Hands on: 18 hours with Google Glass

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  The author's first experience with Google Glass, a futuristic headmounted computer that Google hopes will change the world.FoxNews.com / Perry Chiaramonte

Today is my first full day as a cyborg.

I’ve spent the past 18 or so hours wearing Google Glass -- the Internet giant’s vision of an always-on, digitally connected future, disguised as a pair of glassless eyeglasses.

Looking past the double-takes and outright stares from everyone looking at me, it’s easy to see the potential of this crazy gizmo. But for now, well, it’s weird being one of the borg.

Glass is a lopsided yet oddly comfortable hunk of plastic, silicon and titanium. The brains of my device were housed in two hunks of gray plastic, all on the right side (and no, there’s currently no option to swap sides). Google has versions in a variety of colors, including a gorgeous bright orange. If you’re going to call attention to yourself, may as well do it in style.

At the back is a battery and a tiny speaker that rests against your head, and uses the bones in your skull to amplify its output. The front contains the camera, processor and a tiny display screen -- your interface to the world of Google.

I picked mine up from Google’s temporary Glass office in New York. And after a 90-minute walkthrough with several “Glass guides,” I was ready to set out in the world.

I found using Glass to be remarkably intuitive and straightforward. Others who tried it had mixed luck, however, which mainly revealed an eagerness to play around without knowing what exactly to do. The lesson: Read the directions.

Tap the touch-sensitive temple piece or simply tilt your head up and the screen activates, displaying the time and two words: “Ok Glass.” Speak them aloud and the voice-activated device gives you a menu with a few simple options: Google, take a picture, record a video, get directions, send a message, make a call, hang out.

Ask the device to Google something and, thanks to a Bluetooth link to your smartphone or the built-in Wi-Fi, it will search the Web almost immediately. I tried Googling the length of the Golden Gate bridge (8,980 feet), how to say “I love you” in Japanese (“Watashi wa anata o aishite”), and checking the weather (“No, it isn’t raining in New York, the weather is 58 and clear”).

The future is a robotic voice literally telling me to skip the raincoat, apparently.

Pictures with Glass are reasonably good; it has a 5 megapixel camera, comparable to that of a newish smartphone. That’s not the greatest quality, but it works. I immediately found myself wanting to edit images, crop out the backgrounds and boost the colors. You can do that all on Google+, of course, but there’s little interface directly through Glass itself.

The real charm of Glass comes in sharing, however, not touching your temples. Glass integrates deeply with Google+, which you’re probably a member of already, like it or not. It’s no Facebook, sure, but it does have tens of millions of users.

Using the simple MyGlass smartphone app, you can configure the Google+ sharing features on Glass: Which of your contacts you want ready access to, which groups you want to share videos and pictures to, and so on. For what it’s worth, Google+ actually does social networking better than Facebook in some ways, and sharing pics with groups and individuals is as easy as taking them.

On the other hand, social networking is both a Glass strength and its Achilles Heel: Everyone I saw while wearing Glass stared, then eventually asked me if I was recording them. Are we live right now? Is this online?

For the record, no, Glass is not violating your privacy. No, it is not surreptitiously recording you. No, it does not do face recognition. No, I am not seeing through your clothing.

While Google’s wild invention does raise those questions, the device is designed to skirt them all: To start recording a video or snap a shot, you need to actively turn it on. And there’s no red light on the front to indicate activity, but whoever you’re speaking with should be able to see the active screen.

And Google told me face recognition would require some processing power that’s simply out of the question, at least for now.

That said, what it does do is tantalize. Want directions? There they are. Want to share a picture of your trip? Done. Need a fact to wow a dinner party? There it is. 

Just don’t wear Glass during the dinner party. At least, that’s what my wife says.

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American tourists recoving after swimming for 14 hours when ship sinks in Caribbean

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  This Nov. 2009 photo courtesy of Dan Suski shows Kate Suski, right, and her brother Dan while on vacation in San Diego, Ca. The brother and sister are recovering in the eastern Caribbean island of St. Lucia after their ship sank on April 21 during a fishing trip, forcing them to swim almost 14 hours to reach land, according to the siblings.AP/Dan Suski

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico –  The fishing trip off the rugged north coast of St. Lucia was supposed to last all day, but about four hours into the journey, the boat's electric system crackled and popped.

Dan Suski, a 30-year-old business owner and information technology expert from San Francisco, had been wrestling a 200-pound marlin in rough seas with help from his sister, Kate Suski, a 39-year-old architect from Seattle. It was around noon April 21.

He was still trying to reel in the fish when water rushed into the cabin and flooded the engine room, prompting the captain to radio for help as he yelled out their coordinates.

It would be nearly 14 hours and a long, long swim before what was supposed to be a highlight of their sunny vacation would come to an end.

As the waves pounded the boat they had chartered from the local company "Reel Irie," more water flooded in. The captain threw life preservers to the Suskis.

"He said, `Jump out! Jump out!"' Kate Suski recalled in a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press.

The Suskis obeyed and jumped into the water with the captain and first mate. Less than five minutes later, the boat sank.

The group was at least eight miles (13 kilometers) from shore, and waves more than twice their size tossed them.

"The captain was telling us to stay together, and that help was on its way and that we needed to wait," Kate Suski said.

The group waited for about an hour, but no one came.

"I was saying, `Let's swim, let's swim. If they're coming, they will find us. We can't just stay here,"' she recalled.

As they began to swim, the Suskis lost sight of the captain and first mate amid the burgeoning swells. Soon after, they also lost sight of land amid the rain.

"We would just see swells and gray," Dan Suski said.

A plane and a helicopter appeared in the distance and hovered over the area, but no one spotted the siblings.

Several hours went by, and the sun began to set.

"There's this very real understanding that the situation is dire," Kate Suski said. "You come face-to-face with understanding your own mortality ... We both processed the possible ways we might die. Would we drown? Be eaten by a shark?"

"Hypothermia?" Dan Suski asked.

"Would our legs cramp up and make it impossible to swim?" the sister continued.

They swam for 12 to 14 hours, talking as they pushed and shivered their way through the ocean. Dan Suski tried to ignore images of the movie "Open Water" that kept popping into his head and its story of a scuba-diving couple left behind by their group and attacked by sharks. His sister said she also couldn't stop thinking about sharks.

"I thought I was going to vomit I was so scared," she said.

When they finally came within 30 feet (9 meters) of land, they realized they couldn't get out of the water.

"There were sheer cliffs coming into the ocean," she said. "We knew we would get crushed."

Dan Suski thought they should try to reach the rocks anyway, but his sister disagreed.

"We won't survive that," she told him.

They swam until they noticed a spit of sand nearby. When they got to land, they collapsed, barely able to walk. It was past midnight, and they didn't notice any homes in the area.

"Dan said the first priority was to stay warm," she recalled.

They hiked inland and lay side by side, pulling up grass and brush to cover themselves and stay warm. Kate Suski had only her bikini on, having shed her sundress to swim better. Dan Suski had gotten rid of his shorts, having recalled a saying when he was a kid that "the best-dressed corpses wear cotton."

They heard a stream nearby but decided to wait until daylight to determine whether the water was safe to drink.

As the sun came up, they began to hike through thick brush, picking up bitter mangoes along the way and stopping to eat green bananas.

"It was probably the best and worst banana I've ever had," Dan Suski recalled.

Some three hours later, they spotted a young farm worker walking with his white dog. He fed them crackers, gave them water and waited until police arrived, the Suskis said.

"We asked if he knew anything about the captain and mate," Kate Suski said. "He said he had seen the news the night before and they hadn't been found at that time. I think we felt a sense of tragedy that we weren't prepared for."

The Suskis were hospitalized and received IV fluids, with doctors concerned they couldn't draw blood from Kate Suski's arm because she was so dehydrated. They also learned that the captain and mate were rescued after spending nearly 23 hours in the water, noting that their relatives called and took care of them after the ordeal.

St. Lucia's tourism minister called it a miracle, and the island's maritime affairs unit is investigating exactly what caused the ship to sink.  Marine Police Sgt. Finley Leonce said they have already interviewed the captain, and that police did not suspect foul play or any criminal activity in the sinking of the ship.

A man who answered the phone Thursday at the "Reel Irie" company declined to comment except to say that he's grateful everyone is safe. He said both the captain and first mate were standing next to him but that they weren't ready to talk about the incident.

The brother and sister said they don't blame anyone for the shipwreck.

"We are so grateful to be alive right now," Kate Suski said. "Nothing can sort of puncture that bubble."

Upon returning to their hotel in St. Lucia earlier this week, the Suskis were upgraded to a suite as they recover from cuts on their feet, severe tendonitis in their ankles from swimming and abrasions from the lifejackets.

"It's really been amazing," Dan Suski said. "It's a moving experience for me."

On Saturday, they plan to fly back to the U.S. to meet their father in Miami.

Once a night owl, Kate Suski no longer minds getting up early for flights, or for any other reason.

"Since this ordeal, I've been waking up at dawn every morning," she said. "I've never looked forward to the sunrise so much in my life."

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Colorado avalanche survivor buried for 4 hours with only 1 arm free

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  April 20, 2013: Snow falls near the spot where five members of a backcountry snowboarder group were found dead after they were trapped by an avalanche on Loveland Pass, Colo.AP

GEORGETOWN, Colo. –  The sole survivor of an avalanche that killed five other men on the Continental Divide west of Denver was able to clear snow from his face with his unburied lower left arm so he could breathe, but he remained stuck for four hours until rescuers arrived, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center said Wednesday.

In its final report on the weekend accident, the center said the state's deadliest slide since 1962 was large enough to bury or destroy a car. Of the men who died in the 800-foot-wide, 600-foot-long avalanche Saturday morning, one was buried under 10 to 12 feet of snow.

The avalanche was tragic but avoidable, the center said.

The center's final report offered new details on the avalanche that occurred as snowboarders and skiers converged near Loveland Pass for the Rocky Mountain High Backcountry Gathering. The event was promoted by a Colorado snowboarding magazine as a day for backcountry riding but also avalanche gear and safety demonstrations.

The four snowboarders and a skier who died were all from Colorado. The Clear Creek County sheriff's office identified them as Christopher Peters, 32, of Lakewood; Joseph Timlin, 32, of Gypsum; Ryan Novack, 33, of Boulder; Ian Lamphere, 36, of Crested Butte; and Rick Gaukel, 33, of Estes Park.

Friends identified the survivor as Jerome Boulay of Crested Butte, who has declined requests for interviews.

All had proper avalanche equipment. At least two had avalanche airbags, and some had Avalung breathing devices but apparently were unable to use them, the report said.

"This was a really tragic accident. There's no denying that," said Ethan Greene, the center's director. "Nobody's immune from getting caught in avalanches. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this, how athletic you are. ... Everybody can get killed. It's an equal-opportunity hazard."

The center has said the avalanche was a deep persistent slab avalanche, which occurs when a thick layer of hard snow breaks loose from a weak, deep layer of snowpack underneath. Colorado Avalanche Information Center forecasters had alerted people about the potential for such avalanches Saturday, warning of likely trigger points.

"If you find the wrong spot, the resulting avalanche will be very large, destructive, and dangerous," the forecast said.

On Saturday, Boulay and the other five men had left the parking lot of Loveland Ski Area, which wasn't affiliated with the backcountry gathering, for a one-hour tour.

They read the center's avalanche bulletin together, were aware of the deep persistent slab problem, and aimed to avoid threatening north-facing slopes as they planned to climb a few hundred vertical feet onto northwest-facing slopes, the report said.

But to get to that safer spot, they had to cross a dangerous area, Greene said. They decided to reduce the risk by leaving 50 feet between each person as they trekked. That turned out not to be enough for the large avalanche they triggered.

The group was heading for a stand of trees when they felt a large collapse and heard a "whumpf," the report said. In the seconds it took for the crack in the snow to move uphill and release the deep slab, the group ran toward the trees. Everyone but Boulay was completely buried as the group was swept into the Sheep Creek gully.

Boulay was buried except for his lower left arm, which he used to clear snow from his face. He tried to free his other arm and screamed for help.

There was no one around to hear him, the report said.

"It covered everybody. There was nobody left to call 911, nobody left to look for the buried, to help the one person who wasn't buried but couldn't get out," Greene said.

It took a while for anyone to realize the group was trapped.

Two Colorado Avalanche Information Center highway avalanche forecasters spotted the slide around 12:15 p.m. from Interstate 70. When they got to the scene about 30 minutes later, their avalanche beacons detected no signals. Even with binoculars, they couldn't see tracks heading into the slide area, the report said.

After forecasters drove back to the ski area to ask others at the backcountry gathering whether anyone might be trapped, several people rushed to the scene.

The center urges even expert backcountry enthusiasts to know the conditions, have rescue equipment and get educated on avalanches.

"We owe it to these guys to learn from a really horrible accident they were involved in," Greene said. "The only thing worse than all these guys getting killed is not to have us learn anything from it."

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Nissan announces electric entry for 24 Hours of Le Mans

Less than a year after being a crucial part of the pioneering DeltaWing project, Nissan has revealed that it will return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2014 with an all-new electric race car, set to compete as the “Garage 56” entrant.

The announcement was made Monday evening by Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn during the opening of NISMO’s new headquarters in Yokohama, Japan. Ghosn also confirmed that NISMO has become the brand’s exclusive global motorsports and performance arm.

“We will return to Le Mans with a vehicle that will act as a high-speed test bed in the harshest of environments for both our road car and race car electric vehicle technology,” Ghosn said in a statement.

Further details of Nissan’s new project, incorporating electric technology, have yet to be revealed. However, the Garage 56 entry is the first step towards a planned entry into LMP1 in the future, according to Darren Cox, Nissan’s Global Motorsports Director.

"We say we're about innovation and excitement,” Cox said in an exclusive interview on radiolemans.com. “If we weren't trying to get Garage 56 every year, we wouldn't be innovative.

“That particular entry is put in place for the most innovative car that year. That's what we're all about. We're not about using it once and walking away from it. We really want to utilize that opportunity to show our innovation."

Cox said Nissan is currently evaluating an undisclosed type of propulsion technology with the ACO and FIA and the feasibly of it fitting within the new-for-2014 LMP1 regulations, which sees a switch towards energy allocation and efficiency.

No specific timeframe for Nissan’s planned LMP1 effort has been announced.

"We're in uncharted territory here,” Cox said. “We don't know how good this technology is going to be. We're obviously doing a huge amount with simulation at the moment. We think we will be pretty accurate when we actually get there in terms of the simulation. But we need to run these cars and need to work out how it all works."

As one of the driving forces behind the DeltaWing project, Nissan was part of the first-ever Garage 56 entrant at Le Mans in 2012, running outside of the general classification but aligned to the LMP2 class. While the DeltaWing retired early after contact with a Toyota LMP1 car, the Ben Bowlby-designed car went on to finish an impressive fifth at the 1,000-mile Petit Le Mans.

This year, a hydrogen-electric powered car from Green GT will occupy Garage 56 at Le Mans, which will be followed by Nissan’s planned return in 2014.

"With Garage 56 and the open regulations, you're not restricted. You can do different things," Cox added. "We're already talking about different strategies and how you use the electric technology. It's really interesting.

“Yes, there'll be the headline that we'll be doing a lap of Le Mans [in 'x amount of time'] with an electric car. But actually, there is a real interest in terms of the strategy of how you use the electric technology."

Nissan will also have a continued presence in the LMP2 category at Le Mans, as well as the FIA World Endurance Championship and European and Asian Le Mans Series, with customer-based efforts utilizing its 4.5-liter V8 powerplant.

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