Yes, I have been a Google Glass explorer since Monday. Some observations….

1. I didn’t really have to adjust them. I haven’t moved the nose pads at all. Of course, I have to move the prism slightly to see the whole picture.

2. I decided I want to get my prescription lenses in and ordered the frames to do so which I received yesterday. I am momentarily off to the eye glass store for that. I am in somewhat of a dilemma as to what to get. I was considering single vision versus my normal progressive. I believe I am going to go with the progressives. I am not going to do my normal Transition lens thing though. I am afraid they might interfere with the eye sensor when they go dark. I am going to hope someone comes out with clipons which have the cutout for the eye piece.

3. I took a couple of days to get used to the interface since I am not an Android guy. (More on that later.) I believe I have most of it now though.

4. I discovered early on that Glass does not connect to a WPA2-Enterprise network. Fortunately, I found an app for that. GlassWifiConnect.

5. In order to get the above to work, I had to learn how to “side load” apps. I found this explanation to be very helpful though I did have to fill in a few blanks. I don’t know if that is just because I couldn’t follow the instructions exactly or there really are some missing steps. In any case, I found the explanation very helpful, and I was able to figure it out.

6. I have been a iPhone guy since the very first one! I don’t know that will change, but because of needing to do the above, I found out that the Android IDE in Eclipse based and programming language is Java. Both of which I know. I may need to change my religion! I am seriously considering adding a line with an Android phone. Not only because of this but SMS and GPS seem to be compatibility issues with iPhone.

7. In addition to side loading the above. I also side loaded SpeedHud and Drive Safe for Glass. I’m still experimenting with them. I am having some issues. I believe some may be related to my iPhone versus Android thing. Between getting heads up turn by turn directions and these two apps and others to come, I hope states don’t legislate these away. I agree that texting and email and movie watching and other such distracting applications should be illegal while driving. However, if you ban Glass altogether to stop these abuses, you eliminate the important legitimate uses as well. I’ll already have a blog entry on this so that I will stop there.

Anyway, interesting so far. There is yet much exploring to do.

I’ve seen many articles on line regarding the evil of using Google Glass while driving. I noted, though, a couple of applications which could change people’s minds. One application is one that shows your speed. Ask a fighter pilot whether it is better to have your instruments on a heads up display or needing to glance in the cockpit to see them. Another application is one that detects you are falling asleep at the wheel and wakes you up. Ask a state trooper how many accidents they have investigated where the cause was falling asleep at the wheel.

Most technologies can be used and abused. If you legislate to prohibit the technology to control the abusers, you eliminate the uses as well. Please be careful with the legislation.

Yes, I did all my research and bought a Macbook.  I went with the Macbook and the 13.3″ screen as a backlash from owning a Sony Vaio 17″ screen laptop.  I wanted something lighter.I figured if I wanted more screen real estate, I would plug into my widescreen monitor.  That meant I wanted to make sure I had the Santa Rosa chip set.It was everything I wanted except I started looking for Quicken.  I found out that I could not get a 2008 version.  That led me to VMware Fusion to run Quicken.  It works excellently in the Unity mode where the windows look like they are running on the Mac!I then bought 2 GB of Crucial memory to get to a total of 3 GB.Also, I found I needed 1Password to save my important information.I am enjoying Time Machine saving on my USB drive.Things are going well. 

I got an iPhone for myself as an early birthday present.

It certainly has good usability features, and I recommend it for that. Here are some things I like other than the usability:

1. WiFi in addition to the AT&T mobile phone and data connection.

2. Bluetooth compatibility seems more straight forward than Windows Mobile 5. Oops, I have to strike this based on the fact that my stereo headphones don’t work. See below.

However, I here is the start of my complaint list:

1. I have used thumb keyboards for a long time. Because this one doesn’t have “real” keys, I find it difficult to hit the correct letters. It is not the edge of your thumb that counts, but the part that hits the key. That means the key is covered when you hit it. I seem to need to aim slightly more to the inside of what feels natural.

2. I had it “hang up” the first night after I had tried the settings for my WIFI at home. I found out how to reset it by holding home and sleep/wake. I did several times but the slider to unlock it wouldn’t work. I tried to restore the software but got error 1602. I followed the instructions under support for clearing 1602 including to reboot the PC and, if that didn’t work, uninstall and reinstall iTunes. Almost like I was working with a PC. Well, I was on the iTunes side but not the other side! Nothing worked. Finally I got it to go by doing some combination of holding my breath, plugging it in a certain way, etc. Pretty frustrating.

3. I just found out that the iPhone does not do Internet Streaming Radio and such. Too bad. I had that on my Windows Mobile 5 phone. I did find out that it will play static MP3 files as podcasts via Quicktime in Safari.

4.  I found out my Tunecast II doesn’t work. It needs some kind of headphone extension adapter. I have seen them advertised on the Internet.

5. Seems I can only turn an MP3 into a Ringtone if I buy it from iTunes. Not very open….

6. The iPhone won’t sync with Lotus Notes. Interestingly, it will sync with Yahoo Address Book but not Yahoo Calendar. All the rest is Outlook. Another interesting thing…. When you go to My Yahoo on Safari, Yahoo says it doesn’t support Safari.

7. No electronic wallet thing exists unless you want the encrypted passwords stored on the Internet.

I’m sure I’ll find more. Meanwhile, I will try to enjoy it.

8. I discovered another one…. My Jabra BT620S Bluetooth stereo headphones work as a headphone for a call but not for playing music ala iPod. This is a real bummer!!

And another!!

9. No copy-paste!

My son, who now as an iPhone, discovered another….

10. No ability to navigate to a specific page of a PDF through the browser. That makes it tough if what you need to find is on page 150 or so!

Every since I upgraded to SP2, I have had trouble with my Bluetooth Support Server, which came with my Bluetooth mouse from Belkin, aborting. I worked with Belkin to try and correct this.Belkin support was very helpful, but I couldn’t get their solution to work. Their solution involved downloading and installing the latest software from WIDCOMM (through Belkin), namely 1.4.2 Build 10 after a clean uninstall. I had trouble getting a clean install as MsiExec.exe tended to abort in the middle of the install. In addition, the install under SP2 picks the Microsoft drivers, and you need to switch it the Belkin drivers. Even when I got a clean install, the Bluetooth Support Server would start aborting again.

Finally, I got the idea of just uninstalling the Belkin software and going with the Microsoft Bluetooth software in SP2. That worked! My mouse works fine and I no longer have any Bluetooth Support Server aborts. I might be missing functionality, but, if so, I don’t know it. If you have this Bluetooth Support Server abort problem with your Belkin mouse, I recommend you contact Belkin technical support. If, however, things don’t work out there, you might try just going with the Microsoft Bluetooth software as noted above. Also, be aware, this same software from WIDCOMM is used by manufacturers other than Belkin and may have the same problems. Also, remember, as far as I know this is only an issue on WINXP SP2.