Move Over Google Glass - GlassUp Is A Less Creepy And Much Cheaper Pair Of AR Specs

TechCrunch » Gadgets

Move Over Google Glass - GlassUp Is A Less Creepy And Much Cheaper Pair Of AR Specs

Right now Google Glass sits at the apogee of geeky, wearable technology.  Last month, interviewing a Glass-wearing Robert Scoble, Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman memorably debunked it in his opening question as “that thing on your head. ” Getting non-techie people to view Glass as anything other than ludicrously geeky is going to be an uphill fight for Google.

Arguably, though, even more of a blocker to Glass adoption is people viewing the technology as the epitome of creepy, thanks to its built-in camera. Sure a digital eye sited at eye-level lets you share a nice view of that mountain you can see from your hotel window. But in more everyday scenarios, it also lets you video your fellow humans as they go about their business, and that privacy intrusion is inevitably going to cause some friction. Throw in the whole NSA PRISM surveillance fallout and stuff like this is inevitable.

Add to that, even though Google has banned (even more creepy) facial-recognition apps on Glass’s Mirror API, it’s possible to envisage a workaround that leverages Google’s Hangouts feature — which shares real-time field of vision — to get around the bar. Marco Vanossi, co-founder of GeoPapyrus, pointed out this workaround to TechCrunch — and demonstrates how it can be made to work in this video, creating a Hangout with a robot assistant called Dexter that then analyses what the Glass wearer can see.

“You can share your camera view through a Google Hangout and the content in it (people, objects, places, barcodes, qrcodes) can be analyzed and identified,” he tells TechCrunch. “As a result, information can be overlaid on top of it and shown back on your screen. This means that the Hangout app, built and distributed by Google on every Glass device, could be used to violate its own privacy rules.”

All of which suggests there may be room for an eyeless Glass-style product that preserves privacy by being receive-only — and therefore can’t be accused of spying. Enter GlassUp. GlassUp is a prototype pair of augmented reality specs that does not include a camera. It’s currently seeking funds to start manufacturing on Indiegogo. The glasses are designed to allow the wearer to receive text-based messages and updates overlaid over the central portion of their field of vision — so while they intrude on the wearer’s vision, they can’t be accused of intruding on the privacy of the people around them.

GlassUp’s creators envisage a typical use-case being a pedestrian or a motorbike rider wanting to navigate handsfree and without having to stop every few yards to consult a map/smartphone. Or a tourist wanting to get info about the historical landmarks they are seeing pushed to their eye-line as they explore a new city. Other imagined use-cases include for cooks or warehouse workers needing info as they work.

The device is basically a second screen output for a smartphone, connecting via Bluetooth, that’s worn as a heads-up display. It has a monochrome projector to display text updates, helping to extend the battery life of the device. The creators say they intend to release some apps themselves, but also plan to release an API for Android, iOS and Windows Phone to allow developers to extend its functionality.

Having intentionally stripped back the hardware of GlassUp to remove privacy concerns its creators have also shrunk the cost. The price tag for the device starts at $299 — considerably cheaper than the Google Glass Explorer’s hefty price tag of $1,500.

GlassUp’s creators are hoping to raise $150,000 on Indiegogo and have so far managed to reach just over half their goal, with 11 days left on the campaign. However, an update on their crowdfunding page notes that they will deliver products even if they fail to achieve their funding goal — thanks to unnamed investor backers. GlassUp is due to go on sale from February next year.

TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear contributed to this story

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Crowdfunding Reaches Its Terrible, Glorious Climax With ‘Smart Vibrator' Vibease

TechCrunch » Gadgets

Crowdfunding Reaches Its Terrible, Glorious Climax With ‘Smart Vibrator' Vibease

The startup behind a “wearable smart vibrator” called Vibease has taken to Indiegogo with hopes of raising at least $30,000 from fans.

That sentence kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? I mean, I could probably insert some suggestive wording from the campaign description (“People often forget that the brain is the biggest sex organ.”), mention some of the high-end rewards (100 vibrators!), embed the campaign video (which is sometimes hilarious, sometimes awkward, and often both), and call it a day.

But here’s the thing: I’m genuinely not sure whether or not this is a terrible idea. I mean, if I say “smart vibrator” (or, even worse, “Internet of Things-connected vibrator”, which is the shorthand we were using around the office) it’s easy to laugh and roll your eyes.

At the same time, I wonder if that comes from a combination of suppressed Puritanism and immaturity. If we genuinely think that everything in our lives is becoming increasingly smartphone-controlled and Internet-connected, why would we exclude sex? (Co-founder Hermione Way has argued that the Valley sometimes forces entrepreneurs to make a false choice between seriousness and sexiness.) Sure, the idea of a remote-controlled vibrator as a tool for long-distance relationships seems awkward, but is phone sex any better? Is this the future we’ve all been secretly hoping for?

For what it’s worth, Vibease has validation from other tech industry organizations, having been incubated by the Founder Institute and the Haxlr8r accelerator for hardware startups. It also received an at least semi-positive response from investors when Way made her pitch in a segment on Bravo’s “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley” TV show (it’s okay if you missed it, so did everyone else) and from the judges (including my boss Alexia Tsotsis) at the Dublin Web Submit.

So hey, maybe there’s a real business here. Or maybe I and everyone else in the Valley have become so numb to crazy startup ideas that this seems almost normal. Almost.

Update 1: I failed to mention that although the company is only now crowdfunding the vibrator itself, it actually launched its Android app last fall.

Update 2: Just to be clear, I don’t think vibrators are inherently funny. I do think a “wearable smart vibrator” marketed with repeated references to Fifty Shades of Grey is inherently funny (which, again, doesn’t make it a terrible idea, maybe). You may adjust your estimations of my maturity accordingly.

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A Week With The Shine, A Beautifully Designed Smart Activity Tracker Made From Japanese Metal

TechCrunch » Gadgets

A Week With The Shine, A Beautifully Designed Smart Activity Tracker Made From Japanese Metal

Fitbits. FuelBands. UPs. The market for smart, connected activity trackers continues to get ever-more crowded. And yet, there’s not an obvious winner yet.

Misfit Wearables’ Shine is a new entrant in the space and they may have the most beautifully-designed piece of hardware yet. The company behind the Shine is itself a homage to Apple founder Steve Jobs’ famous “Think Different” campaign and the famous 1997 commercial that began with the line, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits.“

Backed by Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, the company was co-founded by Sonny Vu, who built up a glucose-monitoring business called Agamatrix that had the first official medical device add-on to the iPhone, and former Apple CEO John Sculley. For a small startup, they have an impressively multi-national team with industrial designers in San Francisco, data scientists in Vietnam and manufacturing in South Korea and Japan.

The Shine is a tiny circle not much larger than a quarter that’s made from Japanese metal or aircraft-grade aluminum. It has LED lights beneath the surface that glow through minuscule holes on the metal itself. Those lights form a ring, indicating how far a person is toward completing their activity goals for the day. You tap the Shine twice to see how much progress you’ve made. If half the lights shine, you’re halfway done. If they complete a circle, then you’ve hit your goal.

I had a chance to test it out for a week or so, tracking everything from regular walks to dancing and downhill mountain biking.

Overall, I love the product. It looks like a piece of jewelry in many ways, and while I’m not an industrial designer myself, several other friends who work in hardware were impressed by the make and form of the Shine.

It is not plastic like a Fitbit. Then because it doesn’t have to be worn as a bracelet like the FuelBand or Jawbone UP, it looks a lot more elegant, especially if you’re a woman and want something more discreet. The Shine is comparable in price to its competitors at $99.95. The Fitbit is about $99.95, the Jawbone UP is $129.99 and the Nike FuelBand is about $150.

The Shine has four different accessories: a wristband, a necklace, a watch and a magnetic clip that makes it easy to attach anywhere, from your shoe to your sleeve to your shirt. My preferred accessory was the magnetic clip, but I didn’t have a chance to try out the necklace or watch.

Throughout the day, the Shine tracks how much you walk or run. It also handles sleep, swimming and cycling, but you have to program it. To do that, you tap the Shine three times, and it will recognize whichever activity you set up in the paired app. Unfortunately, like the other activity trackers, it doesn’t handle yoga (and as someone who practices pretty much every day, the Shine and other competing products are missing out on an hour of physical activity).

The tapping is a bit hard to learn. Sometimes I would tap with two fingers and sometimes with three. Sometimes the Shine would misinterpret a few taps as a signal to record a different type of activity instead of showing me my results so far. You can also use it to tell time with different lights glowing to represent the hour and minute hands of a watch.

“The data science to get the double tap is hard,” Vu told me. “There is no on and off button for the Shine and everything is powered by sensors.”

Indeed, the only way to turn the Shine off is for the battery to run out or for you to remove it.

That underscores the huge benefit of the Shine, which is that it doesn’t need to be charged every few days or weeks. It has a simple coin cell battery that needs to be replaced once every four to six months. It’s also waterproof to a depth of 50 meters. I dunked it in a river in the Sierra Nevadas this weekend and it came out fine, but you could theoretically scuba dive with it, too.

The data transfer to the iPhone is also beautiful. You can see how it works below. The Shine uses a simple Bluetooth connection, and the app directs you to place the Shine on a circle on the iPhone app’s screen. Circles radiate outward before the iPhone picks up the activity data in the Shine.

The paired app tells you how many points you’ve achieved in a day. The Shine doesn’t do “steps” because it would be hard to swim in steps. The middle-range goal of 1,000 points per day requires walking for 1.5 hours, running for 35 minutes or swimming for 25. You can move points higher as you please.

Overall, I was really happy with the product. It is just that much more beautiful looking than the standard Fitbit or FuelBand. For women who are turned off by the look of the bracelet trackers, it’s probably the ideal choice.

The Misfit Shine is only compatible with the iPhone for now, which was surely disappointing for Android-using supporters of the Shine who backed it on Indiegogo.

The company had a successful campaign on the crowdfunding site late last fall where they racked up 8,000 supporters in 64 countries, hit their goal in nine hours and went on to raise $850,000. That was nearly nine times as much as they targeted. Like many other hardware startups, Misfit Wearables used crowdfunding more as a marketing strategy than as a capital source. Misfit had no problem raising from some of the Valley’s better-known VC firms, and this product shows why.

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Geeksphone Announces Its First Consumer-Focused Firefox Smartphone, Mid-Range Peak+ Preorders Kick Off At $196

TechCrunch » Gadgets

Geeksphone Announces Its First Consumer-Focused Firefox Smartphone, Mid-Range Peak+ Preorders Kick Off At $196

Spanish open hardware phone platform manufacturer Geeksphone, which created the first developer preview devices for Mozilla’s Firefox OS (aka Peak and Keon), has announced it’s now taking pre-orders for a new beefed up consumer version of its Peak smartphone that it’s called Peak+.

Geeksphone’s original two developer-focused devices sold out a few hours after going on sale – doubtless helped by their low prices of $194 and $119 respectively. The Peak+ looks likely to garner similar levels of demand, thanks to a similarly low pre-order price, although there is now more competition for Firefox devices — with Telefonica selling the ZTE Open in Spain (and elsewhere) for as little as €69/$90. (Albeit, the more expensive Peak+ does offer beefier, mid-range specs vs the very budget ZTE Open.)

Geeksphone has created a pre-sale reservation list for consumers wanting to buy the device for a “one-time, limited promotional price” of €149/$196 (excluding taxes) — after which it will be sold at a “standard price” via the startup’s online store, from September. Geeksphone would not confirm exactly how much the phone will ultimately retail for, saying only it would be “slightly higher”. 

On paper, the Peak+ is a slightly beefier version of the original Peak, with double (1GB) the RAM and the latest version of the Firefox OS (v1.1). Other specs are the same as the original Peak, including its dual-core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm 8225 chipset, 4.3” qHD IPS multitouch screen, 8-megapixel rear camera (with flash), 2 megapixel front camera, and tri-band UMTS / HSPA, plus a 1800 mAh battery. But Geeksphone says it has improved battery management and graphical performance.

It also says it has “enhanced” the external materials and inner construction for “a more polished finish and pleasant touch, as demanded by our users”. Storage wise, the Peak+ has 4GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 32 GB via MicroSD. It will also come with 25GB of cloud storage (from Fiabee).

Geeksphone said the vast majority (93%) of buyers of its earlier developer devices came from outside its home country. Demand was apparently especially high in Germany, France and Japan. Several other Asian and Latin American countries were also said to be very keen on the devices.

Mozilla’s Firefox OS is aiming to provide an open alternative to Google’s Android OS, especially at the budget to mid-tier smartphone handset price range, and has signed up considerable carrier support for the initiative. This contrasts to Canonical’s high end approach, with its circa $600 Ubuntu Edge smartphone — currently seeking $32 million in crowdfunding backing to build an open source-based smartphone that can double as a PC.

Update: A Mozilla spokesperson has been in touch requesting a “correction” that the Peak+ is not a Firefox OS phone, but rather is “based on Boot to Gecko technology” — aka Mozilla’s original codename for the Firefox OS Linux-based open source software project.

“We want to clarify that this new phone that was announced is based on Boot to Gecko technology with pre-release software, but is not a certified or supported Firefox OS device,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

This is basically an issue of brand control. It’s worth noting that Mozilla has been criticised by others in the open software movement for the lengths it goes to to defend its branding. And Firefox OS is a key new brand for Mozilla, which it’s clearly keen to protect and control.

As to why Geeksphone’s Peak+ does not have Firefox OS branding, TechCrunch understands the Firefox OS branding scheme is currently only available to carrier-backed devices. We’ve reached out to Mozilla for clarification on what mobile makers have to do to achieve Firefox OS certification/branding and will update this post with any response.

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This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Nexus 7, Cheap iPhone 4s, And Chromecast

TechCrunch » Gadgets

This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Nexus 7, Cheap iPhone 4s, And Chromecast

Does the high-res Nexus 7 beat out the iPad mini? Why has Apple’s average selling price gone down? Is Google’s new Chromecast dongle an Apple TV/Airplay killer?

We discuss all this and more on this week’s TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast. The show features John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Chris Velazco, Darrell Etherington, and Romain Dillet. Packed house, I know.

So sit back, relax, and listen to us make fun of each other while discussing this week’s developments in gadgetry.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.

You can subscribe to the show via RSS.

Subscribe in iTunes

Intro Music by Rick Barr.

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