谷歌眼镜迎来日本挑战者

    日本企业家井口尊然希望人们能通过别人的眼睛来看世界。不过他的第一款产品并不那么有野心，通过它看世界，整个世界看起来有点像日本卡通漫画。在我目前见过的处于研发阶段的产品中，这个名为“心电感应1号”的产品是最接近谷歌眼镜（Google Glass）的一款。本周二晚上，在纽约的一场活动上，井口尊然和他的团队向媒体展示了这款眼镜的原型机，它可以用来传送图像（其中两台是实物，其它几台是实物模型）。

    像谷歌眼镜一样，用户可以把“心电感应1号”戴在头上，然后把眼镜腿挂在耳朵上。“心电感应1号”还配了一幅耳机，因此可以推测，未来它应该会在产品中添加音频功能。

    与谷歌眼镜不同，“心电感应1号”在眼镜前方有一个光学投影的小屏幕，另一个人通过一款手机应用，可以将拍摄的图像传送到眼镜的小屏幕上，呈现在佩戴者眼前。“心电感应1号”团队表示，这款设备还可以通过眼镜直接拍摄照片或视频，然后把这些图像传输到另一个人的手机应用上，不过目前原型机上还没有这些功能。

    井口尊然强调，他希望“心电感应1号”可以让用户跟所爱的人分享所见的景象。他说：“当你爱的人站在你旁边的时候，你会感觉到爱。”井口是几天前从东京飞到纽约的，他在演讲时，有一半的时间说英语，一半的时间说日语，有一位翻译在旁边帮忙。他解释说，“心电感应1号”的核心功能就是让身处两地的人们可以实时分享某种体验。他指出，这和谷歌眼镜可能使用的某些开放性的应用形成了鲜明对比。

    “心电感应1号”将使用的第一款应用叫Manga Camara。这款应用在日本很流行，已经获得了600万次的下载量。演示过程中，我戴上了这副眼镜，然后“心灵感应1号”团队的人给我周围的人拍照，随后我眼前的小屏幕上就出现了这些人的日本漫画形象。

    听起来是不是有点奇怪？呃，那是因为它本来就有点奇怪。

    看着一群陌生人变成黑白漫画式的小人儿，可能不如看到好朋友或合作伙伴变成漫画人物更有喜感。另外这款原型机戴起来也不是很舒服，没有办法很清晰地欣赏图像。所以大多数试戴过这款设备的人最后不得不把它拿在手里，用一个尴尬的姿势往里瞄，最后几乎是眯着眼睛看里边的图像。

    Japanese entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi wants people to see the world through other people’s eyes. But as a less ambitious jumping off point, he’ll kick it off with a world that looks like a Japanese manga cartoon. His device, called the Telepathy One, is the closest thing I’ve seen under development yet to Google’s Glass gadget, and at an event in New York City on Tuesday night, Iguchi and his team showed off prototypes (two working and several others just mockups) of the wearable image-streaming glasses to the media.

    Like with Google Glass, users wear the Telepathy One on their heads, in front of the eye and wrapped around the ears. Telepathy actually has ear buds that fit into the ears, so you can presumably hear audio functionality when they add it in.

    Unlike with Google Glass, the Telepathy One has an optically projected small screen in front of the eye of the wearer, and a cell phone app controlled by the partner captures the images that the wearer sees in a tiny screen. The Telepathy team said the device will also be able to take photos or videos from the headset and stream those images to the partner’s cell phone app, but the prototype didn’t yet have that functionality.

    Iguchi emphasized that he wants the Telepathy One to enable users to share what they’re seeing with their loved ones. “You feel the love when your loved one is standing beside you,” said Iguchi, who flew in from Tokyo days before and half the time spoke to the group in English and half the time spoke in Japanese using an interpreter. The core functionality of the Telepathy One is the social sharing of experiences in real time between people over distance, explained Iguchi. He pointed out that this is in contrast to some of the more open-ended apps that will come out of Google Glass.

    The first app that the Telepathy One will use is the Manga Camera app, which is a popular app in Japan that’s gotten 6 million downloads. For the demo, I put the headset on and the Telepathy team took photos of people around me, and the Manga-versions of those people streamed to the little projected screen in front of my eye.

    Sound a little weird? Well, that’s because it was a little weird.

    Seeing a bunch of strangers look like tiny black and white cartoons might not have the same type of pull as, say, seeing your best friend or partner as a goofy manga character. The prototype also wasn’t fitted comfortably enough to be able to see the image very well, so most people that tried the device on ended up holding it with their hand at a certain angle, looking up in an awkward manner, and practically squinting to see the image.