GlassUp - Smartphone HUD Eyeglasses

GlassUp. They're a pair of HUD smartphone-linked glasses that flash texts, emails, news updates, directions, any messages for which you would normally look down and consult a screen, right onto the glass in front of your eyes. You could call them a (way) less expensive cousin of Google Glass. One that has taken to Indiegogo for crowdfunding rather than taken in thousands and thousands of applications from eager beavers clamoring to be their guinea pigs. One whose attempts to pique product interest include filming an official video that, according to GlassUp makers themselves, "looks as if it was made in the Soviet Union," rather than spending what were surely millions of marketing dollars developing a chichi Website and advertising to consumers. One that will allow wearers to look straight ahead to absorb its information feed rather than rolling their eyeballs sideways, and possibly getting them stuck that way.

That said, GlassUps will not have many of Google Glass' capabilities. Notably: photography and video recording; voice commands; two-way interaction (the glasses will display information, but users will not be able to use them to respond to it). They will likely too have limits and bugs within their own realm of performance. But...I don't give a shit! Their impending existence is still like Hollywood blockbusters leaping right off the big screen and onto my ear flaps!

When in use, GlassUps will employ the Android platform to report incoming e-mails, text messages, tweets, Facebook updates, and other messages--unobtrusively, for just a few seconds, and on the side of the wearer's field of view. They'll also have the capacity to project:

• News, weather, sports, and stock information
• Real time feedback during running, biking, and other activities
• Turn by turn directions
• Aids for the hearing impaired
• A patient's body data to a surgeon
• Instructions to workers in warehousing or maintenance
• Prompts and lines for public speakers
• Subtitles at the movies--both CC and for foreign language films
• Details about works of art at a museum

The GlassUp campaign runs on Indiegogo through August 11, 2013. However, even if funding is not achieved GlassUp makers will deliver the HUD spectacles to those who have pledged for a pair, as they've evidently found investors willing to ensure a first-run production.

January 2014 Update: While GlassUp did not quite reach its funding goal, as mentioned above, its creators are still producing and selling the HUD glasses to the public through the company's Website--follow the link below.