May 3, 2013: Can I Haz Glass?

Not long ago, Google started shipping Google Glass, their wearable net interface, to the 2,000 or so developers who signed up at their conference last year.

A few months ago they did a Twitter campaign, #ifIhadglass, to choose another round of 8,000 or so beta users. They wanted 50 words or less about what the user would do with Glass. My reply was: "Heh. Google, I don't need 50 words. I'll give you ONE word. GAMES." Apparently that was a good reply, because on March 26 I got the reply "@SJGames You're invited to join our #glassexplorers program. Woohoo! Make sure to follow us - we'll DM in the coming weeks."

So I haven't heard back from them yet, but I've definitely been thinking about it. Some of the things that I've come up with aren't "games" as much as they are "fun things," but saying what is and isn't a game is like defining art. So my working definition will just be "if I think of it, it's a game." And I won't really know how practical any of these ideas are until I put the thing on. (And it will mean going back to contact lenses, because this version of Glass won't fit over glasses.)

Here's a very interesting article listing more than half of the #ifIhadglass choices ranked by number of Twitter followers. Some of the top names sound like fun. Adam Savage. Levar Burton. Newt Gingrich (who wants to use Glass to create museum tours).

If any of my regular readers are also early Glass adopters, or want to toss out ideas, or just want to point out interesting names that I might have missed on the list, please give me a shout on the forums.

-- Steve Jackson