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Kes: Ray-Ban has also worked with Bose to develop my beloved bluetooth audio sunglasses
https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/frames.html
which have an amazing audio quality, and are great for visually impaired people who want to listen to navigation apps on their phone without losing the ability to hear what's going on around them.
I can see these Facebook glasses--note that you don't need to necessarily upload your photos to Facebook--as being useful to some low vision users who may wish to take photos of objects or environments in order to examine them in more detail or run them through an visual recognition app.
Facebook’s New Camera Glasses Are Dangerously Easy to Use
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-glasses/
Facebook’s latest foray into “Wait, haven’t I seen this before?” is a pair of photo- and video-capturing sunglasses, à la
Snap Spectacles.
https://www.wired.com/story/snapchat-spectacles-2018/
They’re called Ray-Ban Stories, with Ray-Ban appearing first and Facebook second in most of the product branding. Even though this is a product collaboration between two globally recognizable brands, these are Facebook glasses. This is Facebook’s first piece of wearable tech designed for casual use—not just specialized VR applications, which is what
Oculus
https://www.wired.com/story/oculus-rift-five-year-anniversary/
is for—and the sunglasses are designed for completely frictionless media capture of the world around you. They go on sale today for $299.
It’s the “effortless” part that will raise eyebrows behind the plastic frames. Facebook has made a pair of smart glasses—even if they’re not true AR glasses—that people might actually want to wear. (Giaia Rener, Ray-Ban's global brand director, even describes them as "the first smart glasses you're going to want to wear.") If the ultimate goal of wearable-tech makers has been to develop something at the intersection of comfort, invisibility, and invisible data capture, then Facebook seems to have accomplished this.
Cameras are everywhere now; a person doesn’t even need to pull out their phone to digitally memorialize a moment. The question is whether Facebook should own even more of those moments.
Where Snap’s design team has leaned into the
Burning Man aesthetic
https://www.wired.com/story/snap-spectacles-3-glasses/
for its Spectacles, Facebook and Ray-Ban went normcore. If you ignore the fact that they have cameras and wireless connectivity, Ray-Ban Stories are just
are just a pair of Wayfarers.
....Most smart glasses have unusually large temples to accommodate all the necessary sensors and chips and batteries. The arms on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are slightly wider than a normal pair, but they don’t look geeky. (They also don’t have a waveguide, or a microprojector for display optics, since they’re not powering AR overlays). Packed into the arms are a power button, a capture button, a three-microphone array, two tiny speakers, and a touch panel. On the front of the specs are two 5-megapixel cameras, as well as a barely-there LED indicator light that lets people know the wearer is recording.
Capturing media is easy. You long-press the button to take a photo, and a shutter sound comes through the built-in speakers to indicate a photo has in fact been snapped. Press quickly on the same button and the glasses start recording a 30-second video. You can also walk around saying “Hey, Facebook” and speaking your capture commands if you have no shame whatsoever. The videos are crisp and stable (even if they're square); the photos, which are only captured after a maddening half-second shutter lag, measure 2,592 by 1,944 pixels, with plenty of room for editing. All images and clips export into Facebook's View app using the glasses themselves as a temporary Wi-Fi hot spot for faster sharing. At this point, you can edit and share photos and videos directly to Facebook or Instagram, or usher them out of the walled garden by adding them to your photo roll.
Read the full review at
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-glasses/
https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/frames.html
which have an amazing audio quality, and are great for visually impaired people who want to listen to navigation apps on their phone without losing the ability to hear what's going on around them.
I can see these Facebook glasses--note that you don't need to necessarily upload your photos to Facebook--as being useful to some low vision users who may wish to take photos of objects or environments in order to examine them in more detail or run them through an visual recognition app.
Facebook’s New Camera Glasses Are Dangerously Easy to Use
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-glasses/
Facebook’s latest foray into “Wait, haven’t I seen this before?” is a pair of photo- and video-capturing sunglasses, à la
Snap Spectacles.
https://www.wired.com/story/snapchat-spectacles-2018/
They’re called Ray-Ban Stories, with Ray-Ban appearing first and Facebook second in most of the product branding. Even though this is a product collaboration between two globally recognizable brands, these are Facebook glasses. This is Facebook’s first piece of wearable tech designed for casual use—not just specialized VR applications, which is what
Oculus
https://www.wired.com/story/oculus-rift-five-year-anniversary/
is for—and the sunglasses are designed for completely frictionless media capture of the world around you. They go on sale today for $299.
It’s the “effortless” part that will raise eyebrows behind the plastic frames. Facebook has made a pair of smart glasses—even if they’re not true AR glasses—that people might actually want to wear. (Giaia Rener, Ray-Ban's global brand director, even describes them as "the first smart glasses you're going to want to wear.") If the ultimate goal of wearable-tech makers has been to develop something at the intersection of comfort, invisibility, and invisible data capture, then Facebook seems to have accomplished this.
Cameras are everywhere now; a person doesn’t even need to pull out their phone to digitally memorialize a moment. The question is whether Facebook should own even more of those moments.
Where Snap’s design team has leaned into the
Burning Man aesthetic
https://www.wired.com/story/snap-spectacles-3-glasses/
for its Spectacles, Facebook and Ray-Ban went normcore. If you ignore the fact that they have cameras and wireless connectivity, Ray-Ban Stories are just
are just a pair of Wayfarers.
....Most smart glasses have unusually large temples to accommodate all the necessary sensors and chips and batteries. The arms on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are slightly wider than a normal pair, but they don’t look geeky. (They also don’t have a waveguide, or a microprojector for display optics, since they’re not powering AR overlays). Packed into the arms are a power button, a capture button, a three-microphone array, two tiny speakers, and a touch panel. On the front of the specs are two 5-megapixel cameras, as well as a barely-there LED indicator light that lets people know the wearer is recording.
Capturing media is easy. You long-press the button to take a photo, and a shutter sound comes through the built-in speakers to indicate a photo has in fact been snapped. Press quickly on the same button and the glasses start recording a 30-second video. You can also walk around saying “Hey, Facebook” and speaking your capture commands if you have no shame whatsoever. The videos are crisp and stable (even if they're square); the photos, which are only captured after a maddening half-second shutter lag, measure 2,592 by 1,944 pixels, with plenty of room for editing. All images and clips export into Facebook's View app using the glasses themselves as a temporary Wi-Fi hot spot for faster sharing. At this point, you can edit and share photos and videos directly to Facebook or Instagram, or usher them out of the walled garden by adding them to your photo roll.
Read the full review at
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-glasses/
