Hackers Get Clever With Google Glass

With great power comes great responsibility, and I am quite sure that you do know that by now. Sure, not everyone is able to afford a pair of Google Glass, but there are some who do and have done some pretty zany things with it. Case in point, a hack by a certain Stephen Balaban has added more “powers” to his Google Glass. Balaban shared, “Essentially what I am building is an alternative operating system that runs on Glass but is not controlled by Google.” The whole reason for Balaban’s efforts is this – to let his pair of Google Glass to perform different tasks which was not what Google’s designers had in mind for it in the first place.

One of the main fears of Google Glass would be privacy issues, and Google has reiterated that you cannot snap a photo without a voice command or tapping your temple to have the screen light up, which would be signs for others around to be more aware that you are going to shoot a photo. Hackers, however, have proved that one can re-engineer Google Glass in various means. This is an interesting scenario that Google is in – a delicate one, which handled correctly, could see the explosion of Glass adaption everywhere. After all, they cannot push away these enterprising hackers who are oozing with creative talent to build a huge and viable software ecosystem, and yet they cannot restrict Google Glass in such a way that everyone shuns the platform. How would you approach the situation if you were Google?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: Google Glass, Hacking