Wearable Devices

  The Immersive Education Initiative has announced that the 2015 venue for the Immersive Education Summit as Paris. With the past 9 years of successful Immersive Education conferences, Immersive Education will continue on holding a summit that addresses the personal and cultural impact of immersive technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, holography, holograms, wearable computing devices, cybernetics, affective computing, neuro-gaming technology and many other forms of immersive experiences. More information on the Immersive Education summit can be access through the following link: (http://immersiveeducation.org/news/2015/02/09/paris-announced-site-immersion-2015).

In this report, I intend to introduce a form of immersion categorized as the wearable devices, or wearable computing.

  Wearable devices are one of the hottest area of interest for IT enthusiasts living in the current era. It is often referred as wearable technology, wearables, fashionable technology, and so on. This specific technology incorporates computer and advanced electronic technologies to offer practical functions and features to the users. Currently released wearable technologies include smart watches, healthcare bands, wearable digital glasses, and many more. Specifically, in this report, I would like to introduce the following devices: Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Gear, Google Glass and Oculus Rift.

  The Apple Watch is planned to be premiered on early 2015, more likely around April, 2015. The Apple Watch is a wearable device that connects with the users' iPhone to get internet connection. As the name of the product connotes, it is an electronic watch with smart capability, which includes the functions for navigation (maps), contacts, phone call receptions, send and receive messages, monitor health status and timed work-out period, play music and various other features. The biggest issue with the Apple Watch is its positioning in the wearable device industry and its overlapping presence even in the fine watchmaking industry. 

  Samsung, as the world's leading cellular phones and memory chip producer, has also jumped into this competition of wearable device with their Galaxy Gear and Galaxy Gear Fit. Samsung is sort of branded not as the pioneer of this technology, but is deemed as a viable competition for Apple and many other Android based hardware providers in this game of Smartwatches. It also connects with Samsung smartphones to integrate the usage of phone into a watch. Surprisingly, the functions of the Samsung Galaxy Gear does not vary significantly with the functions that the Apple Watch has: map, phone, message, health monitoring, compass, and many other functions.

  Google is also doing a great job in keeping up with the newly blooming industry with their most avant-garde device named the Google Glass. Google first introduced the Google Glass on 2012. The device has numerous capabilities and most importantly, feeds the information directly to our eyes without obstructing the users' view. In depth, the device has an incorporated 5 mega pixel camera and records high definition videos. The functions of the device is activated through Google's voice command. Google is not only focusing on the hardware, but also on software side. The company has been releasing updates for the Google Glass companion application named the MyGlass. Although it is widely used in the US, in some countries where Google Maps services are partially prohibited, Google Glass is restricted for sale.

 Aside from the three corporate giants' richly funded projects like the Apple Watch, Galaxy Gear and Google Glass, there is Oculus Rift. Oculus Rift is one of the first “real” virtual reality headsets. It is developed for enthusiastic gamers. In fact, according to the KickStart webpage by Oculus Rift, one of the major developer of the Oculus Rift revealed that his initial motives for developing the Rift was the absence of high quality gamer headset that lives up to the name of the technology, “virtual reality.” For the very average gamers, Occulus Rift can be somewhat compact, without any add-ons or additional parts attached to it. The developers released a documentary for this device, Zero Point, as well. The map of the gaming industry will definitely be affected due to the emergence and rapidly improving related technologies in the field of realizing the virtual reality.

  There are many other hardware providers that are striving for the best wearable devices. The important aspect in this specific form of immersion is that this field requires design element to be elegantly incorporated to the actual product, bearing in mind that these devices actually affect the wearers' exterior looks. Criticisms toward the highly multi-functional Google Glass has been with the design, not the hardware and the supporting functions of the glass itself. To be successful in this field of immersive technology, design elements have to be attractive enough for the audiences to make the decision of purchasing. Also, in order to grab the public attention for this technology and its application, the software providers should definitely not stop innovating, and thus provide the users with unforeseen technologies that will greatly expedite the daily processes and tasks for the public.

This is an assignment from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Collaborative Computing. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc