Google Glass – the biggest game changer since mobile phones?

I still remember the mid-1990s in which people in Europe found it rude when you would make a phone call on the street or in a public place. “Why could you not wait until you are home to make that call?” or “Why is that person trying to show that he/she is important?” were things you heard when people discussed it. Even I did not see the necessity of having a mobile phone until around 1998 – people could leave a message on my answer machine at home or on my voice mail in the office, that seemed good enough. Of course things changed when more people started to get mobile phones and everybody realized the convenience of using them. Within the time span of 2 years mobile phones became socially acceptable and suddenly everybody seemed to want one.

I think the same will happen with Google Glass, the glasses-like wearable computer that projects messages and can record or broadcast your life. In my opinion this is a huge game changer for the way we will live our lives, very similar to how mobile phones changed the world as we know it. At first people will probably make “you’re showing off” comments and don’t understand why such a device would be useful (“I have a smartphone, why would I need Google Glass?”), until more people start using it and everybody suddenly can’t imagine a world without these devices anymore.

I have not seen Google Glass in action yet, but the video that Google released yesterday gives a good overview of what the device does: you can receive messages, read important news, make video calls and basically do everything you would now do with your smartphone. The big difference is that Google Glass will be always on (if you wear it of course) and people won’t notice what you are doing, except when you give voice commands to the device. Because of video streaming capabilities this will really be the end of privacy and it will be another huge boost for online video and social media (don’t sell your Facebook shares yet!). I think eventually almost everything that happens will be recorded by someone and will be available instantly to the whole world.

Google Glass will be an additional brain and the people that will adopt to it first could have a huge advantage. I now already constantly Google things on my phone to get additional information on things I see or do, with Google Glass there will be a whole new dimension to this. It may seem like science fiction now, but I can imangine that if you are in a discussion your device can give you addtional information on the topic while you are talking. Or imagine sitting in a restaurant where you can see the names and other information of everybody guest through a combination of face recognition and augmented reality. Literally world changing!

However, the massive amount of data that the average Internet user has available will become even more of a burden than it currently is. Online curation will become much more important. Not manual curation (that would be too slow) but automatic tools to sift through data and to only show what is most relevant to you at that moment based on where you are and what you are doing. Companies that can deliver this kind of real-time algorithms and execute well can become huge. Facebook is doing a decent job there with its timeline, but it can still be improved a lot.

The way we will consume news will change as well. Hamish McKenzie at the PandoDaily published an excellent piece on this just now. Among others he writes that more than before news will come to you instead of that you are looking for news, a bit like a feed of important messages that occasionally pop up. The packaging of news will be more important, a good picture with a short but clear headline is likely all that can be projected (Twitter’s 140 characters!). The news you get will be contextually relevant, but for longer pieces you will still use other devices.

It’s fascinating what will happen. Even though the current design is still super nerdy I can’t wait to get my hands on my first Google Glass device. Too bad we’ll probably still have to wait another year before this product will hit the market for everyone.

No Harlem Shake in China (Yet)

Over the past 2 weeks the Harlem Shake meme spread all over the Internet. The hype seems to be a bit over by now, at least I don’t see that many new mentions in my feeds anymore. When companies like Pepsi start to release their own Harlem Shake video ads you know the hype is probably over the top. On the other hand, the song just hit the #1 position on iTunes today and even my kids are now jumping up and down to the Baauer music – my fault, I showed them a couple of the videos over the weekend and they liked it so much that they now keep on shouting Harlem Shake instead of Gangnam Style.

Interesting is that I did not see many Harlem Shake mentions in social media feeds from Chinese friends, so out of curiosity I did a quick search on Tudou and Youku. It turns out that for the search term 哈林摇 there are only less than 300 videos on both sites together. Harlem Shake gives a few more hits, but also these seem to be only foreign-made videos. And just 3 of them have over 100,000 views, which is very low for Chinese video sites. As a comparison, while I am writing this YouTube gives 8.5 million search results for Harlem Shake and the current top video compilation has been watched 13 million times so far.

Either the Chinese are a bit behind on this one or they just don’t like it. My take is that because the dance videos spread during the height of Chinese New Year many Chinese may have missed it, but that the hype may still come. Not that I am waiting for it, I have actually seen too many versions of the dance over the past days already. In case you missed the whole phenomenon, below a compilation of the best Harlem Shake videos on YouTube.

A compilation of Harlem Shake videos on YouTube

Shanghai slowly back to normal after CNY

Today is the 5th day of Chinese New Year and finally life becomes more normal again. The first few days of CNY there was virtually no traffic on the roads and you could drive everywhere in the city in a matter of 10-20 minutes instead of the usual 30-60 minutes. That is, if you have your own car, because there were not many taxis around yet. But today quite some taxis seem to be back from the countryside and most are empty.

On Monday I had planned to have drinks with a friend in a bar, but the place was still closed so we ended up at his house with a bottle of wine. Last night I drove by the bar and noticed it was open now, so we’ll try again tomorrow.

City Supermarket is still on a holiday schedule, which I found out this morning when I wanted to buy yoghurt at 9 AM with Scott. The store did not open until 10… We were not the only ones who were surprised to see that this supermarket opened later, during the time span of a few minutes at least 3 other people wanted to enter the store.

Smog levels are still pretty high, especially because of the fireworks. On Chinese New Year’s Eve the smog level for the first time exceeded the upper limit of the index (which is quite scary if you think about it). And last night the level was even higher, because of the massive fireworks for the Fortune God. I actually had the feeling that there were more fireworks last night than on CNY eve, and they for sure lasted longer (from 6 pm until 1 am, and then again from 7 am onwards – so I did not get a lot of sleep).

Business wise not much is happening yet, I only have 3 meetings this week and before people call me they send me a SMS to check whether it’s okay to call. In a way I look forward to next week when all offices are open again and when you can get things done. I just hope the traffic could be a bit longer like it currently is though.

Happy Year of the Snake

It’s New Year’s Day in China, the first day of the Year of the Snake. Grace’ family from Beijing came over to celebrate the holiday here, so it’s a food and drink extravaganza at home. Last night my father-in-law prepared the New Year’s Eve dinner, he spent the whole day in the kitchen making all the dishes. It was excellent, especially in combination with the bottles of Champagne that I had opened to accompany the food.

The kids got presents and hongbao (red envelopes with money) from everybody, and Scott was already musing about what kind of things he could buy now. After the meal the family watched the annual CCTV New Year Gala, and I read some magazines. I am not a big fan of the show, if you have seen one you have seen them all. Scott and Elaine loved it though (I guess that says a lot about the level of the show!) and could not stop watching the stand-up comedians and the songs and dances.

At a certain point I fell asleep on the couch but the kids were still awake. I was a bit jet lagged, because we just came back from a week in Canada, and a big meal plus some nice wines don’t help to stay awake. The fireworks woke me up at midnight though and we all watched it from the 3rd floor of our house. I felt there were less fireworks than in years before, but maybe that was because I didn’t go outside this year. But the smog certainly wasn’t less, at 1 AM the index was above 500 (which is the upper level, above 300 the air quality is considered hazardous). Probably good that I stayed inside.

Today we drove out to Sheshan to climb the mountain there and to get some fresh air. The roads were quite empty and the drive went fast, helped by the fact that all tollroads are free during Chinese New Year, so you don’t waste a lot of time in traffic jams at the toll gates. But Sheshan itself was very busy and I was glad to find a parking space close to the entrance gate of the mountain. Also the access to the mountain was free now (it used to be quite expensive), but that also meant that thousands of others decided to hike up the hill as well.

Despite being 30 kilometers from Shanghai the air at Sheshan was actually still pretty bad. The kids asked why the air smelled like smoke and when we were at the top there was not much of a view because of the air pollution. Not sure if the walk was very healthy, but at least we got out of the city for a few hours, which is always a good thing.