Many expect wearable computing to be one of the largest markets in 2013, and right now, Google is at the forefront of the market. At Google I/O last year, the company made Google Glass available for pre-order to attendees for a whopping $1,500. But price aside, many developers can’t wait to get their hands on Project Glass. The company says the glasses should ship sometime in early 2013, but that didn’t stop Sergey Brin from rocking them in public…on a subway. The Google co-founder was seen riding the 3 train in New York while wearing the Google Glass prototype. Wearable computing enthusiast Noah Zerkin was able to snap the picture of Brin in the glasses and looking rather stealthy. “Yeeeah… I just had a brief conversation with the most powerful man in the world. On the downtown 3 train. Nice guy,” Zerkin tweeted last night.
It’s hard to know what Brin was up to with the glasses, considering that he probably had little to no signal on the underground subway. Maybe he was testing the offline features of the device? Watching a movie perhaps?
Google Glass has a busy and exciting year ahead. Google last week announced two hackathons for the device. One will be held in New York City on February 1st and 2nd and other in San Francisco on January 28th and 29th. Google is expected to show off the Mirror API and give developers “two full days of hacking” the API. The invite gave the first mention of the project APIs. The biggest reason many developers will attend a hackathon, though, is to receive their Glass pre-order, which Google will be handing out on-site. Google has been very reluctant to let the public see any features of Google Glass so far, but maybe the fact that they are holding a hackathon and encouraging users to play with the glasses is a sign that they are nearing some sort of usability.
Do you plan on attending a hackathon later this month to receive Google Glass? Or will you simply wait for Google to ship the glasses to your doorstep? Let us know down in the comments!