Google Glass

Google officially shut down the prototype version of Google Glass (the Explorer Edition) yesterday. Following are a few thoughts based on my year of being a Glass Explorer (beta user).

First, some context: early in 2014 I received a prescription for eye glasses for the first time in my life. I was told that my eyes were pretty good but that I might like having some glasses around for night driving.

After I got over the crushing blow to my ego by this affront to my once-perfect eyes, I actually became a little excited about entering the four-eyed world. Would I look smarter with glasses? More sophisticated? Cooler? I didn't know but I was intrigued.

To those readers who know me personally it will come as no surprise that I am a tech gadgetophile. From cars to sports watches to speakers, my chief criterion for just about anything I have or use is how much I can geek out on it. Thus my search for technologically advanced glasses led me straight to Google Glass.

Glass takes normal glasses (Originally they were only available with non-prescription lenses but they added prescription lenses at almost the exact time that I received  my prescription - could it be fate?) and adds a heads-up display (HUD), camera, microphone, speaker, and touch pad. It connects wirelessly to the phone in your pocket and acts as a more convenient interface for everything you would normally do on your phone.

The Good
Glass is very handy for conducting the basic triage that you would normally do on your smart phone: reading emails or texts, sending short messages, etc. When your phone receives an inbound message Glass makes a sound and you simply touch the frame or tilt your head back to see the message on your HUD.

This sounds like such a #firstworldproblem but Glass really does save me a lot of pulling my phone out of my pocket. The end result is that I spend less time with my head down looking at my phone and more time with my head up taking in the entire world - I like this aspect a lot.

I find myself messaging more when I'm wearing Glass. For example, if I'm on my way home from work and I have a question for Katie about whether or not I need to pick up something on the way, I just tell Glass to send her a message and the voice recognition is pretty fantastic (I swear it's better than basic Android voice recognition but I have no idea why this would be the case.). Without Glass I wouldn't be able to send any messages while driving so would have to pull over somewhere and whip out my phone or, more likely, just guess the answer.

In much the same way I also find myself taking many more pictures with Glass than I do without it. Glass has a "take a picture" button but you can actually train it to take a picture any time you make a big, exaggerated wink. This has really transformed my picture-taking: instead of having to take my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, hit the Camera app, and then take a picture (again, #firstworldproblems!), I simply wink.

I take more pictures, the pictures I take are more candid/less staged, and I also take pictures for more purposes than I did previously, e.g. snapping a pic of a billboard that's quickly going by on the highway to remind me to follow up on something related later. The camera isn't amazing but it's full 720 HD for both pics and video and the optics are much better than I would have expected.

The killer app for Glass by far is driving navigation. It takes everything that's great about Google Maps navigation and puts it on your HUD. No more glancing down to look at a GPS or your phone; it's right there in front of you showing you where to turn without obstructing your view of the road. Considering that the main reason I was supposed to get glasses was for night driving, this is a huge win.

The Bad
Unfortunately that's the only killer app for Glass. Most Glassware apps are just lightweight versions of apps that already exist on phones. For Glass really to flourish it will need an ecosystem of apps that are not "ports" of pre-existing apps but rather are only possible on this unique platform.

Glass should serve as a good bluetooth headset for calls too but it falls short in this area. I made a few calls with it but the microphone isn't great (The other side often reported having a hard time hearing me, especially if I was in the car.) and the bone-conductive speaker, which ensures that no one else hears what you are hearing, often ensures that you can't hear all that well either. You can plug in an earbud but I found that I almost never took the trouble (another #firstworldproblem - wow, I'm a real brat!) to do that.

Similarly I also never took advantage of Glass for sports. There are Glassware apps that will connect to my sports watch and display my heart rate, pace, etc. on my HUD. Rather than getting my nice prescription lenses all sweaty and dirty, though, I would only take advantage of this by swapping in the more ruggedized sunglasses lenses. This is possible but it takes several minutes and a special tool. If these lenses were more "hot swappable" then I would get more use out of the sports apps.

The final "bad" aspect of Glass is the controversy that surrounds it. Many people freak out when they see Glass because they think it's recording them without them knowing it. This fear is rationally unfounded as A. a conspicuous light shows on Glass whenever it is recording and B. its battery life wouldn't allow it to record much anyway! It would be much easier to record people without their knowledge by using a mobile phone or a GoPro camera than with Glass. But people don't understand Glass so they fear it - understandable but it still brings about some awkward experiences with individuals who are uncomfortable or with businesses that expressly ban the devices.

The Ugly
The worst aspect of Glass to me is that it doesn't "just work." As someone who is often running late, a real benefit of Glass is that I should be able to put it on, use the touchpad to access my calendar, click the event for which I'm late, and have it navigate me there (or just say, "OK Glass, get directions to XYZ.") without any fuss. When it is already connected to my phone, this works like a champ. Maybe it would be better if I wore it all day every day but, because I only wear it occasionally, I often have to spend a couple of minutes reconnecting it by Bluetooth to my phone when I first put it on, which somewhat defeats its convenience.

Also, as I hinted above, the battery life isn't great if you want to do anything other than just the basic messaging. Using Glassware apps, especially those that are always on in the background, really saps the battery life. Battery technology has advanced a great deal in recent years, though, so I would expect a next generation to be better in this regard.

Final Thoughts
So is Google Glass a success or a failure? As a mass market product, it would definitely be a failure. It simply doesn't "just work" enough to be consistently useful. However, it isn't a mass market product. It's a prototype in an open beta and trying to figure out what it could/should be. To measure its success in this light I suppose we will have to see how successful the next generation is as a mass market product.

It is clear that wearable technology as a trend isn't going anywhere so we've got to try-fail-learn if we're going to produce something truly transformative. When I decided to give Glass a try I was inspired by the "jewel" that Andrew "Ender" Wiggin wore during the sequel novels to Ender's Game - an inconspicuous, intelligent, connected device that augmented his capabilities in real-time. Glass definitely isn't there yet but I think it's a decent first shot on goal and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

I Out-Googled Google

Last week a friend, former professor of mine, and leading authority on computer security posted on Google+ a recommendation that people who have Google accounts should enable two-factor authentication. Basically this means that, if Google doesn't recognize your device or location, it asks you for confirmation via another medium (phone or text) in case your account has been hacked, phone has been stolen, etc.

I use Google a LOT: Gmail, Google Voice, Google+, Google Calendar, Google Analytics, etc. etc. Although I wasn't wild about the idea of adding a small hassle to my Google login experience, I figured it was worthwhile to prevent what would be an absolute catastrophe if my Google account were compromised.

So I went to my Google Account page and checked the box for two-factor authentication. The website then walked me through a few steps explaining the process and setting it up. When it came time to enter my phone number, I wavered a bit. Would it be a problem if I used a Google Voice number for my Google Account verification? It wasn't clear to me from the website if it would be or not. I didn't want to use my AT&T mobile number in case I changed it in the future and forgot to come back and update my two-factor authentication.

It was a bit of a quandary. I tested the notification with Google's "test run" tool, though, and it worked fine with my Google Voice number so that gave me confidence to proceed with that number. With a big warning that I was about to be signed out of all my Google accounts, I clicked the final Submit button.

When I tried to log back in, as expected, it said it was sending me a text to confirm my authenticity. The text never came. I waited . . . and the text still never came. When I checked my phone, I had been logged out of all my Google services there too and it was clear that, as I had originally feared, I was in a bit of a Google catch 22.

I searched through Google Help and it turns out that they have a way to let you back into your account if you find yourself locked out - whew! It would take up to 24 hours and would be a huge inconvenience, but not the end of the world. I set it in motion immediately. Then I received something unexpected: a call.

It turns out that, even though I was locked out of Google Voice, Google Voice was still forwarding phone calls to my mobile number. It was probably forwarding text messages too, but I had long since disabled that feature as I preferred to receive the messages just in my Google Voice app. Doh!

Once I discovered this fact, I was able to change my second authentication factor to voice instead of text. This worked like a champ and I was able to log in to my Google account - briefly! Then the Google account reclamation mechanism that I had initiated earlier kicked in and locked me out again for several hours until I finally received an email from them to reset my password.

So in the end it caused me nearly a full day of inconvenience and and no access to my Google accounts. While it was technically my fault, I would have hoped that Google would have anticipated my predicament a bit. At the very least, a warning to proceed carefully if using a Google Voice number would have helped. More helpful yet would have been some automated identification that the number I'd entered was a Google Voice number.

Even though I now have figured out how to get by this catch 22, I have irrationally disabled two-factor authentication anyway. The trauma of what happened has left me craving the safety of the previous status quo. Again, I don't thing Google has done anything technically wrong here, but I hope they'll take this experience as data about their usability and the effect it has on adoption of their features.

Google Tech Talk

Yesterday, a small group of us from Poken traveled to Google to give a Tech Talk about our product. It was cool to be invited and it was fun to discuss our design and future directions with Googlers. Several of them now have Pokens of their own so we'll see what ideas they come up with!

We hung out at the Zurich office for a little while after the talk and this was notable for two reasons. 

1. I played my first ping pong of 2009. It didn't last very long and it didn't elevate to Smash Ball status, but it was fun just to pick up the paddles again.

2. I played Rock Band for the first time and actually did pretty well. According to our host, I "rocked it like a hurricane," which is appropriate on many levels. It's kind of addictive; I have no idea how people get things done there!

Many thanks to Rupert et al for organizing the talk; we look forward to a tigther relationship with Google as we become more OpenSocial-friendly!

Parlez-vous Francais?

Another day, another milestone. Today was the first day that I conducted over half of my conversations at work in French. Woohoo! Or make that le woohoo! Note that I didn't claim that it was good French. Of course, no Frenchman would claim that any of the French spoken on this side of Lac Leman is "good." C'est la vie!

Today I also started re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion as the beginning of a chronological read-through of Middle Earth. Next will be The Book of Lost Tales, The Hobbit, and then The Lord of the Rings. Thanks so much to Lee and Sam for lending me The Hobbit oh so long ago! Of course I should really be spec'ing out the new Poken Web UI, defining our forthcoming API, and putting together the PowerPoint slides for Wednesday's Google Tech Talk. I guess Tolkien will have to wait.

My Diet

My daily diet can be summed up in two staple food groups:

1. bread

2. stuff you put on bread

Now before you think my diet is boring, let me clarify that there is a LOT of stuff you can put on bread! In the past few days alone, I have eaten bread topped with the following:

honey

cheese

smoked salmon

Nutella

chicken curry sauce

arugula

mangoes

papayas

and pretty much every combination thereof. It's nice living across the street from Globus, which has the most Whole Foods/Central Market-like grocery store that I've found in Lausanne. They have several whole grain selections and the bread is always fresh, crusty, and delicious. Until I'm moved into a more permanent apartment with the means to boil water for pasta, bread will probably remain my main source of complex carbs.

Of course, I don't eat exclusively bread-based meals. I also eat dark chocolate. :-) The Swiss swear that it's good for you and I am happy to accept that as gospel without trying to verify it.

Today was a milestone for me: I successfully responded to a request for directions from a lost couple on the streets of Lausanne--and in French!

This week will mark another milestone: on Wednesday I and some other members of the Poken team are headed to Google's Zurich office to present a Tech Talk. It was just a couple of months ago that I was there interviewing!

Google Interview

Yesterday morning I boarded the 8:20 AM train to Zurich. I've done this a few times before to go visit our ICP client. This time, however, I was going to interview with Google for a Product Manager position.

I arrived in Zurich around 10:30 and used the Google Maps Walking Directions feature from my mobile phone to find my way to the Google office. The office was fun and kind of over-the-top but not quite as much so as I expected. Perhaps my expectations had been artificially inflated by all the press this office received (at least here in Switzerland) when it opened back in January. Still, it was pretty cool: lots of game rooms, snack rooms, coffee bars, a fitness center, an aquarium-lined power nap room, all kinds of funky meeting rooms (with Star Wars-based names) and developer areas. I tested out the fire pole that you can take from one floor to another but didn't have a chance to use the slide into the cafeteria. The cafeteria was awesome, definitely IMD-level, and it serves three meals a day. I don't have to tell you how much I would take advantage of that benefit!

I had five interviews during the day, four with product managers and one with a software engineer. They were all very different, some focusing on product design, some on software technology challenges, some on strategy and management, and some on analytical brain teasers. Most of my interviewers were from different countries, they all seemed very sharp, and, best of all, I never really felt like I was being interviewed. Instead we had very engaging discussions about interesting and challenging problems. There was no "right answer" to any of the questions I was asked all day, just mutually participatory discussions, many of which left me feeling really excited. It really felt like the discussions Alex (or others) and I would frequently have about the future of products, technologies, and consumer behaviors. Sometimes those discussions would be about near-term ideas and sometimes they were a little more science fiction-y. Google seems like one of the few organizations with so much talent/resources/users that it can take real steps toward making the sci fi ideas reality.

At the end of the interviews I was informed that I had accessed the secret bonus round and would have two more interviews with Product Management Directors. Although I characterized Italians as lazy to one of them who turned out to be Italian himself (despite having a very German-sounding name!), I thoroughly enjoyed those discussions as well.

I stumbled a few times throughout the day. For example, some of my interviewers challenged me about my stated objective of helping to change the world of energy and how on earth working at Google would accomplish that. My responses weren't terribly eloquent or convincing there; shame on me for not preparing better.

Still, after seven interviews, I finished the day at 7 PM feeling very positive. These really felt like "my kind of people." In my experience there's a certain kind of magic that comes from a great team. Someone starts a discussion with an idea, others critique it, react to it, and add their own ideas. The level of frenetic excitement rises until everyone decides that the idea has to be pursued and then they all get down to business. This was the type of entropy I felt in my discussions all day, which was a very positive sign.

In many ways, yesterday was like my IMD interview day. I came in not really knowing what to expect. The day was set up to simulate some of the daily challenges encountered by the position for which I was interviewing. I had great, enlightening discussions with a bunch of really smart, diverse people. I left still thinking about the discussions and generating new ideas that I wished I had brought up during the interviews but feeling energized, able to visualize myself contributing to and benefiting from such an environment, and hoping they felt the same way. Oh, right, and I had an awesome lunch! So, we shall see!

After the interviews I met up with a friend of mine in Zurich for dinner (overlooking the city at night--beautiful!) and drinks at a cigar bar by the train station. Zurich seems like a really nice town that has the amenities that come with a major urban area (very international airport and accomplished arts, for example) without many of the drawbacks (high crime, for example). It's certainly not a cheap place to live but it also has one of the highest quality of life rankings in the world. Again, we shall see!

Pictures are in my facebook album.

Buffett and Google

My train for Zurich departs in 1.5 hours and I'm as ready as I'll ever be for a full day of interviews at Google. Guess who just performed at Google HQ yesterday? If that's not an omen, I don't know what is!

The Career Search Progresses

It was another productive week for my career search. My plans with GE Energy were solidified and I will fly to Florence tomorrow evening for interviews on Monday. I'm not really sure which position(s) they have in mind; I think it's more of a "let's get to know you and then, if we like you, we'll see where we have a good fit for your skills, experience, and interests." My network has been helpful with GE Energy: a Rice alum in their Houston office helped me understand their product/solution offering, one of my interviewers is an IMD alum, and two of my current classmates have worked at GE and helped me prepare for questions I am likely to receive.

I had my third (if you include my first "fit" interview with a recruiter) phone interview with Google this week and it went well. This one was less about my experience and more about how I think. I had to design another product and work through a few brain teasers. On Thursday I received the news that I had "passed" and an invitation to interview onsite at their Zurich office. According to one of my contacts in Google (whom I know through the Rice alumni network) the economic slowdown has raised the "hiring bar" and making it to the onsite interview is even harder than it used to be so I am particularly honored to have made it this far. The interview should be next week.

The founder/CEO of Poken (IMD alum) and I met again and I remain very enthusiastic about the company. They have big, world changing ideas, cool opportunities for a product manager/COO, and a fun corporate culture. The CEO is becoming overstretched between product management, business development, investor relations, etc. and is looking for someone to share the load. Given that my background is in managing innovative teams of software engineers and working with the marketing and strategy interfaces to ensure that the product vision is headed in the right direction, the role would be a great fit.

I also had a first interview yesterday with Positive Energy, a Washington DC-based startup that builds software to help residential power customers consume less energy. They just closed a major funding round, already have some customers, and have a smart team in place. The VP of Product has a marketing background and is looking for someone to manage the more technical side of their software product. Even though the company is only 20 people strong right now they have a couple of TJ alumni on board so, once again, this really drives home the importance of the network.

This last opportunity came may way through CleanTechies, a cool new site for techies looking to help the environment. I'm doing some side blogging there about how technology can be used to help address the global energy challenge.

So, things are moving along with a few very appealing opportunities and I'm continuing to add more to the pipeline. I'm long overdue for a Board update so will write one soon and post it here.

Some Good News

Monday I interviewed with Google for their Product Manager position. It sounds really cool--basically an internal entrepreneur/general manager with all the capital and smart people you could want to help make great ideas a reality. The people I know who are or have been Google PMs are really smart so I'm honored even to be considered.

My performance in the interview was OK. I suggested some product innovations Google might consider and was quickly shown that Google had already invented or acquired many of them. Oops--someone needs to do his homework better next time. I thought the open-ended question, though, in which I was asked to design a product, went well. In fact, if Google doesn't hire me, I may consider starting up a company to develop that product!

By the end of the interview I felt energized and excited, which is a great sign for me; I felt the same way after the IMD interview and I think it is indicative of a good fit. I don't know if my interviewer was as energized by my ideas as I was but he was at least satisfied enough to move me on to the next round, which will be another, similar interview with another Google PM. This was just a first interview in a process renowned for many interviews (up to 16!) but it still felt great to receive the thumbs-up today from the recruiter.

It's not the only good news I received this week, either. Yesterday I was asked to come to Florence for a second interview with GE Oil & Gas, which is making great strides at reducing the carbon footprint of oil & gas production. Furthermore, GE's renewable energy companies are taking off so they might be an option further down the road.

Monday I talked with a delightful alum from eSolar (Again, many thanks are due the most sophsticated woman at IMD for forging the connection.) and another with Planet Capital. Tuesday, I spoke with a good friend of one of my ICP teammates who has launched CleanTechies.com, where I will soon begin blogging about the use of ICT in sustainable energy. Wednesday I chatted with the Oerlikon Solar and E.ON Renewables. Today I met with another alum, the founder/CEO of Poken, a hardware/software service which will revolutionize the world of social networking. Finally my career search feels like it's really in gear!

Several of my classmates have either accepted job offers or received offers that they will accept. These mostly come from companies that did on-campus recruiting, in which I didn't participate much. Still, it's hard not to feel at least a little time pressure when others are starting to make plans for their living arrangements already! This is what I planned, though, to take my time through the recruiting process, to make sure I explore my options, and to make sure I make the best decision for me and my future employer--not one based on early deadlines or unexplored alternatives.

The distractions of the career search have an impact on our ICPs as well. It is becoming more and more rare to find all four of our group members in the room at the same time because each of us frequently steps out for career-related calls. In the meantime, our project has taken a major turn. It has evolved from a supply chain project to a change management project. The subject matter is still supply chain, but the obstacle between our client and the $100m+ they can add to their bottom line with supply chain improvements isn't analysis; it is implementation. That is now our focus: how can they conduct sweeping change in a way that works for all the varied (and often opposed) stakeholders involved? We are all very excited about it because it affords us the opportunity to learn and practice skills that transcend industry, function, and geography. But it isn't easy--real world, real learning!

Geneva

Mom and I headed into Geneva today to tour around the old town. I can't believe I've been here for nine months and never been into Geneva except for the airport and train station! It's a pretty town, albeit clearly more of a tourist trap than Lausanne. Pictures are in my facebook album.



As it remained cold all day, we took advantage of the opportunity for some fondue upon our return to Lausanne. In between touring and dining I spent the day preparing for my Monday interview with Google. I familiarized myself with their product suite , business strategy, and corporate history. It's only fair that I bone up on them; after all, given that this blog site is owned by Google, they should know plenty about me!