Gadgetory

why is snapchat making glasses I'm Brian Cooley in search of the next big thing these are spectacles from snapchat now known as snap the parent company changing its name to something more generic because they aren't just in the social media business anymore this is the actual set of spectacles as you can see they wouldn't look out of place in Elton John's dressing room the idea here is pretty simple there's a camera on the temple they take 10 second video clips and kind of an odd circular format and those get uploaded to your snapchat account and that's it they're not augmented or virtual anything they don't learn they don't take selfies they're very simple single point usage devices and that may be where the magic lies scarcity is part of the strategy these are sold for a hundred and thirty bucks through an ephemeral traveling vending machine but that means street prices are in the hundreds or even thousands on eBay these are a gimmick in the kindest sense of the word and we'll probably only find a minority though a visible one of users but that's enough to help position snapchat in its own space in a crowded social media market they do solve some meaningful issues of electronic Fung Shui like being able to shoot photos without having to hold your arm out in front of you that tells the world I'm shooting a photo and having an immediacy that fishing something out of your bag or pocket and turning it on and activating it can't replicate and these are hardware that says fun not tool which is what Google glass said about themselves or you for wearing them now you can bet Apple and Google are watching these very very intently not because they want to learn any lessons about software or sensor integration or cloud integration that's not the point here they want to see what snap can learn about scaling an almost insurmountable wall getting us to where technology on our face know what's next at cnet.com / time