Author: peterjang73

The human desire to log the realities of everyday life is something that technology companies have been trying to turn into a successful product for years. With a new pair of smart glasses on offer, the company behind Snapchat hopes that the answer lies in simplicity.

Some of the strongest proponents of the life-logging movement have recently retired from the pursuit. But those early adopters sought to record everything, from sleep and steps to calorie intake and mood. Ultimately, they found the process difficult and unrewarding.

Google’s attempt to capitalize on the phenomenon with its Glass project struggled to take off. First announced in April  2013, the device later became available as part of the Explorer Program for the princely sum of $1,500. It was ultimately scrapped as a commercial product last year, sidelined instead to research and workplace use.

Glass had many problems. Certainly, its price made it an exclusive item. Privacy advocates worried ceaselessly about people snapping images without permission, coining the fabulous term “Glasshole” along the way. But perhaps its biggest failing was Google’s attempt to shoehorn a small computer, display, camera, microphone, and more into a diminutive frame. This was Google trying to invent the future, and failing.

Now Snap—the new name of Snapchat—thinks it can do better.

Where Glass was an exercise in speculative future-gazing, Snap’s new Spectacles are a study in pragmatism. The new sunglasses, which are styled like Ray-Bans, allow the wearer to record first-person video at the press of a button, shooting up to 30 seconds of circular video with a 115-degree field of view. The clips can then be transferred to a smartphone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, to be added to Snapchat.

That’s it. Nothing else to it.

Their simplicity—the very decision not to even attempt to break new technological ground—could be the very thing that cements their place in the future. Perhaps their most compelling feature is that they have a clear and distinct purpose: you can wear them, acquire first-person images and video of what you have done, and then quickly upload that material to the Web.

Snap does give Spectacles one particularly innovative touch: the circular video that the device shoots. In a stroke, that’s solved—for Snapchat, at least—the annoying problem of video appearing in the wrong orientation if people hold their phone in landscape view.

At $130, the glasses are also easy on the wallet. Snap’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, referred to them as a “toy” in the Wall Street Journal interview in which they were announced, and he’s right. At that price, it’s a piece of hardware that can be purchased for good old-fashioned fun, or given to a teenager as a treat. Like any other toy, they’ll become their own advertising if they do sell well: while smartphones are inherently private devices, wearing a pair of Snap’s glasses alerts the world to what a person is doing, which may appeal to people looking to make a statement.

But that brings us to one of the major questions facing the device: who, exactly, is going to buy them?

The styling is undeniably youthful, and it’s easy enough to imagine a teenager lusting after a pair. But earlier this year, Snapchat’s vice president of content, Nick Bell, pointed out that two-thirds of its users are over 18, and 50 percent of new daily users are over 25. Those folks are more attractive to advertise to, because unlike teens, they tend to have money. But it’s not clear if Spectacles are the product to drive that adoption.

There’s also the pesky question of privacy. Glass suffered an onslaught of criticism for the ways in which it enabled snooping, and Snap will undoubtedly be seeking to avoid the same. It’s clearly at least considered the issue: the glasses light up when they’re recording, which may help. A little. But that feature is sure to be hacked within days of the device’s release.

What could act in Snap’s favor is volume. While Glass was the preserve of wealthy, middle-aged Silicon Valley types who were few and far between and easy to feel alienated by, cities awash with Spectacle-wearing Millennials could help normalize public video recording.

Not that will happen overnight. Spiegel told the Wall Street Journal that the company was “going to take a slow approach to rolling them out,” so that it can work through a process of “figuring out if it fits into people’s lives and seeing how they like it.” If it does, and they do, Spectacles could help Snap turn an idea that’s always proved unsuccessful into something that allows people to document their lives easily.

It could, perhaps, make life logging cool again.

(Read more: Wall Street Journal, “Google Glass Is Dead; Long Live Smart Glasses,” “Google Glass Finds a Second Act at Work,” “Life Logging Is Dead. Long Live Life Logging?”)

Google has made a series of announcements that make one thing very clear: it plans to take India’s Internet by storm.

The company is no stranger to working in India, with its railroad station Wi-Fi project already proving to be a notable success. But today it announced a series of new products and projects squarely aimed at the Indian market, signaling its intent to tap a market of 1.25 billion people where only 200 or 250 million are currently online.

Most notable among the announcements is a new YouTube app called Go, specially designed for users in developing countries with poor—and expensive—data connections. While the app does allow video downloads for later viewing, that’s not its real party trick. Instead, as Wired explains, it allows people to share video with others in their community using ad-hoc wireless networks, so users don’t have to chew through cellular data allowances. That feature was inspired by trips to India, where Google saw people sharing videos not as links, but via SD cards that were passed around.

The app isn’t the only data-saving scheme Google’s been working on. It’s also announced that Chrome for Android will now provide a Data Saver mode that will allow it to more aggressively compress audio and video, as well as downloading a specially streamlined version of Web pages. It’s claimed that MP4 files can be streamed using 67 percent less data, while a Web page ends up just 10 percent of the size. There will also be the option to download Web pages for later viewing. Clearly, there will be a loss of quality—but that probably doesn’t matter too much when you’re using a slow 2G connection.

Elsewhere, Google has also announced that it’s expanding its rail station Wi-Fi initiative, known as Google Station, into other locations such as cafes and malls, with plans to take it to other countries. And the company will be adding Hindi support to its new AI-powered Assistant.

You may, of course, be reading this and thinking that these features seem useful anywhere, and not just in underconnected countries like India. Google would agree. Writing in the Economic Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai explains that the company is learning a lot from its work in the country, finding that many of its solutions to connectivity issues—such as Maps Offline—are also popular in the West. “In an increasingly mobile-first world, India gives us early insights into the future of the Internet,” he explains.

But make no mistake: India is a huge opportunity for Google. If Google can be the one to provide the services that new Internet users adopt, it will be able to recoup its investments using its favorite trick of all—advertising. Facebook has already tried as much in India with its Free Basics scheme, but that was banned because it breached the principles of net neutrality.

Google, though, looks set to do everything it can to succeed.

(Read more: Wired, Economic Times, The Verge, “Facebook and Google Are Racing to Supply India with Internet Access,” “How Assistant Could End Up Eating Google’s Lunch,” “India’s Blow Against Facebook Sets Up a Grand Experiment in Net Neutrality”)