gadgets

Google is expected to start selling glasses by the end of the year. No, they are not foraying into optometry, but rather finding a new way to stream the contents of your smartphone straight at your eyeballs.  The glasses, which reportedly resemble a pair of Oakley Thumps, will run on Android and be equipped with 3G, 4G, GPS and a low-resolution camera. Other Google technologies like Google Latitudes and Maps could superimpose information to augment your reality—say, tell you what’s nearby, or what your friends think of that restaurant.

The glasses, which are expected to cost around the price of a smartphone ($250-600), would have a small screen a few inches from the wearer’s eye. Seth Weintraub at 9 to 5 Google reports that head tilting would be used to navigate the device, which will be easy to learn, becoming “second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.” But one man’s augmented reality could be another’s dystopian horror. The New York Times’ Nick Bilton thought perhaps the future bodes “throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.” Read more

Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

It seems that despite the ever-quickening speeds of information travel, long-form journalism is adapting and thriving in the new media environment. Yesterday, Longform.org released its iPad app, one that doesn’t merely plop the website in app form, but tries to tailor the experience directly for the iPad user. Its design is sleek and minimal, and users can save articles with Readability, Instapaper and Read It Later.  One can subscribe to Longform.org’s most popular sources, including magazine favorites like The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Atlantic; Internet denizens The Awl and Grantland; and even fellow aggregators Longreads. Read more

Good news for digital publishers: The number of Americans who own tablet computers and e-book readers nearly doubled over the holiday season, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Between mid-December and early January, the share of American adults who own a tablet computer jumped from 10 percent to 19 percent. Ownership of E-book readers among adults also jumped from 10 percent to 19 percent. The number of Americans owning at least one of these devices jumped from 18 percent in December to 29 percent in January, the report said.

“These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers,” wrote the author of the report, Lee Rainie.

Rainie attributed part of this surge in sales to a more competitively-priced marketplace, especially on the e-book reader side. They noted that many of these devices, like the original Amazon Kindle, now cost under $100. Read more

Roy Greenslade at The Guardian recently conducted an interview with Andrew Rashbass, the “chief suit” of The Economist. As the chief executive, Rashbass’ commercial story “turns out to be more of a digital story,” even with their impressive print circulation numbers.

Rashbass draws a distinction between the “lean-back, immersive, ritual pleasure” that comes from reading The Economist in print, to the “lean-forward, interactive” way that people use the website. He was previously in charge of The Economist’s website, and its own research found that readers were eager to build a community and have discussions on the web. Read more

A new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group found that consuming news was one of the most popular activities for tablet users. The study also found that out of tablet users who regularly read the news, three out of 10 of them spent more time consuming news than they did before they got a tablet. Four out of 10 regularly read in-depth news and analysis. These are promising figures for the future of digital news and the tablet.

But the figures came with one pitfall: “News is valued but willingness to pay is low.” The majority of tablet owners (85 percent) had never paid for news on their tablet, and 78 percent said that news on the tablet was not worth more than any other medium. Out of those who had not already paid for news, only 21 percent would agree to pay $5 a month for their favorite tablet news source. Most turned down the $5 charge, even if it were the only way to access it.

So who are those lovely people paying for news? Read more