Gadgetory

Valley and Marrone Griffiths founder of wearable startup meta contributes his fair share I want to change the way we use computers and I think I have a really compelling vision of the future a lot of people are buying into it this is gribbit TSA's future forward device meta space glasses a pair of augmented reality specs that layer digital information and content that users can manipulate over their field of vision meta an analogy has a stereoscopic pair of glasses with a projector that projects to each I allowing for a 3d screen that wraps around the entire world and the analogy to the mouse and keyboard is this camera that can track the edges of your fingers and their location in space at really high dexterity and low latency in a video highlighting how the glasses might be used meta presents a mind-boggling world where free-floating virtual shapes can be molded then actually produced with 3d printers and details like names and job titles pop up as you meet people watching this it's easy to be odd yet also hard not to be skeptical but during a recent visit to their makeshift headquarters in the los altos hills we experience some of these demos firsthand ok they look a step back with backing from venture fund y combinator meta is off to a strong start it's received pre-orders from 1300 developers that want to get their hands on the glasses Architects looking to create 3d models collaboratively that'll be the first collaborative computer they're surgeons who want to track cat-scans to the body and sort of rotate them with their hands in 3d as they perform surgery because their hands are bloody so they couldn't touch an iPad I mean there's so many use cases that are coming in and surprising us meta success will in part hinge on a robust app store and there are other non-trivial hurdles the prototype is a bit on the bulky side but metas goal is to shrink down the technology so that ultimately the device is the size of a pair of ray all this reminded us of another tech companies wearable device google glass though gribbit seeeeee doesn't see the similarities we're not competing with a multi-billion dollar company they create a very different type of device than ours so their device is what I call a notification machine okay it's a small screen in the corner of your eye that you can only interact with with your voice or Y by swiping the side of your head meta bills its device as a natural machine that's more intuitive we use the thing that I was evolved to manipulate your environment namely your hand and it's just so much more immersive than Google glass so I think it's gonna bare different use cases from its home base meta has sweeping views of Silicon Valley you have a little apple over there in the distance little Google over there we could see all the way to San Francisco a perspective that inspires Griffiths and reminds him exactly what he's up against in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet for CBS News