8000 people try out internet glasses

Google glass will cost £995 London - Arabstoday Google has picked 8,000 “winners” who will have a chance to wear the company's new internet-connected glasses ahead of the general public. The US winners will each have to pay 1,500 dollars (£995) if they want a test version of the product, called Google Glass and hailed as the latest in “wearable computing.” They will also have to travel to New York, Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area to pick up the device, which is not expected to be available on the mass market until late this year or early next year. The excitement stems from the belief that Google Glass is at the forefront of a new wave of technology known as “wearable computing”. Google, Apple and several other companies are also working on internet-connected watches, according to reports citing people familiar with the projects. Google Glass is supposed to perform many of the same tasks as smartphones, except the glasses respond to voice commands instead of fingers touching a display screen. The glasses are equipped with a hidden camera and tiny display screen attached to a rim above the right eye. The engineers who have been building Google Glass tout the technology as a way to keep people connected to their email, online social networks and other crucial information without having to frequently gaze down at the small screen on a smartphone. The hidden camera is designed to make it easy for people to take hands-free photos or video of whatever they are doing. Privacy watchdogs, though, are already worried that Google Glass will make it even more difficult for people to know when they are on camera. One contest winner promised to take Google Glass to Veteran Administration hospitals so soldiers who fought in the Second World War can see their memorials before they die. Another plans to wear Google Glass during a trip to Japan so she can take video and pictures that she can share with her grandmother, who lives in the US but would like to see her native country again. A zookeeper wants to use Google Glass to show what it is like to feed penguins and another contest winner plans to use the technology to provide maps that will help firefighters in emergencies. Google said the test, or “Explorer” version of Glass, will help its engineers get a better understanding of how the technology might be used and make any necessary adjustments before the device hits the mass market. The company sold an unspecified number of Explorer models to computer programmers last year. The finished product is expected to cost between 700 and 1,500 dollars (£465-£995).