The results are in: Google set to announce winners of Glass contest

By Trevor Mogg Published March 27, 2013

The day when we’ll be able to walk the streets with Google-made glass and gadgetry perched on the end of our nose is coming ever closer, with the company soon to hand out pairs of the high-tech specs to thousands of lucky winners of the Glass Explorer contest which the Web giant launched last month.

Entrants were invited to post ideas on Google+ and Twitter with the hashtag #ifihadglass suggesting how they’d like to utilize the device – a smart move by Google, as it gave the company an opportunity to find out more about what regular members of the public are thinking about Glass in terms of its potential. Before now, only Google workers and outside developers have had a chance to put Glass through its paces (and on their face).

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In a Google+ post on Tuesday, the Mountain View company announced that the competition results are now in, and that in the coming days invitations to its Explorer Program will be sent out via Google+ and Twitter.

“There were so many creative, diverse, and (sometimes) crazy applications,” the company said on Google+. “We’ve certainly learned a lot through this whole process and it’s inspiring to hear how much passion there is for Glass.”

A quick glance at the #ifihadglass Twitter page shows the range of ideas the folks at Google had to sift through, from “I would record surgeries for video teaching libraries” to “I would document what remains of my life to share with my children” to someone who took a rather different approach: “Dear Google, pleeeeeeeeease let me try these..oh please oh please oh please. I’d do anything!!!!” It’ll be interesting to see if that one gets the nod from the Web company.

Google noted in its post that while it had received some great ideas from businesses, the current competition was for individuals only. “However, we are working on connecting with businesses in other ways,” Google said.

So, if you entered the contest, keep your eye on the relevant sites to find out if your idea caught the imagination of those in charge – and check your bank balance too, as you’ll need to cough up $1500 before you can get your hands on them.

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Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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A healthy few have already appeared on rival AI products such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, alongside much smaller players like Perplexity and browser-maker Opera. However, two products that have found some vocal fan-following with Gemini and ChatGPT have finally landed on the Copilot platform.

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The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
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It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
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The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
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