Google Glass, Still Evolving but On Track For Release To Developers

Google Glass is one of those innovations where you know right away that you're staring at the future. Google has been a company that has constantly pushed the envelope in a variety of things, and recently, some of those "things" have been far-flung ideas that would never earn an ounce of funding at more focused, strapped outfits. But since being announced last year, very little has been said. The company gave Google I/O 2012 attendees the chance to put their name in the hat for an early pre-order, noting that they'd receive an e-mail once the Explorer units were ready for purchase at $1500 apiece.


But as of now, those e-mails have yet to arrive. In a recent interview over at IEEE Spectrum, however, the head of Glass Babak Parviz sat down to answer a few questions about what may be Google's most ambitious project yet. When asked what Google was aiming to accomplish with Glass, Parviz stated that they wanted to build a device that would "allow for pictorial communications, allow people to connect to others with images and video, and  allow people to access information very, very quickly." He also noted that augmented reality isn't really the immediate goal for Glass, but anything is possible when looking at a long-form view of wearable computing.


During the interview, he also shared that final features, specifications, and functionality was still in flux. When asked about apps, he noted that Glass wasn't just a mobile port, but an entirely "new platform," so writing programs for it is a bit complicated. Google still plans to ship with a cloud-based API that will allow devs to tap into and integrate with Glass. Unfortunately, there's still no clear ship date ahead, but surely we'll either have them in-hand or have a real-deal update at Google I/O 2013 in May.