The real world uses for Google Glass just keep popping up. Just recently, CNN has announced that they will begin experimenting with Google Glass in a way some might not have expected. They’ll be allowing Citizen Journalists to submit their stories containing videos and images pertaining to breaking news events by way of Google Glass. CNN’s iReport agency project has been around for years and has been the source for many stories they were able to gather and report on because of every day citizens who were near a breaking news event, and were able to grab some form of media content to cover and send in. The new Google Glass project is at its core a way for CNN to learn more about the tech and maybe even potential ways of using it themselves, but above all else at least for the time being, it should end up making for some interesting shots and video recordings to come whenever something news worthy breaks and CNN isn’t around to experience it first hand.
While the projects end goals may be to learn, the project was designed around growing CNN’s access to those who are able to cover and submit stories for them from around the world. For now such a project will be fairly limited since Google Glass is not nearly on the same scale of ownership as the amount of people who own and use other forms of technology that shoot video and take pictures, still anything extra is never a bad thing and it will allow for a totally different perspective on the way citizen journalists cover news for CNN news.
Google Glass support for the iReport usage will be accompanying already existing iReport capable apps from CNN on the three most major mobile OS platforms, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, as well as some Nokia devices. Even though Google Glass is pretty sparse right now compared to other forms of iReport media delivery, CNN’s plan to experiment with wearable tech could give them a leg up in the future if Google Glass eventually becomes more mainstream. Short of potentially being an eye opening and cool new way to experience news, it would also make CNN a first in the industry to be utilizing wearable tech for news coverage.