BabakParviz
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Google Glass founder heads to Amazon
The optics savant that helped Google create Glass has just announced that he's "super excited" to be joining Amazon. Babak Parvis was one of the original members of Google's Project X skunkworks lab, and the first head of the Glass project team. Prior to that, the Seattle resident was a researcher at the University of Washington where he developed the first contact lenses with integrated circuits. Later, he worked with Microsoft on research for blood-glucose monitoring contacts with Microsoft, a project he eventually brought to Google. Parvis didn't say exactly what he'd be doing with Amazon, but projects like Google's Tango, the Oculus Rift and Amazon's new Fire phone and Firefly app have made optics designers a hot commodity. Meanwhile, Glass is well past the research stage where Parvis shined, so Google now has design guru Ivy Ross in charge for a likely consumer launch. [Image credit: loiclemeur/Flickr]
Google Glass features 'still in flux', no plans to display advertising on device
It's been a few months since we heard anything new about Google Glass -- fortunately, IEEE Spectrum has managed to get a few questions answered by the project's lead, Babak Parviz. While noting that Google Now could be "very compelling" on the new hardware, he stopped short of saying that it would make an outing on the headset. There will, however, be a cloud-based API, which Parviz hopes will help to maintain a consistent user experience -- it's already been used to build both the email and calendar functions on Glass. Perhaps more importantly, when asked whether Google Glass would display advertising to its users, the project lead said that there were no plans for ads on the device. Google's keeping it vague with a precise feature list, but hardware-wise, Parviz says that the team is aiming for the headwear to last a full day on a single charge, with work still underway on head gestures -- still likely to be the least subtle input option alongside the (now patented) trackpad and voice commands. He added that the product is still on track to ship to those early 'explorers' early this year -- we're already polishing our glass block in anticipation.
