Wearables

Google Glass now plays movie trailers, closed-captions your conversations

Google Glass now plays movie trailers, closed-captions your conversations
Captioning on Glass lets wearers see transcriptions of a conversation on their screens
Captioning on Glass lets wearers see transcriptions of a conversation on their screens
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Captioning on Glass lets wearers see transcriptions of a conversation on their screens
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Captioning on Glass lets wearers see transcriptions of a conversation on their screens
Preview for Glass plays movie trailers when you look at their posters
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Preview for Glass plays movie trailers when you look at their posters

Google Glass hasn't exactly set the world on fire – or, for that matter, even left beta status. But that doesn't mean there aren't still some cool potential uses for the headset. Today Glass has two big new apps: one that can turn it into a life-changing tool for the hearing-impaired, and another that, erm, helps movie theaters sell tickets.

Captioning on Glass (CoG) is a real-time closed-captioning app for Google Glass. If you're deaf or hard of hearing, you'll see the words that a partner is speaking to you on your Glass display – almost instantly.

The only catch is that the speaker needs to be talking into a paired Android smartphone with a companion app installed. Google Glass has its own built-in microphone and voice recognition software, but it's much better at recognizing the wearer's voice than it is background voices. The CoG service uses the paired phone's microphone, held near the mouth of the person that's speaking, to deliver much more accurate transcription.

If the Captioning app transcribes something wrong, the speaker can easily correct it from within the phone app (either from a list of suggestions or entered manually). And if the Glass wearer is also visually-impaired, he or she can adjust the text size.

Like most other Glass functions, the process is triggered with an "OK Glass" command (in this case, followed by "... recognize this!").

Preview for Glass plays movie trailers when you look at their posters
Preview for Glass plays movie trailers when you look at their posters

Preview for Glass offers new functionality as well, but it's of a more commercial nature. After installing the app, you simply wear Glass to a movie theater, look at a coming attraction poster and say "OK Glass, recognize this!" (yep, the same command as CoG). The movie's trailer will then play on your head-mounted display.

If you aren't yet convinced of Google Glass' merits, then Preview won't likely change that. After all, it isn't exactly hard to whip out your smartphone and open the YouTube app while waiting for a flick to start. But if you're already a happy Glass Explorer, then perhaps it could save you the trouble of reaching into your pocket the next time you pass that new Mockingjay poster.

Both of the new "Recognize this!" apps are available now from the source links. And you can learn more about Captioning on Glass in the video below.

Sources: Captioning on Glass, Preview for Glass via Android Police

Using Google Glass to Caption Conversations

3 comments
3 comments
liui
Closed caption will make learning a foreign language much easier
Jeffrey Melton
If Google Glass could instantly translate language to text the uses would be endless. One would never be left out of any conversation in any language and it would help one learn those languages.
noteugene
This is great, but tell me why a smart phone is necessary or a particular type of phone or particular operating system? Why can't Google just box up the glasses and as an accessory an "ink pen" for the microphone & speech files portion? A deaf person goes to order fast food, holds his/her pen closer to the fast food worker behind the counter...or standing in front of a judge, or talking to a police officer....or get the instructor in front of class to wear it. And why 1 pen? Hopefully, most times you could just keep it clipped into your shirt pocket and the speaker doesn't have to click on anything. Now if you could just cut out all the "now hear this" crap, you'd be good to go. don't you think a deaf person would get tired of having to say that over and over? How about just tapping something with your finger instead? The only problem with all of these hearing assisted devices being developed lately is that they are only designed by hearing engineers. That's the problem, they can hear. What you need is non-hearing engineers or consult more with the non-hearing before you release the product. Most "revolutionary" hearing devices - are not. Your getting there though. This is light years away from 40 years ago.