awe2013 ♥ Telepathy

On June 4th & 5th, AWE 2013: Augmented World Expo, was held at Santa Clara Convention Center. As an expanded agenda from the previously named ARE: Augmented Reality Event. We now include technologies such as big-data, semantic web, smart objects, and others, specifically where they relate to or compliment AR.

This year I again played the role of host-chair for the Business Track. We had many impressive speakers, some among my favorites being Victor Ng-Thow-Hing, Principle Scientist at Honda Research doing real world, practical research in the automotive sector. We were honored to host a team from NASA, including Gabriel Rangel, Senior Solutions Architect, with us locally; joined by NASA JPL CTO, Tom Soderstrom, appearing via telepresence. Aiaz Kazi of SAP is a talented speaker that confidently ran the stage, I bet he can speak well on a variety of subjects, technical and otherwise — I recommend him. There was a nice ‘teams’ panel with AR for Education where Mindy Brooks and Sesame Workshop colleague Miles Ludwig, spoke along side the couple, Jay Van Buren and Katy Garnier, probably leaving Christopher Stapleton feeling like a third wheel. Due to time limit overruns earlier in the session, Dave Lorenzini got clipped short in the AR for Urban & Architecture panel (a solid panel from end-to-end), but still managed to give some of the most compelling five minutes of the day, talking about CyberCity 3D. I was also honored to have Gaia Dempsey, Co-Founder and Director of Marketing for Daqri, for the closing speaker in my Business Track lecture hall. In addition to host-chair, I also gave one presentation of my own, speaking about the launch of Telepathy, and our Telepathy-One. You can view my slides below.

MY TELEPATHY SLIDES:

SLIDE NOTES:

Telepathy is a very young company, publicly launched at SxSW.

How many people here know Takahito Iguchi? I met Taka here, at the first year of ARE, when we spoke on a panel together right here in the business track. Taka is a serial entrepreneur from Tokyo.

For those who don’t know him, you may be familiar with his previous startup, Tonchidot — Maker of Sekai Camera — a mobile, social, gaming, AR app. For those who recall when Apple finally opened up the camera API, Sekai Camera was one of the first 3 AR apps to be listed in the Apple App store.

I joined Taka, and came on board with Telepathy in April.

Our product is a slim wearable video communications device shown here:
The Telepathy One. It has an optical display, camera, wireless bluetooth headphones, microphone, touch switch, with a full Linux computer: CPU, memory, bluetooth, wifi, and sensors in the right fin; balanced by the battery in the left fin.

But for what? While there are many uses for a wearable computer system, we believe that the killer-app for a mass market wearable is the social and peer-to-peer sharing of personal experiences, in the form of photos and video.

Users upload half-a-million videos and a quarter-billion photos to Facebook each day.

Over at YouTube they upload 72 hours of video … every minute.

… and that doesn’t event include Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and all the other photo and video sharing platforms in the social space.

Consider that, on an iPhone the number of steps it takes to share a photo or video on Facebook is between 14 and 18 steps, depending on preference settings. The first of which is pulling the device out of your pocket to begin with.

So whether it’s sharing a performance …

Asking a friend, ‘How do I look in this?’ when out shopping.

… or simply sharing a meal …

Any of these experiences will be enhanced with a hands free eyewear device, but only one stylish enough that a casual user will be willing to wear it going about their day.

I’m going to share a quick video with you here.

So what are they saying about Telepathy? For a startup that is only a few months old, we’ve already captured a lot of attention. See if you notice a common theme here … These are all just the headlines from articles in the last two months.

Entrepreneur Magazine, “Google Glass Competitor? Startup Creates Its Own Computerized Headset.”

Business Insider, “What It’s Like Using Telepathy One, The Google Glass Competitor Aiming To Launch This Year.”

Bloomberg, “Telepathy One: Japan’s Answer to Google Glass.”

PandoDaily, “And let the Google Glass competitors enter the ring.”

Mashable, “Google Glass Competitor Telepathy’ Aims to Get to Market First.”

Reuters, “Telepathy One sets sights on Google Glass.”

GigaOm, “A Google Glass rival emerges from an upstart in Japan.”

cNet, “Telepathy One guns for Google Glass.”

CNN, “Fashionable tech: Tokyo company developing rival to Google Glass.”

Flying the pirate flag against Google has served us well in getting exposure (the media chooses to position us there, by the way), we candidly feel we’re in a slightly different space. Google Glass aims to be a full-fledged face-worn android device aimed at the technorati.

Telepathy One is a more single purpose peer-to-peer and social-sharing device aimed at the mass market.

But we are pleased to accept all the good press.

There’s one last headline that I want to share here.
Media Post’s Online Media Daily column wrote an article about Telepathy a few weeks ago, with the inevitable Google Glass comparisons, but they chose to lead with a headline based on an Analysts IHS white paper on wearable devices:

Online Media Daily, “10 million smart glasses to ship in the next 4 years.”

We believe Telepathy One is a unique proposition that will bring new users into that market …

With a sleek, single purpose device that allows people to more easily share important moments in their lives with the people they care about most.