Tonight I experienced one of the joys of working at the European Parliament: Receptions!!! Did you know that there are people who are willing to give you free food (and for most people, free alcohol) just so that you will show up to their events and enjoy yourself? It's awesome! Okay, I'm not THAT naive, but I hadn't yet gone to one before tonight. A friend who lives in the same residence as me invited everyone there to an event at Google for the promotion of a product they are developing, Google Glass. When I went, I was mostly just going for the snacks, and there were those. They had these delicious little dessert things, they had Coca-Cola products (which I appreciated), they had cake...it was a nice little snack spread. Too, just walking around the Google office with their exercise balls and the bright colors and the atmosphere felt very Google-like and was a lot of fun. Then we got to go try out the product, Google Glass. When we saw the demonstration, the Google representative talked about their "Moonshot" division, which develops experimental programs, and some of the other programs they have in the works. This one fits the way glasses fit, although it was much lighter. There is also no glass to impede you looking straight at someone. it's pretty much just the top part of the frames and the nose pieces. If you can see it, on the right-hand side of the frame by my eye there is a camera. See the little dot of light? To me, that is an actual screen that looks like a normal sized screen to me. You click on the side of the frame to activate it, and then say "okay glass" to show that you want to start giving it commands. Then you can say things like "take a picture" or "get directions to...." The whole thing is connected to your phone, so you are basically using your phone without looking at it nor using your hands. That was the whole point of it, to get you away from looking at a phone screen which, even with Siri, we still do a ton to make sure she types everything correctly. :-) It was funny, but it reacted far better to my commands than to anyone else's at my table. Why? Well, they were from Germany, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, France, and Belgium. Because of their accents, the Glass had a difficult time understanding them. I'm not making fun of them, but you could definitely tell that it was made for an American market first, before a European one. :-)
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Me, Deniz from Sweden, and Julia and Sophie from Germany. My drink is
Coca-Cola, just to clarify :-) |
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Henrietta from Finland and me. I actually only
ended up in this picture because she didn't want to be awkwardly alone. |
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| This sign is neon green. See the ball pillar in the background? |
We had a way fun night, and here are a couple of pictures of people that I was with. I have one last picture to share. As we were walking home, it was raining. I had my leather backpack on and a suit with a Polish tie. I also happened to be walking in the downtown area of a European city. Can you say mission flashback? I had to take a picture of that, just because of how funny it felt to me.
Tonight I experienced one of the joys of working at the European Parliament: Receptions!!! Did you know that there are people who are willing to give you free food (and for most people, free alcohol) just so that you will show up to their events and enjoy yourself? It's awesome! Okay, I'm not THAT naive, but I hadn't yet gone to one before tonight. A friend who lives in the same residence as me invited everyone there to an event at Google for the promotion of a product they are developing, Google Glass. When I went, I was mostly just going for the snacks, and there were those. They had these delicious little dessert things, they had Coca-Cola products (which I appreciated), they had cake...it was a nice little snack spread. Too, just walking around the Google office with their exercise balls and the bright colors and the atmosphere felt very Google-like and was a lot of fun. Then we got to go try out the product, Google Glass. When we saw the demonstration, the Google representative talked about their "Moonshot" division, which develops experimental programs, and some of the other programs they have in the works. This one fits the way glasses fit, although it was much lighter. There is also no glass to impede you looking straight at someone. it's pretty much just the top part of the frames and the nose pieces. If you can see it, on the right-hand side of the frame by my eye there is a camera. See the little dot of light? To me, that is an actual screen that looks like a normal sized screen to me. You click on the side of the frame to activate it, and then say "okay glass" to show that you want to start giving it commands. Then you can say things like "take a picture" or "get directions to...." The whole thing is connected to your phone, so you are basically using your phone without looking at it nor using your hands. That was the whole point of it, to get you away from looking at a phone screen which, even with Siri, we still do a ton to make sure she types everything correctly. :-) It was funny, but it reacted far better to my commands than to anyone else's at my table. Why? Well, they were from Germany, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, France, and Belgium. Because of their accents, the Glass had a difficult time understanding them. I'm not making fun of them, but you could definitely tell that it was made for an American market first, before a European one. :-) 
I am glad to see you are having fun!!
ReplyDeleteGreat pictures! Great life! Lucky you!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun experience! And those goggles from google sound pretty cool. Does it allow you to search the internet while you are walking around?
ReplyDelete