My Top Ten Uses for Google Glass

The great thing about wearing Glass is when I receive a phone call I can quickly glance at the screen to see who is calling and decide whether or accept or reject the call. I don’t need to pull my phone out of my pocket and I can very discretely reject a call. Best of all, I can answer the call with Glass. The only issue right now are some call quality issues which is why I use Glass more for Caller ID than making/receiving calls. I would expect that to improve before the consumer version rolls out.

Getting notified of comments on your posts and responding quickly can be integral to keeping the conversation going. With Glass, I can always rely on getting my notifications for certain posts right in my periphery.

While I was getting ready for work this morning I tiled my head up and said, “OK Glass, Google, Do I need a jacket?” within a second I had the current weather conditions read aloud and a forecast displayed on the prism. It doesn’t seem like much, but little time savers like these can add up HUGE. The best part, is Google can understand natural language like, “do I need an umbrella?”

The awesomething about appointment reminders is that you can immediately get directions to wherever you are going. With Google Now, Glass can remind you when you need to leave the house to make it to the office on time. If you embed the location of your appointments, you can instantly get turn-by-turn directions to your destination with no effort on your part.

Granted, you can do this with your phone, but zipping through the Google Now tile cards on Glass allows you to do it even more quickly. These little time savers stack up and keep you from bending your neck down to look at your phone throughout the day.

E-mail is still the primary form of my digital communications. It’s how I work with businesses, get updated on financial transactions and ultimately the easiest and most widely accepted way for people to communicate online. With Glass, I can have my messages read to me while I am on the road. Use Google Wallet to pay for dinner? Watch your e-mail appear instantly confirming the amount charged before the server returns with your check.

One of the greatest innovations in texting wasn’t the graduation from T9 to the Qwerty keyboard, but the advent of voice recognition. Glass’s voice recognition is fantasticwhich makes things like responding to text messages a breeze and surprisingly safe(r) when you’re driving.

“OK Glass, Google, How do you say this is my favorite restaurant in French?” It’s one of the simplest ways to communicate with people while you’re traveling abroad (provided you have connectivity).

Glass’s turn-by-turn directions are the simplest, most intuitive and unobtrusive method of providing directions I have ever seen. Unlike a traditional GPS, Google Glass only shows you a map when you are about to make key maneuvers during your trip. You’ll hear audible reminders, but the screen will only illuminate when you need to see what you’re about to do.

Let’s be honest, the most amazing part of Google Glass is the instant and (almost) effortless access to Google’s search engine. As Google improves its contextual search and natural language recognition, I am finding that there are more and more “natural” search queries that give me exactly the information I’m looking for, exactly when I’m looking for it. That’s what I call awesome.