With every monthly update Google rolls out for its Glass device, the futuristic face-based gadget takes another step toward its commercial release.
The latest update, announced by the Mountain View company on Monday, will roll out to Glass-owning Explorers over the course of this week, and it appears there’ll be plenty more new stuff to play with.
For starters, there are new controls for Glass’s video feature, including tap-to-play, tap-to-pause, swipe-back-to-rewind, and swipe-forward-to-you-can-probably-guess.
A new feature many are likely to find useful is the ability to check something on your timeline during a video call. Simply swipe down to shift the call to the background before turning to the required Glass app. Doing this mutes the camera function until you return to it.
New contextual voice commands for navigation and the ability to add a caption by voice after taking a photo or video have also been introduced. A new “hashtag” voice command is set to make tagging simple, too.
The Web giant has also added Google Now cards for reservations and events, so you’ll (hopefully) never miss another date, appointment or meeting.
Path and Evernote
Glass’s growing third-party ecosystem gets a look-in too, with two new voice actions offered for Glassware apps Path and Evernote.
“You can now update your Path feed by saying ‘OK Glass, post an update,’” an entry on Google’s Glass support page explained. “Similarly, sending a note to Evernote is as easy as saying ‘OK Glass, take a note.’” Google is calling the new app functions “just the beginning”, promising more voice actions over time.
As you can see, this latest release is pretty meaty, and, like all the promised monthly updates Google’s been rolling out, helps to push the project closer to completion. Many expect Google’s augmented-reality gadget to hit the market some time in 2014, leaving at the very least four more software updates between now and then, each of which is set to enhance and refine a product which recently has really started to take shape.
