back to article Amazon wants to be king of the nerd goggles

Something to quicken the pulses of middle-aged men in the shower, whose surname rhymes with "Noble"*. Amazon is reportedly working on a pair of smart specs, its first wearable. The eyewear will "look like a regular pair of spectacles so that it [can] be worn comfortably and unobtrusively", the FT reports. The paper doesn't …

  1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

    Second time lucky?

    I don't think it was necessarily the glasses which were the problem.

    Pretentious wankers have always risked a beating wherever they stray. There's always some dick with a "what you looking at?" attitude, and even wearing the wrong team's football scarf can invite a good kicking and worse. In extreme cases the colour of one's skin can be the decider between life and death.

    I don't know exactly what it was with Google Glasses but it certainly fired up the angry mob and gave them an excuse to vent their ire. And there seemed to be plenty of encouragement in that from some quarters.

    But as with most things; targets of hatred change over time. I guess this time round it depends whether we collectively choose to be tolerant and ignore it, or be intolerant and incite violence against it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Second time lucky?

      > "I don't think it was necessarily the glasses which were the problem."

      I tend to think it was. So you're in a pub/bar and someone wearing something outlandish on his head appears. That alone doesn't necessarily lead to strong responses, but add the fact that this guy's head is now a 24/7 webcam that might be feeding the scene straight to a hidden audience and you can see how this might put some people on edge when they are suddenly confronted with this possibility.

      And, given the fact that the offending object (not him, the glasses!) is just an arm's length away, well...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Second time lucky?

        The glasses weren't the problem for me. A visual and audio direct link to Google, however, was.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "I don't think it was necessarily the glasses which were the problem."

      No, it was the camera. Just, everybody now has camera in the phone, and will still record and upload whatever happens around... and people looks not to be so worried anytime someone holds a phone in fron of him or her. Maybe it's just because snapping a selfie or making a video call... or maybe it's because they're recording the next viral video and the protagonist is you...

  2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    The killer app for glass appeared several years later

    Glass could have had a much different fate if it was released AFTER Pokemon Go.

    Granted, as I have interest in neither this would not have made me buy one. I can see how it would have given it a massively larger market combined with a not-so-creepy use case.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The killer app for glass appeared several years later

      Pokemon Go would have never been noticed by the rest of the world if it was a Glasses only app. They cost $1500 and were in limited release, it isn't like millions of people would have paid that just to play a game.

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Re: The killer app for glass appeared several years later

        They cost $1500 and were in limited release,

        That was exactly because they were a limited release. A few games and apps like Pokemon Go would have allowed mass production and reduction of the price down into the high end smartphone bracket.

  3. jake Silver badge

    The short attention span generation.

    I've had half a dozen kids each of these last couple years get totally bent out of shape when they discover that the small plot of veg[0] they plant with their 4-H/FFA class won't be harvestable for a couple weeks. I've been teaching this class[1] for about twenty years now, and never saw kids that divorced from reality until about 2012. Seems that anything that takes longer that 10 (or 30) seconds isn't worth pursuing anymore. Sad, that.

    Who's going to grow my bacon when I'm in my dotage?

    [0] Mostly lettuces, radishes, hakurei turnips, spinach, scallions ... fast growing crops.

    [1] "Backyard Kitchen Gardens" ... hey, we all gotta eat!

  4. Wade Burchette
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Plod will love this

    They'll force tech companies to supply special data feeds which will work with real time facial recognition in the street, so they will see everything about you hanging in mid air as they peer with you with those rat eyes.... which will be hacked and sold on...creating a society of data haves and have nots... the former will prey on the other....

  6. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

    What's this 'Ill fated' nonsense about Glass? It's back, it never really went away, it just found a niche and wasn't a mass market product.

    Supposedly Snapticles are a mass market product, but I've yet to see any tragic fashion victim wearing any.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    in other words

    "we know resistance to Glass was because it was obvious you were being spied on and monetized. So we made these new ones so you can't tell and won't complain. So much better, right?"

    if that drawing is all the quality and depth it takes to illustrate a patent, I'll be the richest patent troll EVAR! :P

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