Google Glass for Eyeglass Wearers

  NOTE: If you don't wear glasses, please scroll to the bottom of this post and tell me what you would like to know about using Google Glass for historical research.

Prescription eyeglass wearers can wear Google Glass 2 ways:

1. You can purchase prescription-ready frames for $224.

Price does not include prescription lenses.

2. You can create 3-D-printed plastic clips to attach Glass to your existing eyeglass frames.

These clips cost between $1-$10 to make, plus shipping if you don’t own a 3-D printer.

In this post you will learn about the pros and cons of each option.

3-D-Printed Plastic Clips

Just before I purchased Glass,  TechCrunch announced that eyeglass wearers could attach Google Glass to their eyeglass frames with custom clips.

I decided to try the plastic clips and purchased Glass without prescription-ready frames.

When my Glass arrived, Tim followed the directions posted by Adafruit and measured the Glass unit and my existing eyeglass frames with digital calipers.

Tim used his measurements and Autodesk 123D to design my clips. When finished, he uploaded his design to Sculpteo.com and ordered the clips.

It cost $6.98 for the clips plus $6.50 for shipping. The clips arrived 1 week after we ordered them.

Clip Pros & Cons

Pros

1. Clips are cheap.

At $13.48 with shipping, they save eyeglass wears approximately $700 (the cost of the frames with prescription lenses).

2. Clips are lightweight.

My clips weigh 2 grams.

Cons

1. Clips require exact measurement.

You must measure your eyeglass frames with exact precision. If you don’t, the clips won’t hold your Glass steady or in the right position.

2. The color of your clips may not match your eyeglass frames or Glass.

It is hard to judge the exact color of the plastic online.

The price of your clips will fluctuate depending on the color of plastic you choose.

My Thoughts on Clips

I ordered 2 different sets of clips and neither set worked perfectly.

The first set proved too big. Tim used this set to refine his measurements.

The second set held Glass better.

The clips held Glass securely to the side of my eyeglass frames. However, every time I nodded or turned my head the Glass optics fell out of its optimal viewpoint.

After 2 attempts and 1 month I gave up on the clips and ordered a pair of prescription Glass frames.

I want to use Glass as a research tool. I need it to hold steady when I take a picture or look at an object.

Google Glass Prescription Frames: What You Should Know

Finding an Optician

Google recommends that you use a preferred provider to fit your prescription-ready frames with lenses.

I went to my regular optometry shop as Google listed someone in Connecticut as my nearest “preferred provider.”

My optician loved the fact that I had Glass. She had never seen one before. Initially she felt confident that she could fit my Glass frames with lenses.

But then she looked at the box.

Prescription Specifications

Google recommends a prescription lens range of -4D to +4D for its frames.

These specifications presented a problem for me.

The prescription lens required for my right eye fell outside of the recommended range.

The optician made several phone calls to try and find out whether the recommended prescription range had to do with fitting the lens inside the frame or if a greater-than-recommended prescription strength would affect my ability to see the Glass optics.

After a few hours of inconclusive research she asked me to find another optician.

Fortunately, Tim works for Google and has several coworkers with both Google Glass and poor eyesight. He asked them where they had their lenses made.

They all went to Central Square Eye Care, an optical shop in Cambridge, MA.

Outside Recommended Prescriptions

An experienced optician can fit Google Glass prescription-ready frames with lenses that exceed Google's recommended range.

Optician George Skelton made mine.

It took a bit of trial and error, but 2 weeks after I dropped off my frames, Skelton called to tell me he had succeeded.

My new lenses are made of a new, ultra-lightweight and thin material. It took my eyes several hours of continuous wear to adjust to seeing out these new lenses.

Unless you look at the top of my frames, you cannot tell that my right eye sports a thick lens. The Glass optics hide the thickness from the front and side views.

Total Additional Cost

Eyeglass wearers can expect to pay a premium if they want to sport Glass with prescription lenses.

It will cost you $1500 for Glass, $224 for the frames, and hundreds of dollars more for the lenses.

My lenses cost $500.

What Would You Like to Know?

What would you like to know about Google Glass?

Is there a specific capability you wonder about and would like me to test?

Send me an e-mail, tweet, or leave a comment.

My experiments with manuscripts commence at the Massachusetts Historical Society on May 6, 2014.

Getting Access: Internet Archive

Welcome to Getting Access, a series devoted to helping you obtain the digital records you need. Have you ever searched for a book online only to find that Google Books does not have the antiquarian tome you were looking for?

If so, you should give the Internet Archive a try.

In fact, the Internet Archive contains digital records that will help all historians, no matter what period you study.

In this post you will learn what the Internet Archive is and why it is an excellent digital resource for historians.

Internet Archive

Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive is an internet library that offers historians, researchers, and members of the general public “permanent access” to historical collections.

The goal of the Internet Archive is to create a comprehensive archive of our 21st-century digital world. It has partnered with several institutions, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian to ensure the preservation of the Internet's digital record.

Its digital archive includes historical texts, audio, videos, software, and archived webpages.

The Internet Archive strives to provide free, open access to literature and other writings that society has deemed essential to its education and maintenance.

Records: Antiquarian Books

The Internet Archive provides digital access to many antiquarian books.

In addition to conducting it own scanning projects at libraries such as the Boston Public Library, the Internet Archive has indexed many books from the Google Books Project.

This indexing can be helpful when you search for a book as the Internet Archive's search engine will turn up results in both the Internet Archive database and the Google Books library.

With that said, the Internet Archive has not indexed every book in the Google Books library.

I have also found variations in the holdings of Google Books and the Internet Archive.

The Internet Archive sometimes has books that Google Books does not and vice versa.

Therefore, I usually search the Internet Archive first, but if my search does not turn up the book I am looking for, I will try a search in Google Books directly.

When you find a book you want to read, the Internet Archive will provide you with links to all available file formats. These formats include: PDF, Black-and-White PDF, ePub, Kindle, Daisy, Full Text, Metadata, DjVu. Not every book is available in every file format.

Records: Other Files

A click of the Internet Archive drop-down menu shows that the archive contains a huge array of different file types.

Beyond texts you can use the Internet Archive to search for video of news, movies, cartoons, vlogs, and sports broadcasts; audio files of podcasts, radio programs, and music; educational lectures and internet forum discussions.

Conclusion

The Internet Archive stands as an invaluable resource for any historian, especially those with limited library access. It has an extensive array of holdings that all historian will find useful.

What Do You Think?

Have you used the Internet Archive’s non-text files? What is your impression of their holdings?

What is your favorite web-based archive?

Google Glass: What's In the Box?

What can you expect to find in the Google Glass box? I have prepared a slide presentation that will show you what is inside the box.

[SlideDeck2 id=8726]

Do You Have Questions?

Do you have questions about Google Glass, its capabilities, or what is in the box?

Leave a comment, send an e-mail, or tweet me.

How Can Historians Use Google Glass to Research History and Make it More Accessible?

A month ago, my partner Tim asked me whether I thought we should invest in Google Glass. I asked him what Google Glass did and how he would use it.

He responded that he would use it mostly as a “toy,” something to play with on weekends, while on vacation, and at work with his coworkers. (He works for Google.)

We decided against it. But, his question intrigued me.

I had never really thought about Google Glass nor did I completely understand what it can do.

So I did what I always do, I conducted research to find out how Glass worked and what its capabilities are.

What Is Google Glass?

Google Glass provides a way to use your smartphone and still interact with the world.

Glass can take pictures and movies, send texts, check e-mail and weather, provide turn-by-turn directions, and post updates to social media.

You can also browse the internet and share real-time images of what you see with someone else.

The more I read, the more I wondered: Could Google Glass be a good tool for research?

Questions I Have About Google Glass as a Research Tool

• How would the photo and video capture features of Glass enhance or ease historical research?
• Would the ability to look up the context of a document, or object, while viewing it enhance our research experience?
• How useful would it be to read a document, or view an object, and share it in real time with a colleague?
• How useful and how accurate would visual translation be? Developers for Google Glass are working on a translation app that will translate the text you read into your native language.
• How much faster can we conduct our research without having to fiddle with digital cameras or download images before we tag and file them in our databases?

Additionally, I wondered what kind of unique content could glass help us create that would make history more accessible and interactive?

I posed these questions to Tim.

Let the Experiments Begin!

We conversed about how Glass may or may not be able to revolutionize the way historians conduct and present their research.

The more we talked the more curious we became. So we took the plunge.

We purchased Google Glass.

Over the coming months I intend to blog about how historians can use Glass as a tool to research and present history.

I am in the process of setting up appointments with a couple of archives to get answers to some of my questions.

In two weeks, I plan to use Glass as I wander around museums and historic sites in Dublin, Ireland and London, England.

What Do You Think?

What are your questions about Google Glass?

What would you like to know about Glass and what it can do?

Leave a comment or send an e-mail or tweet.

How to Organize Your Research Chronologically

Would you like a fast and easy way to organize your research chronologically? In response to a reader's request, I will show you how you can use DEVONthink to organize your research chronologically.

In this post, you will learn how you can use title formatting and smart groups to view your research in chronological order.

DEVONthink

DEVONthink is a Mac-only program that manages information.

You can use DEVONthink to archive many different file types including: e-mails, PDFs, MS Office documents, PowerPoint slides, iWork files, and websites.

DEVONthink uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to search all of the information you put into it, which makes it both a great digital filing cabinet and database.

DEVONthink excels as a large database because of its search capabilities.

Unlike Evernote, DEVONthink stores all of the information you put into it on your hard drive. Having the information on your hard drive allows DEVONthink to quickly search for what you need; DEVONthink searches much faster than Evernote.

A feature-rich program, DEVONthink has many capabilities that make storing and sorting through your research a breeze.

The Importance of Formatting Entry Titles

I love DEVONthink’s file or “group” structure because it allows me to visualize and quickly find the information I need.

My historical research databases all have groups for “primary sources” and “secondary sources.” Each of those groups contain subgroups, which nest within each group like Russian nesting dolls.

For example, you can see from my screen shot that my main group “primary sources” contains the subgroup “archives.” Each "archives" subgroup contains a “collections” subgroup and each “collections” subgroup contains a “boxes” subgroup.

When I find a letter or document that I want to store in my database, I create a new “Rich Text” entry.

Formatting the title for a new entry is very important if I want DEVONthink to organize my notes chronologically.

I begin each entry's title with the date of the manuscript using the YYYY.MM.DD format. This format allows DEVONthink to chronologically organize all of the documents within a "box" subgroup. (See picture.)

After the document’s date, I complete my titles by adding the author of the document, the recipient (if there is one), and the folder where I found it (if there is one). Adding the manuscript’s author and recipient will allow DEVONthink to easily locate entries I want if I search for a name; folder numbers help me cite and relocate documents.

Smart Groups

Groups store information. Smart groups store specific information.

Groups store the information you type or import into them. Groups do not share information with other groups unless you either duplicate an entry and insert it into another group or create a “smart group.”

Smart groups allow DEVONthink to gather information from across your database based on parameters you set. For example, if you want to see all of the evidence in your database that pertains to the year 1690, you create a smart group.

To create a smart group, go to the top menu bar and click data> new> smart group.

As you can see from the above image, DEVONthink will present you with a query. This is where you establish your parameters.

Use the year you wish to organize as your smart group Name.

Next, set the Search In field to Database.

In the above example we are interested in collecting any document that contains the date “1690,” so tell DEVONthink to include Any where the following 4 rules are true:

(Add a new rule field by clicking + at the end of the query line)

1. All matches 1690

2. Content matches 1690

3. Name matches 1690

4. Tag is 1690

DEVONthink will use these rules to search your database and automagically place every entry that meets your “1690” criteria into your new smart group.

When combined with our smartly formatted titles, DEVONthink will automagically place and sort all entries with the year 1690 in chronological order.

Giving Credit 

I learned the above tips from Rachel Leow. In 2011, she published 3 helpful articles about how historians can use DEVONthink to make collecting and sorting through their research easier. In 2012, she published an additional article in the American Historical Association’s Perspectives.

Want to Learn More?

On Monday, March 24, I will be teaching “How to Organize Your Writing, Ideas, and Research,” a 3-hour workshop at Grub Street in Boston. The course will focus mostly on Evernote, but will cover basic information about Zotero and DEVONthink. There are still seats available.

What Do You Think?

How do you organize your research chronologically? Help your fellow historians and writers by sharing your tips. 

Did You Know?

You can subscribe to Uncommonplace Book via e-mail! Never miss a post. Sign up on the right sidebar.

You can also ask me a question or submit a post topic to lizcovart[at]mac[dot]com.