Today LaCie announced the Mirror portable hard drive that is encased in mirrored Corning Gorilla Glass.  The Mirror features a 1TB hard drive and comes with an ebony wood base to be a functional mirror on your desk.

The Mirror portable hard drive has a capacity of 1TB but is not just about function, it is also about form.  The drive is encased in mirrored Corning Gorilla Glass giving the drive a striking look, it especially looks great if you take a look at it.  This drive comes with an ebony wood stand for the drive to sit in while on a desk, transforming it into a functional desk piece.  The ebony wood was sourced from Makassar and should really make a wonderful stand for the drive.  Users can rest assured that their drive will stay in great shape even with the mirror finish.  Thanks to the Corning Gorilla Glass used in the case the finish will stand up to even the roughest handling of the drive.  The drive is able to be used with all OSes, so you should not need to worry if this will work for your computer.  Even though LaCie did not disclose the connectivity options it is easy to see from the picture.  The power and data will be handled through a micro USB 3.0 cable which means you will only need to carry the drive and USB 3.0 cable to use it, there is no need for a power cord.

The LaCie Mirror portable hard drive will be available in 1TB capacity with a MSRP of $279.99 later this month from LaCie’s online store and authorized LaCie resellers.  The drive will carry a three-year limited warranty that users can extend or upgrade.  The warranty provides worldwide repair and/or replacement, so this drive is ready for your adventures around the world.

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Google has been working with Diane von Furstenberg for a very long time and if you remember, last year, during New York Fashion Week they did a lot with her in and around fashion. So, it comes as little surprise that she would work with Google to spice up their currently incredibly ugly Google Glass. Google has already taken some pretty significant steps in terms of making Google Glass more visually appealing, including their partnership with Luxottica. However, Luxottica is mostly a manufacturer of glasses and still works very close with most of the designer brands in order to ensure that their designs are in line with their brand identity. In fact, there’s a very good chance that almost any designer brand of glasses or sunglasses could immediately become a Google Glass partner if Luxottica and Google deem it a good idea.

So, today Google and Diana von Furstenberg have announced a line of glasses and sunglasses that have Google Glass functionality and look miles better than anything Google currently offers through Glass.

So, as you can see, they’re clearly trying to change the way that we see Google Glass and wear it too. The real question will be how well can they integrate the optical system into future designs and whether or not they can get rid of the unsightly bump of the processor and battery system in the Google Glass itself. Sure, this is a huge improvement over what Google has done but just changing how Google Glass looks won’t make it more successful. It will just make it less repulsive to people around the Google Glass wearer. The real power of Google Glass will come when they’ve got enough developers developing apps for it and when they finally decide to upgrade the hardware beyond its 3+ year old platform with a TI OMAP 4330 processor. If Google upgrades Google Glass to something like a Snapdragon 800, I have a feeling that they’ll be able to really get some serious performance improvements and better battery life. It will also enable them to use much lower power Bluetooth technologies which will also save power as that is one of the biggest drains on the battery life of Google Glass right now.

These new models of Google Glass by DVF are going for an extra premium $1,800 which puts them at a $300 premium on top of the standard Google Glass which sells for $1,500 and we’ve already established is grossly overpriced due to the current BOM which is around $80. So, you’re really really overpaying for Google Glass at $1,800 and Google is sort of admitting that this is no longer a ‘developer’ device by bringing it into a more fashionable form factor. In fact, it might be arguable that at this point Google is just being elitist with the price and only putting it in the hands of those that can afford it. Because let’s be honest, most upstart developers don’t have $1,500 to throw down on a Google Glass without any expectation of selling millions of downloads of their app. That’s what makes the $1,800 price all the more ridiculous, it has just become a more premium version of an already premium product that’s actually running sub-par hardware. Wonderful, isn’t it?

DVF Shades Model

If Google is serious about Google Glass, they need to release it at a consumer-friendly price and push it out to more designers and get app developers excited about it by making it accessible to them.

DVF Google Glass Brown White

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Usually, the YouTube channel TheFineBros asks people of differing ages (usually much older or much younger) to react to a certain type of video, but sometimes they ask someone to respond to a physical technology item that they might not understand. In the past, they did a video about how kids reacted to a Sony Walkman cassette player with admittedly hilarious results.

In this video, however, they’ve flipped the technology and the audience and tried to see what it was like for older people to react to Google Glass, and unsurprisingly enough they were far more aware of what it was and were far more able to operate it than the younger kids were with the cassette player. Having used Google Glass myself, I will admit it definitely has some incredibly novel applications, but the fact is that it alone does not solve many day to day problems that people have in their lives today. Even so, this video is a great thing to watch over the course of this weekend to see how older people react to Google Glass, unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to do so myself so this video is without a doubt entertaining to me.

They also help educate consumers by explaining the technology little by little by explaining to them (and the audience) how to use Google Glass. And they all have a lot of very legitimate concerns and observations much like the rest of the general public. There was also a poll of the elders that asked them whether or not they would use it and the responses to Google Glass were mostly 50/50. This clearly helps illustrate the slow development of wearables and Google Glass is helping move along these ideas with the whole society together as one and doesn’t seem to be leaving one generation behind. It would be interesting to see how they will react to smartwatches or some sort of combination of smartwatches and Google Glass.

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When I found out that I’m actually going to Computex Taipei 2014, my first thought was – well, nothing. The fact is that through all of my journalist years I’ve heard news bits about an IT conference that is held in Taiwan every year for the last 33 years. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine myself being actually there on that very spot. I’m aware that as for all of you BSN readers, I don’t have to explain what it’s all about. Somehow though, I still like to think that I’m not the only one who’s been IT ignorant so maybe this typically chick-lit text will find its readers.

Computex Taipei 2014 Intro Page

If you’d ask someone who knows me in person, they would probably call me a geek. A girl, but, still a geek. It is true though, that even I am a great final user of many gizmos and gadgets, I couldn’t call myself a geek. Nowadays, when a girl needs a huge amount of gadgets and related applications, it is practically impossible to stay a total idiot. Or lives under a rock.

In that way I’m pretty much trying to go along with the news in the IT industry. For me, the most important thing that a gadget should have is accuracy. I want my mobile/laptop/tablet (etc.) to act fast, be accurate, simple to use and – to look nice. It’s not the matter of benchmarks, which as we know – today can be owned by the manufacturers of the said gadgets.

Yes, I can understand some guys drooling over some really ugly (but still very cool, expensive, hip, mega extra wanted) notebook as it was some hot chick from AVN Expo. Still, for me, my gadgets have to be pretty, and has to match my other accessories and has to be noticed.

That is way I’m pretty happy because of attending of this years’ Computex. I you consider that it’s my peer, and that every year it gathers top ICT elite, different innovators and entrepreneurs from all of the world – I believe that there is a hope of finding some very cool and useful stuff. As organizers announced during their press conference, this Computex should be impressive for launching the new ‘SmarTech’ area featuring smart wearables, 3D printing and the rest of the smart technology at all levels of everyday life. Who knows, maybe 3D printing opens our ways to some new fashion era.

Teuta wearing Google Glass at the W Taipei Hotel.

All in all, through the next few days, I will be there having my Google Glasses on – assuring that nothing comes out of my way. And of course, I’ll be in my feminine way informing you on what have I learned and found out.

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The University of California, Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine yesterday announced that they would be incorporating Google Glass into their 4-year curriculum. The School, including dean of medicine, Dr. Ralph V. Clayman, stated that they would introduce Google Glass at the beginning of the students’ 4-year medical programs and would incorporate it into the first two years of anatomy and clinical skills training to their third and fourth-year hospital rotations. The hopes are to help integrate technology more effectively into a student’s overall daily life and to enable them to become more productive and effective in delivering quality care. The school claims that they will be using specialized software that will comply with the HIPAA requirements for privacy, even though I’m not entirely sure if that’ll actually be entirely possible.

While the idea of integrating Google Glass into the medical field seems incredibly great, Google needs to enable these med students and the hospitals they’ll be working in to be able to properly warehouse all of the data within the hospital’s networks. This may be difficult because Google Glass makes heavily utilization of Google’s voice recognition software, almost all of which is running in the cloud. Yes, there is a way to enable cloud-less voice recognition but it is vastly less accurate and less responsive, which means these schools like UCI need to cooperate with Google to install local hardware to enable this to properly comply with HIPPA. However, they will probably get an exemption since they are using this for testing and will likely help Google and others find ways to balance technology, usability and privacy.

If you go to a lot of doctor’s offices today, you can still see how low-tech a lot of things still are and it would be incredibly valuable to help bring technology into the doctor’s office with something like Google Glass that enables a vast amount of data to be at a Doctor’s fingertips without actually restricting their hands.

Starting this month, they will deploy 10 pairs of Google Glass with 3rd and 4th year students with preliminary plans to utilize them in operating rooms and emergency departments. In fact, the technology has already been piloted by UC Irvine’s Medical Center in operating rooms, intensive care units and the emergency department to assess its effectiveness in improving physician efficiency and patient safety. In addition to that, an additional 20 to 30 pairs of Google Glass will be acquired and deployed in August when 1st and 2nd year students start their 4-year programs. The devices will be incorporated into places like anatomy labs, medical simulation centers, the ultrasound institute the Clinical Skills Center and even the basic science lecture hall.

One of my biggest concerns about deploying Google Glass widely across a place like UCI is how patients will receive the devices as some people simply worry about being filmed or having their picture taken even though Google Glass is mostly used for things other than that. It will be interesting to see how wearables mature further and how technologies like Google Glass find their way into the medical field.

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According to the guys at Teardown.com the very hot Google Glass wearable computer from Google only carries a bill of materials of $80, which is about of of what we were expecting. It doesn’t really come as much of a surprise though, because Google Glass itself is incredibly old technology in terms of mobile and wearables and it really doesn’t provide much technological innovation. In fact, most people will be shocked to know that the SoC powering the Google Glass is in fact the same SoC that powers the failed Blackberry Playbook which was released more than 3 years ago with the same SoC. At the time of the Google Glass’ release, about a year ago, it was already running on 2 year old technology and was still being billed by the company as bleeding edge tech. The real truth of the matter is that Google Glass is being promoted as bleeding-edge when in reality we’re being sold technology that is at least 2-3 years old, which would be absolutely unforgivable in the smartphone industry. Imagine if someone tried to sell you a Blackberry Playbook for the same price as an iPad Air and convince to you pay way more on top of it.

Teardown.com’s Teardown of Google Glass

Sure, there was some research and development involved with the creation of the Google Glass, and the reality is that it doesn’t really have any comparable competitors. That’s why Google is able to effectively charge $1,500 for a device they could sell for $320 and still make a hefty profit. The software on the Google Glass is really where Google has put in the most effort with the device considering that a lot of its design and hardware was designed by another firm and acquired by Foxconn and then subsequently acquired by Google from Foxconn. In fact, Google recently bought more communications patents from Foxconn, which may indicate that perhaps Google needs an even stronger mobile patent portfolio than they already have. Or, they didn’t get all of the patents they needed to make Google Glass go mainstream.

Either way, Google Glass is grossly overpriced and underperforms in almost every way, mainly because of the old hardware. The battery life isn’t too great, it gets pretty hot, it isn’t very responsive and on top of all that, it looks pretty damn ugly. And when it doesn’t look ugly, it looks douchey, which is almost worse. Google Glass has a long way to go, no doubt, but it definitely gets people excited about wearables and wearable computing and hopefully there will be more actually useful apps for it soon. Oh, and Google needs to do a REAL Google Glass 2.0 hardware revision, not the one that they did late last year where they got rid of bone induction sound and added some optics adjustments and prescription glasses. Google needs to properly update Google Glass with newer hardware that gets better performance while consuming less power, they have plenty of low-power choices and it will be interesting to see whom they pick for the new SoC, if they ever do update the damn thing.

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