14 DAY TRIAL // Google Glass isn't even available to most people, and probably won't be this year, but that's not stopping all sorts of people from coming up with very interesting uses of the technology. That was Google's idea with the Explorer Program, through which developers and a select few have gotten their hands on Glass, in the first place.
Mutualink, a company that specializes in communication solutions for law enforcement agencies and the like, is demoing a Glass app for police, firefighters and other emergency response personnel.
It's easy to imagine how Glass, or a more rugged version of the device, would come in really handy in situations where you don't have the time or the free hands to fiddle with a smartphone.
The Glass app allows officers to communicate in real time, share streaming video, or get information from headquarters. Things like a building layout would be crucial to firefighters in an emergency, for example.
Already, more and more police departments are fitting their officers with a body camera, designed to record both the actions of the officers and those they are engaging with. Studies have shown that the presence of the camera makes both the police officers and those being questioned behave better.
Google Glass, with its hands-off video recording feature would certainly be a good replacement for the body cameras and serve a similar purpose while also providing much more functionality.
As it stands though, Google Glass seems a bit too fragile for such fieldwork, but that opens up the opportunity for Google or, indeed, someone else, to create a custom, rugged version.
After all, there are smartphones out there to satisfy a variety of needs and companies try to fill as many markets as possible, unless they're Apple. It should be interesting to see how Google expands the Glass ecosystem though, whether it will always build its own devices or open up the operating system to other manufacturers like it does with Android.