on the Hey Girl meme live and die, Nicki Minaj battles it out against Katy Perry and cats, dogs and horses vie for the most beloved and adorable pet, it's a wonder to think about how one can and should look at art through the lens of the edited Internet and apps. Taking Berger's ideas for looking as a starting point, how is the idea of looking changing on the Internet and through smartphone apps? In the age of always on apps and the Internet, is it possible to return to the childlike state of looking?

"Seeing comes before words," writes Berger. "The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." Indeed, the Internet is ripe with stories about how children are interacting with iPads and iPhones. Writes PCWorld nearly two years ago, when the first iPad came out: "I think the iPad will spark a revolution in children's culture...by the time these kids reach middle school, they will have been using multitouch user interfaces almost every day for eight years or more." The narrative has since expanded, and children are at the center of it.

In looking at art, we at once have to become child-like again - approaching the image with zero preconceived notions, seeing as if we knew nothing. We become blank slates, wiping clean our memories and experiences when at all possible. Does using apps and the Internet amplify or make possible this "for the first time" experience? Not in an adolescent way. Rather, in a childlike way.

Seeing Art through Art Museums, Augmented Reality & Map Apps

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta released an app that offers maps of the art museum, a browsable collection of art at the museum, comments on each work of art from members of the community. And then there is the ability to take a photo of a work you see, which you can then either share to Facebook or Twitter, or discuss it in the community that lives within this tiny app. "So amazing in person!" writes a user named Marykh about Pablo Picasso's 1928 work of art Girl Before a Mirror. No comments have been posted yet.

Project Paperclip is the first augmented photography exhibition by Portuguese photographer Nuno Serrão. The app provides augmented reality soundscapes to accompany each photograph in the exhibition. Walk up to the image in an actual, physical gallery space and scan the QR code. Doing so triggers some pretty trippy music that, depending on your current state, could take you to an augmented reality of your own. The effect of scanning a QR code with your phone from your computer screen and experiencing the music is a neat hat trick. But take away the QR code gimmick and translate this to a real world art space, and it has the same effect of walking into a darkened gallery show of video or installation art, minus the full physical effect.

Three years ago the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago presented "Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson", a visceral exhibition of sound, light, color and nature. Science met culture, and reverted back to the elements. Eliasson acts more like a scientist, probing the visceral and translating it into a full body experience for the viewer. This is work that demands a full sensory experience. It asks you to take your time - something that technology does not.

Moss Wall (1994) is a simple, elegiac installation of Artic reindeer moss covering a single wall of the gallery. The viewer is left overwhelmed by the fresh, earthy scent of the moss, and as such is transported to another mental space. Imagine yourself as reindeer, brushing up against the brocolli-like nubs of moss, quietly munching on it underneath a sunny sky.

Beauty (1993) is another visceral experience, of stepping into a darkened room quietly inhabited by mist sprays that spit from a hose on the ceiling. Inside a spotlight shines, making a quiet rainbow visible only to the lucky few. We cannot replicate a full-sensory experience through technology, and especially not apps. But at least we can augment our current state of being.

Installation view, Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, MCA Chicago
May 1 - September 13, 2009
Photos: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Project Paperclip proposes a way to augment reality. It takes a highly replicable Internet photograph of nature, combining it with a QR code and sound emitted from an iPhone app. It is subtly disconcerting, an ominous prediction of the artificial realities we build with the help of smartphone apps and the Internet.

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced Google Goggles for Android and iPhone, the experience of accessing information about art changed dramatically. Now you can go to the Met, take a photo of the work you're looking at in person, and pull up a database full of information about it.

More recently, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority introduced an app that guides users to 186 permanent works of art that are installed throughout stations in the city, and a few off the Metro North and Long Island Rail Road systems. Public art is indeed now easier to find, especially if you prefer to ask your phone for directions rather than a person or prior Internet research. Or, more importantly, if you prefer the experience as mediated through an app rather than the idea of just stumbling upon something beautiful which may or may not be public art. The app provides information either by subway line or by individual artist.

"In a setting like the subway," Sandra Bloodworth, the director of MTA Arts for Transit, told the New York Times, "art really does something. It gives a certain amount of dignity to your ride and your day. And this is finally going to be like having the whole collection in the palm of your hand."

The RedEye Chicago reports that the Windy City is indeed one of the top places for street art. Grafrank.com pulls grafitti photos from Flickr that are tagged "street art" and "graffiti." It also features artists who tag and have marked the city with their ink that comes from cans.

"The random tagger or etcher on the subway won't be photographed because most people don't recognize that graffiti as a form of art," said New York writer Jake Dobkin, who launched the tracker. "This is more a tool for high quality artists."

Looking Through the Glass Screen

Smartphones, iPads and social networks provide us with new ways of finding - but they may detract from the actual experience of looking and experiencing in the full-body sense of the word. And even the biggest tech nerds know that.

"So, stuff like this can help educate/self-educate, but it also has the horrible ability to amputate a direct experience of the art," says writer Curt Hopkins. "I don't think anyone should ever allow their first encounter with a piece of art to be mediated by so much as a tri-fold brochure, much less augmented reality, if you can help it. It robs you of that moment of pure encounter and limits how you develop your own sensual relationship with art." To which he adds: "Afterward - or remotely - I think it's a great resource."

But as the child continues looking through the glassy screen of smartphones and tablets, the experience of looking at art will evolve.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

45º views act as a transition between the standard top-down view and Google's new Google MapsGL, a full-3D Maps experience powered by WebGL in the browser. That part won't work on certain low-end graphics cards, but for those who can run it, Google Maps gets pretty magical. Google has good reason to push the envelope on 3D maps. Its competitors are working on magical maps of their own.

In addition to the full-3D WebGL views, desktop Google Maps also got a flyover feature for travel routes last year. When you put in travel directions, the map viewer gets a "Play" button that switches to a Google Earth 3D view and flies you from point A to point B. It's not the most useful feature in the world, but it's a nice way to check out the terrain on your route.

Google is even taking 3D mapping indoors. It's sending people with backpack-mounted Street View cameras inside local businesses, so Google can put a panoramic interior view into Google Places results. Google is also building mobile 2D maps inside buildings, including malls, airports, hotels and convention centers. When all these maps combine, Google can take you from a desktop or mobile search, down the street, into the mall, to the store, inside the store, and eventually, it wants to be the way you pay, too.

Sounds like Google has this whole business locked up, right? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Google has competitors to worry about. There's Microsoft, whose Bing Maps got interior mapping first, but it's still a distant second in terms of market share. Amazon may not have the maps, but it has unparalleled reach into shopping. And Apple has Siri, a mobile assistant that already routes around Google when able, and it has made some intriguing mapping acquisitions.

The missing piece in Google's end-to-end mobile shopping chain is the shopping part, and no Web company does shopping like Amazon. Amazon has released an augmented reality iPhone app that lets customers scan products in a store and buy them (or cheaper alternatives) on Amazon. That's a pretty serious diss to local businesses, but it makes Amazon customers happy. Also, if they're buying through Amazon Flow, they aren't paying with Google Wallet. Amazon also bought a voice recognition company last year, sparking comparisons to Apple's Siri.

For Apple's part, Siri is the piece that threatens Google. Currently, Siri searches the Web using Google when it can't find the answer itself. Apple's iOS Maps app also uses Google for now. But certain features of the Siri beta are telling. When you use Siri to search for a local business, it uses Yelp, not Google. What can we expect from later versions of Siri and iOS? Here's a hint: In November 2011, Apple bought C3 Technologies, a 3D street view and interior mapping company.

What apps, maps and Web services do you use to find your way around?

Would you look at the world through Google Glasses? If you did, what would you see? That may be an option soon, if a reliable report today that the company is in "late prototype stages" on just such a product, proves accurate.

The Wow factor is clear - but what would fashionable cloud (connected) glasses really mean? How might they change what it means to be human and to live in this world? Make no mistake, they certainly could have a deep impact for those who wear them - and possibly for those who are seen through them as well. There's no better time than now to begin considering it all. The best way to start is to recognize those who have already begun before us; in this case science fiction author Vernor Vinge is a key source of illumination.

Above: TV Glasses

Hints and Clues

Hot in the news today is a report from Nick Bilton of the New York Times that Google is developing wearable computers in the secret Google X Lab that Bilton wrote about last month. That prompted Google specialist Seth Weintraub, now at Fortune and formerly of Computerworld, to call the news "an open secret among some in the Google community."

Weintraub asserts the following based on his previous reporting and one unnamed source he cites today:

[Google is] "in late prototype stages of wearable glasses that look similar to thick-rimmed glasses that 'normal people' wear. However, these provide a display with a heads up computer interface. There are a few buttons on the arms of the glasses, but otherwise, they could be mistaken for normal glasses.

"...In addition, we have heard that this device is not an 'Android peripheral' as the NYT stated. According to our source, it communicates directly with the Cloud over IP.

"...We do not have a release date for this new device, but we know that Google Co-founder Sergey Brin is closely associated with the project and it will be Google-branded hardware."

From battery power to proper contextual understanding of a user's location to price to form factor - there are a lot of problems that Google is going to have to solve beyond the imagery and signal reception. Cellular devices are now so small and so cheap that connectivity is probably one of the easier problems the secret team is working on.

What Could it Mean?

The how-and-wow is certainly interesting, but questions of use cases and implications are important too.

Sci-fi authors and artists have been talking about this future for years.

New media choreographer Johannes Birringer has said he looks forward to a future where cloud glasses can be used in art "to enhance and enrich the performer and audience experience with the media."

Mike Kuniavsky, co-founder of smart connected device design firm ThingM, invokes science fiction writer Vernor Vinge's ideas when it comes to widespread Heads Up Displays:

"I think that [Vinge's] idea of consensual imaging among belief circles is interesting. I consider it a kind of physical manifestation of software skinning, mixed with ideas shared among members of a social-network (as a blogroll is, for example).

The implications of this both excite and scare me: it would be totally cool to overlay a trusted source's view of a given scene on mine, but I feel people already ignore the complexity of reality too much and tend to live on parallel planes that exclude ideas that challenge theirs.

I don't want Orrin Hatch's world skin (though I'd try it on to see what it looks like), and I don't think he wants mine."

Architect and urban futurist Dr. Cindy Frewen Wuellner references Vinge as well in imagining how devices like this could change the way people experience the cities they traverse.

"The social city..where IRL [In Real Life] meets virtual, means people/you are the manipulators. The dumb city gets smart and social. The explosion of mobile phones brings the internet into the streets.

"Augmented realities give maps, twitter, sensors, and layers of information. It's transformational. NYC phantom city tour, don't miss that. Heads up display like Vinge's Rainbows End. For architecture and cities, the implications are huge."

Urban Futures, Language of #Architecture: How will you change 21st c #cities?

Artist and mobile technologist Julian Bleecker riffs on Vinge's talk five years ago at the Austin Game Conference.

Bleecker imagines a truly meaningful augmentation of reality...

Ways of revealing the linkages between 1st Life actions and consequences can be made sensible in ways that have been previously impossible.

New forms of networked interaction, participation & engagement that are not just about lightweight atoms & bits, RSS, and WoW raids, but about heavyweight action, the consequences of supra-atomic activities such as driving cars that are too big.

If I could have a heads up display akin to what WoW heavyweights have, but indicative of the relationships amongst a whole matrix of parameters that relate to my 1st Life actions..now that would be really significant."

In other words, Bleecker imagines the Cloud Glasses not displaying imaginary visions - but making things that have always been real, visible.

It's hard to imagine a more valiant calling for Augmented Reality than that.

No doubt most people will use their Google Cloud Glasses to play Angry Birds in an empty room (better that than Farmville!), or will wear them while wearing nothing else, but that's not the reason why any of these technologies are built and they don't represent any kind of limit to what's possible.

You may not want to visit StopHumanTraffic.com with your Cloud Glasses and your location turned on, but there are a whole lot of things good and bad that go on in the very same streets we all walk down every day that we don't see.

We may see the price of speed and altitude-displaying Heads Up Ski Goggles drop over time and it's not hard to imagine tourists wearing glasses given to them by visitors bureaus in major cities around the world.

But a SOPA'd future could also prohibit looking at copyrighted materials through your Cloud Glasses. There might have to be a splintered web that Cloud Glasses tie into in order to view things outside official channels. What would be on each side of that line? It's provocative to consider. Here comes the future, ready or not.