Live Shots with Google Glass

The Live-Streaming Implications of "Nose-Mounted" Cameras
by Sean O'Grady


GoPro sales have more than doubled every year since the first camera’s debut in 2004. In 2012 the company sold 2.3 million cameras and grossed $521 million, according to Forbes and IDC data.

Go anywhere active these days, whether it’s the mountains of Vail or the scuba-diving depths of Honolulu’s Hanauma Bay, and you’re bound to see a GoPro......or 20.

As a result, POV, or Point-of-View camera angles, the type of first-person perspectives GoPros provide, are popping up everywhere from children's YouTube pages to major Hollywood films. And why not? From a production standpoint, the cameras are cheap, durable and produce HD quality MOV files. What's more, is they can be easily attached to a helmet, a bike, a scuba diver or even an airplane. All you need is a screwdriver and an adhesive pad.

But what if you didn't need the screwdriver or the adhesive? What if you just needed a nose? And to up the ante, what if your new "nose-mounted" camera transmitted your video live?

Enter Google Glass, the augmented reality headgear Google co-founder Sergey Brin unveiled in 2012.

Google Glass will become publically available for purchase in 2014, but to date, more than 10,000 have been doled out or sold for Beta testing.

One of those Beta tests recently occurred in an Ohio hospital, was profiled by BusinessWeek's Olga Kharif and has a long-term technology implication on live shots, webcasting and broadcast television.
As Kharif's BusinessWeek article details, Dr. Chistopher Kaeding, an orthopaedic surgeon at Ohio State University, performed the world's first Google Glass surgery. The doctor repaired a torn ACL while simultaneously recording and transmitting the operating room activity by wireless Internet to both a nearby conference room filled with medical students and a consulting physician seven miles away. Or, to put it in television production terms, a doctor conducted a live-shot while performing surgery without a live truck, camera operator or satellite.

That's HUGE!

Think about how many times a day Skype is used to connect government officials, reporters and remote interview subjects to local and national television stations. It's a mainstream tool of global broadcast technology, though not as preferred as an HD satellite shot.

Now here's Google Glass, complete with a video camera, Skype-like transmission capabilities and a broadcasting case study thanks to Dr. Kaeding.

It makes us wonder how long it will be before we'll all be looking down our noses at the news, on television and on the big screen.