#automatically make mike a focus too especially since he's 'figured some stuff out' but still has more stuff to realize it's like. i just

[bylertruther]

season five isn't going to be the byler show because we all have brains and recognize this is an ensemble sci fi show obviously, but it is kinda funny to hear people argue that because the duffers specifically point out in their pitch that will is gay and gets kidnapped soon after realizing it, then in season one have everyone who isn't "in the know" assume that this occurred because he's gay, thus really linking this realization with his disappearance both supernaturally and also to those outside of the main cast. this means that you can't separate the two. there's more to it of course, but will being gay and the consequences he faces for that is intertwined.

not only that, but they then reveal his kidnapper to be will's perfect character foil--love vs hate, light vs dark, hope vs despair, optimism vs cynicism, freedom vs subjugation, light wizard vs dark wizard, etc.

vecna spends all of season four preying on those who are traumatized and "other". he enshrouds them in their darkness until they succumb to it and believe it to be true, and gains strength from their despair.

what does will spend all of season four doing?

he stays by mike's side and banishes his deepest, darkest insecurities by basking him in his light. he listens to mike's worries and his secrets and tells him no, you're wrong, you're absolutely wrong and here's why. this is who you really are: someone worthy, capable, and strong. don't listen to that voice in your head; it's lying to you, mike. he gives mike hope and a way out of his darkness. he frees him from the grips of self-hate out of the goodness of his heart, not because he stands to gain anything from it.

vecna uses people's darkest and scariest memories to trap them and will uses one of mike's happy and safe memories to help him.

vecna gains strength from pain and rage and will gains strength from love and acceptance; acceptance that he felt from mike all his life and then acceptance that he specifically received from jonathan in the back kitchen.

time and time again, season four made sure to show us that they are two sides of the same coin and will's story cannot be extricated from mike and his romantic love for him, so like... season five is not going to be the byler show, but it also ... kind of is going to be the byler show lmao.

if season five is going to feature will then automatically it will feature mike and if it features them then it will pick up on their unfinished plot from season four and if love and acceptance are vecna's weaknesses and love and acceptance are what byler feel and receive from each other then... how is it not the byler show?

obviously other stuff is going to happen because they're not the only two characters in a romance show, but like ... to act like season four [for them] wasn't all about their relationship, the unsaid things that sit between them, and how will's love for mike is not only what made him able to finally say i love you to eleven for the first time but also precisely the love that he was trying to get from her, and that somehow that isn't going to bleed into season five and be resolved and be the exact kind of love and acceptance that will defeat vecna because will's otherness is rooted in his queerness and season five is literally his coming of age and also he's the focus and we'll be exploring his relation to everything because he is In Fact Actually connected to Everything and always has been is just .... weird. and nonsensical.

[khondoker]

Groove.cm Review

GrooveFunnels Turned Into Groove.cm

February 23, 2021 by userkhondoker

If you’re Connected with In the world of online marketing, you’ve probably at least heard of Groove.cm (previously GrooveFunnels), the digital marketing suite and the landing page builder that’s revitalizing online sales funnels. In this  Review, we go deep into the pros and cons to establish whether Groove.cm is a valid online business marketing suite worth attempting, or just much-publicised.

Groove Digital has become quite a big name since it started, becoming one of the most significant marketing SaaS (Software as a Service) for online businesses around. I guess it’s no surprise people adore Groove.cm as it is all about earning its users cash. More specifically, it is about giving businesses apps that help them turn their own site visitors into customers. It’s no wonder Groove has increased so much in such a brief time period.

There’s no denying it has become quite popular, but does this mean it is well worth it? It seems it’s just another site and/or landing page builder, so what sets it apart and should you add it into your marketing tools?

In this Groove.cm Review, I’ll undergo the core of the software suite–what it is, the positives and the negatives, the features, customer service, and so on. I’m basing this review on my own experience with the Groove Free-for-life membership strategy, which comes with the heart the features and plenty of other whistles and bells. I will also provide the nod towards other testimonials I have seen, as not every user will agree with me about the last verdict.

Whether you choose to use it or not, and it is an important player, anybody in e-commerce and online marketing should be acquainted with it. Before you jump in, what’s our rating? I will put it at a solid 4.4 stars. With a few drawbacks, it is definitely good. Continue reading to learn why!

Groove.cm Review Highlights

Groove.cm of Groove digital is a great Landing page builder, with an easy drag-and-drop editor.

Easy and ample integrations between apps permit you to engage in various marketing activities, like selling a digital product, capturing emails, and accepting payments right inside Groove.cm.

Simple to learn and use

Focused on making its user’s more money

Instead of a free Trial, free-for-lifetime membership is available.

Visit the Groove.cm Website here.

What is Groove.cm?

Groove.cm is a suite of digital marketing tools designed to help digital marketers run a successful online business.

The platform includes tools for creating sales funnels, building websites and landing pages (GroovePages), selling a digital product (GrooveSell) and physical product (GrooveKart), creating membership sites (GrooveMember), blogging (GrooveBlog), video storing (GrooveVideo), running webinars (GrooveWebinar), building and marketing to an email list (GrooveMail), and much more.

Keep in mind that Groove is currently in beta, so many of the promised features are still in development at this review.

The creator of Groove digital Mike Filsaime is as famous as his creation, and for a good reason. Mike is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, online marketing coach, and consultant. Also, the inventor of the “Butterfly marketing” method, that restructured digital marketing.

He has been one of the online marketing industry leaders for a long time now. He has produced several software solutions that have helped businesses gain success. Software like Kartra, WebinarJam, and EverWebinar – he’s the man behind them. His experience with Kartra evoked the vision to create the Groove.cm.

Pros — Groove.cm Review

I’ve got some good news:

Groove is intended to save you energy, money and time by making more sales–to do what otherwise demands a lot of technological competence and/or an array of third party applications. In this regard, it succeeds.

Makes You More Sales- More Money

Among the greatest things about Groove is its focus on sales. They make it very easy to make your accounts, put your content up, and begin taking payments. Additionally, it’s pretty simple to select up everything –it’ll probably take you a couple of hours to figure out a lot of what you require, maximum.

Drag and Drop Interface AKA GroovePages

Quite a few features are handy here in the GroovePages app. I like how simple it is to duplicate pages and also the fact I can save templates from being used again after. Their webpage builder, GroovePages, is a fairly important feature, and they have pulled it off nicely. As soon as you get used to it, it’s simple to use drag and drop builder.

Congruent selection of Apps

I believe Groove handles internal apps and API integrations quite nicely. Email autoresponders (GrooveMail) and payment processors are not too much of a sweat–they work reliably and are easy to manage.

All under one roof

Overall, it’s great to have all the marketing apps under one roof: I will build my landing pages, produce forms and order forms and activate emails (GrooveMail) all from one platform.

All of this does save your time and money, resources you would otherwise need to spend on developers, CSS, hosting configurations, and so on.

Exquisite pricing

I think you wouldn’t mind considering the free-for-lifetime account is an excellent investment (lol!)–everything you’re permitted for a StartUp account is pretty decent.

If you need to have over 3 funnels or websites, the Groove.cm Platinum upgrade might not be too much to ask for, especially when you are getting a  lifetime deal (time-specific) with a one-time price of $1397. The monthly payment option will soon roll ou,t and the one-time payment option will be no longer. 

Makes you money with the affiliate Program

Mind-blowing is the right word for the Groove affiliate program. I mean, every member, free or pro, becomes an affiliate automatically; how good’s that? A separate app, GrooveAffiliate, is dedicated to managing affiliates, affiliate link, paying commissions and laying stats for the affiliates. And GrooveAffiliate would pay you 20% off sales if you are a free member. Become a pro, and you’ll get a whopping 40% of $1397, calculate how much it turns out for you. 

An engaging support community

Their private Facebook Group has over 100k members, and most posts are helpful- not consist of people bragging about how much money they made and flashing their sports cars. Groove has helped people do amazing things, but it’s also helped escalate quick rich schemes, online courses, a saturation of coaches and specialists, and other spammy online marketer stuff.

Groove is not only an ideal sales funnel builder; it also does a great job of packaging great resources together and making them accessible under one roof. It arguably conserves most users a hassle they’d have if they attempted to manage funnels another way.https://www.youtube.com/embed/91NLSOr-KXg?feature=oembed

Cons — Groove.cm Review

I have got some terrible news: Even though Groove is overall strong, it’s quite a few places that still require work, and a great Groove.cm review wouldn’t be complete without looking at the ugly side too.

Some Lesser Apps are still in Beta.

Groove blueprint was not focused merely on funnels but the overall digital marketing process. So the team at Groove.cm has to build everything needed in a marketing platform from scratch. However, developing all those features takes a considerable amount of time, so the platforms’ feature rollout will happen over an extended period.

Some of Grove apps are still in beta, and that’s currently the most critical weakness of The Groove. Most of the vital features have rolled out, but many features inside the apps are yet to come out. So, members right now cannot use them to their heart’s content!

Insufficient Training Material

Suppose you joined the Groove as a free member and you want to use its’ features. What would be the first thing you look for? Of course, the training materials for learning how to operate! But you’ll find only a few training videos and materials inside your membership area.

There are training materials, but they are not sufficient. However, the team Groove Digital is fast adding training materials. Still, we consider as a weakness of Groove but understand this will go away with time.

Too Templated

This one is not on Groove but more about the community. While you’ve got the ability to personalize broadly within Groove, many people use similar designs. Considering the prevalence of Groove, this has resulted in a great amount of proto-typed looks floating around. Diversity is important.

App downtime and bugs

Groove is still in beta. Bugs are not uncommon within a few apps. If you invest a great deal in advertising or driving traffic to your funnels and a Groove.cm’ glitch brings your pages down for even a few hours, you can potentially lose a good deal of sales.

It’s also difficult to know if your pages are up or not unless you keep checking or wait till you hear from angry clients. Barring bandwidth, I deal with some glitches when I replicate webpages using the HTML publishing alternative.

User experience changes… a lot.

The dashboard changes often, The stream of creating new pages and funnels changes, a button will proceed, pricing choices change, etc.–and it appears Groove.cm is still figuring things out.

I like consistency in my software suite, particularly if it is a business solution.

Too Easy

Finally, I have Discovered a criticism but disagreed with personally: GroovePages is too simple and too cheap for its simplicity. All these criticisms refer to home improvement approaches that can be free upfront and control certain details. I wouldn’t emphasise this too strongly for less experienced users that are mainly seeking efficacy and an easy to use a bundle of resources.

Groove.cm Pricing — Just how much can be Groove.cm?

Groove currently has two Pricing plans; their free-for-lifetime Plan and their lifetime Platinum Plan with all future updates with $1397. You get a free account to try the service, so at least you don’t need to commit to an expensive upgrade straight away. 

Nonetheless, a $1397 bit hefty, huh? Some might say that I can’t see why–especially if you compare to other services, a comparable (overlapping, but definitely not identical) service that begins at $25 per month. But it’s necessary to keep in mind Groove.cm’ most important service is to make your online business more efficient, and it does a fairly good job. Personally, I consider it a good investment.

groove.cm Pricing

The primary differences between free account and premium accounts are as follows: the benchmark gets the main service, the funnel-builder, GroovePages with some limitations, and only a number of the full list of all attributes.

To summarize the Differences, the free Groove.cm plan basically carries the core feature of Groove, which can be called (you guessed it!)  On the other hand, Platinum packs the foundation tools –and gives you the complete set of digital marketing apps. It is possible to watch the full official list. Here is the list of apps of the Groove member-area: 

Fully Functional Apps

GroovePages

GrooveSell

GrooveAffiliate

GrooveMail

GrooveMember

GrooveVideo

GrooveKart

GrooveBlog

Apps Under Future Groove.cm

GrooveDesk

GrooveCalendar

GrooveSurvey

GrooveWebinars (Live)

Apps Announced (Not inside the member area yet)

GrooveProof

GrooveWebinars (Automated)

GrooveStreaming (live)

GrooveStreaming (Automated)

GrooveProof

GrooveQuiz

Features Overview — Groove.cm Review

Overall Features? I think they’re already powerful, and you get whatever you need. They are largely intuitive and give you a fantastic amount of control. The template editor and integration management program are great examples of this and are therefore essential to give them different sections.

Smaller feature but unquestionably a notable one.

If you replicate a page and Make adjustments to the backup, the split test essentially enables you to select what proportions of the traffic you want to see per page, letting you examine conversion rates very conveniently. It’s a great function and very simple to use.

I also believe Groove is adaptable and straightforward for different settings, like your account information or integrations. Maybe very tech literate people would find them prohibitive (a frequent theme among some criticisms), but while the support is supposed to be simple to work with, I believed the basic features were pretty good.

There are numerous forms Of available pre-made funnels and blocks oriented to several types of businesses, and you can, of course, construct your own funnel from scratch too.

Here is the Complete list of free-for-life membership features

With the free-for-lifetime platinum plan of Groove, you can use three essential apps free for life. The apps are GroovePages, GrooveSell, and GrooveAffiliates. Here are the features and resources a free-for-life member can enjoy:

Unlimited Offers at GrooveSell

Build Brand Websites with full navigation (GroovePages)

2 tier program at GrooveAffiliate, and also

Custom Domains Integration (GroovePages)

Free bandwidth and hosting (GroovePages, GrooveBlog, GrooveMail, GrooveVideo, GrooveMember)

All 12 other Apps with limitations

But there are a few limitations for the free members. Free lifetime members can create and maintain up to three funnels with unlimited pages with GroovePages. Also, free members will get 20% and 5% two-tier affiliate commissions from the Groove affiliate-program. However, there aren’t any restrictions on GrooveSell use.

Note that, at this beta stage, Groove allows the free members to use all the 12 apps with some limitations. But it could be a temporary, beta-special deal. Other than the three free apps, the rest of the nine apps are not free-for-lifetime. They can restrict free access to free members anytime along the way.

Listen to Mike Filsaime on Groove.cm pricing and more:https://www.youtube.com/embed/ROvvnryQOWw?feature=oembed

You can view the Complete list Of Groove.cm features, along with Groove.cm Platinum features, here. If you’re in a situation where you can afford to try Platinum for a little and you also absolutely require an efficient, simple method of increasing earnings, I do not think you would find yourself short. By that same token, I really don’t think pro-package such a huge advantage that you can not do without them: for most users (newbies), the free Groove.cm program will provide a thorough enough package.

Groove.cm Review — GroovePages (Page Builder)

This is probably the most important Groove digital app, so I wanted to devote exclusive attention to it. In fact, I think a large part of why I gave Groove a high score has to do with it having a superb landing page builder. Groove distances itself from page construction software identity and advertises being a digital marketing suite, but truth be told, I use it mostly for this particular landing page builder.

Anyway, there is rather an array of templates with great layouts, though as you may expect, only the templates created by Groove are free. Templates are coordinated by funnel type; therefore, poking around is not too hard.

GroovePages Feature

Groove.cm funnel options

Groove templates

You can also save certain templates and make personal page templates, and it’s pretty simple to find them. As you can see, it is possible to toggle with basic settings and open from the editor.

Groove editor

As Soon as You start your pages in The editor, you’ll basically be working using a drag and drop builder. It’s a little more complex than some other mild page builders, but it’s still easy to use.

Groovepages drag and drop editor

The editor uses a webpage Structure with four main components: blocks, sections, rows, columns, and elements. Think of these parts as fitting inside each other. Basically: blocks, columns, rows, and components go inside of segments. You can have several segments per page. Elements are the dynamic bits that go within columns and also make your page interactive to its customers.

Groovepages page structure

It may sound complex; nonetheless, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of. Everything is colour-coded. 

You can also edit by Section, row, column, and so on through the sidebar. All of the small details and parts of your page can be moved or altered. The template editor allows for plenty of customization but offers a great controller also. You can do all sorts of items –mobile previews, edit colours, text, preferences, and just about anything you anticipate. If you’re handy with code, you may also add your own CSS, Javascript, and HTML.

Groove template editor

I’ve heard (but don’t have ) on the builder is the way grid-like; it’s –you have to work within these columns and rows. I personally do not believe this is a massive issue, and the builder gives you enough control without sacrificing ease of use, but it may be worth a mention.

Overall, I like GroovePages a lot. It makes designing your landing page very simple, and it serves Groove.cm’ goal: to make it easier for you to earn money online.

Groove.cm Integrations

Internal apps integrations are exactly what they sound like: you hardly need other marketing tools to integrate into the Groove software. Still, it’s possible to add a few distinct integrations for your Groove accounts, as GroovePay.

The process for managing Integrations can also be simple, though you might have to look at your third party software’s documentation to find exactly what Groove needs. In general, you’ll discover the procedure pretty straightforward. 

Connected to integrations are payment gateways. Payment gateways become incorporated, and about other software, platforms are just called integrations, but on Groove, they receive a section different from integrations. Payment gateways will also be what they sound like: they are the integrations that allow your customers to pay for your stuff. Your store won’t really be much of a shop unless you’re using a payment gateway.

Managing all of them Integrations are fairly simple –as long as you are all set up with whatever application you’re trying to integrate with, you shouldn’t have any problems adding it to Groove. In my experience, these integrations usually run smoothly, and you don’t have to worry much about them.

Ease of Use — Groove.cm Review

If you haven’t picked it up by now, Groove.cm’ most important market is its ease of use–as their ad says, “Do not waste any more time with tech guys! ”’ As I’ve stated in this Groove.cm review, the most important ceremony Groove offers to supply tools that allow the less experienced save time and money. That being the case, assessing ease of usage is really significant.

Brief answer: It’s easy to Usage, but you need to have some expertise still.

Longer answer: To a First-timer, it could be somewhat overwhelming–and from first-timer, I mean new to the world of e-commerce and marketing–but the learning curve is far from impossible. For most people, I’d say the learning curve could be just a few hours max. If you’re really behind, pick up Mike Filsaime’s training videos.

Anyway, Groove is Certainly simpler than creating funnels all on your own. They’ve got a fair amount of documentation, and it might not be perfect, but it seems to me enjoy most questions must be covered, and you can always contact a customer service representative if it has to do with it.

All of that aside, some Parts of Groove are pretty simple to get the hang of. The centre features of Groove–that the real funnels–are fairly easy to manage. A cohesive menu makes it effortless to navigate to all sections of your funnel managing process, from picking templates into the drag and drop editor. Some settings involving email integrations or payment processors will want a little bit of understanding. Still, it’s nowhere close to the quantity of knowledge you would need actually to code the funnels–it’s things you’ll be able to figure out by Googling about or visiting the centre of the doc.

Ultimately, Groove is Not mind-blowingly straightforward, but it’s overall streamlined with an intuitive, user-friendly interface. They are inclined to change matters often, but it likely won’t be sufficient to hamper you significantly.

We give it a 4.5 out of 5 in Simplicity of use. It combines alternative and customizability with ease, and while I would suggest all prospective users enter with a few simple technological literacies, it basically succeeds where user-friendliness is concerned.

Who is Groove.cm for?

Who really stands to benefit the most from Groove? Broadly speaking, small businesses and startups (talking from experience here) will get the most use from it. There are natural variations in connection kinds that appeal to a business more than others.

Coaches, specialist service providers, people exclusively in e-commerce or community marketing, and even those offering B2B services would probably be most fit for Groove. Groove, generally speaking, does nicely with people offering more creative products or separate ventures. The pre-made funnels are oriented towards these industries: for instance, if you are a gentleman, you may come across the pre-made Daily Deal Funnel for a good marketing way. If you are attempting to centre everything on your own and your own brand, there could also be a good support. The same holds for people selling content such as courses or books.

groove.cm templates

Groove.cm pre-made funnels

Of course, you can always Start from a sterile funnel, and I don’t think you should determine if Groove is ideal for you or not based only on their default funnel kinds. If you’re a bigger business, alright with the price tag, and you have to make your traffic work for you better, I doubt you’d be wasting your money or time with Groove.cm. I’d especially recommend it to anyone who would like to keep a much better landing page.

Customer Support — Groove.cm Review

Groove.cm’ client Support is a place that consists of some excellence. I commend Groove for getting decent documentation onsite. I believe their documentation is only barely industry-standard for SaaS companies but still adequate. It may be simple, but content-wise, it is not too shabby.

Groove.cm customer support

The direct customer Service has been helpful for easy questions and basic troubleshooting, but I’ve found them pretty unhelpful when I’ve had more complex questions. With one special HTML publishing query, they took three weeks to return to me. Most users will not require that kind of support, and to be honest, most SaaS businesses don’t offer that level of support. So I give Groove kudos for trying.

In General Support Rating

I would not say Groove fails in customer service –I think the team largely understand that their providers aren’t elementary to use and/or demand tools new to their customers. They’ve put enough resources in their support to make it decent. At least basic questions will be answered, and they are pretty responsive. Perhaps most consumers, myself included, would not state Groove has outstanding customer care, but it largely meets a bare minimum which makes it at least great enough. Within this class, we give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

Conclusion – Groove.cm Review

So, what’s the cross-cutting verdict? It’s good—4.5 out of 5 stars! It’s a valid contender in the marketing software space and worth trying out.

Yeah, there are a few drawbacks: If you need a more hands-on solution to your marketing needs with higher customization abilities, you may want to look into third party options you can tie together. After all, if you are going with Groove, you may find yourself lucky and end up dealing with helpful customer service representatives.

But you know what? Considering everything, I don’t think any of these outweigh the solid online marketing suite, let alone other positives such as the short learning curve, solid integrations, and good templates.

All-in-all, Groove.cm succeeds in its core objective—to make it easier for you to funnel traffic and reach higher conversion rates. Even positive Groove reviews acknowledge it can be pretty useful for over internet-exposed entrepreneurs. I’m pretty sure that for the vast majority of prospective users, groove offers enough choice. If you’re looking first and foremost for an easy but solid sales solution or landing page editor, Groove.cm is a great product. After all, it hasn’t reached its popularity on empty promises, and that’s why I’m giving it 4/5 stars.

groove.cm free for lifetime access

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[lauramalchowblog]

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses

By KIM BELLARD

It’s been a few months since I last wrote about augmented reality (AR), and, if anything, AR activity has only picked up since then — particularly in regard to smartglasses.  I pointed out then how Apple’s Tim Cook and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg were extremely bullish on the field. and Alphabet (Google Glasses) and Snap (Spectacles) have never, despite a few apparent setbacks, lost their faith.   

I can’t do justice to all that is going on in the field, but I want to try to hit some of the highlights, including not just what we see but how we see.  

Let’s start with Google acquiring smartglass innovator North, for some $180m, saying: 

We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing. 

North’s founders explained that, from the start, their vision had been: “Technology seamlessly blended into your world: immediately accessible when you want it, but hidden away when you don’t,” which is a pretty good vision.

Meanwhile, Snap is up to Spectacles 3.0, introduced last summer.  They allow for 3D video and AR, and continue Snap’s emphasis on headgear that not only does cool stuff but that looks cool too.  Steen Strand, head of SnapLab, told The Indian Express: 

A lot of the challenges with doing technology and eyewear is about how to hack all the stuff you need into a form factor that’s small, light, comfortable, and ultimately something that looks good as well.

Snapchat is very good at taking something very complex like AR and implementing it in a way that’s just fun and playful.  It really sidesteps the whole burden of the technology and we are trying to do that as much as possible with Spectacles.

Snap claims 170m of its users engage with AR daily — and some 30 times each day at that.  It recently introduced Local Lens, which “enable a persistent, shared AR world built right on top of your neighborhood.”  

And then there’s Apple, the leader in taking hardware ideas and making them better, with cooler designs (think iPod, iPhone, iPad).  It has been working on headset-mounted displays (HMDs) — including AR and VR — since 2015, with a 1,000 person engineering team.  

According to Bloomberg, there has been tension between Mike Rockwell, the team’s lead, and Jony Ive, Apple’s design guru, largely centering around if such headsets would be freestanding or need a companion hub, such as a smartphone, that would allow greater capabilities.

Ive won the battle, having Apple focus first on a freestanding headset.  Bloomberg reports:

Although the headset is less technologically ambitious, it’s pretty advanced.  It’s designed to feature ultra-high-resolution that will make it almost impossible for a user to differentiate the virtual world from the real one.

Apple continues to work on both versions (especially since Ive has now departed). Bloomberg predicts Apple’s AR glasses will be available by 2023.

Not to be outdone, according to Patently Apple,  “Facebook is determined to stay ahead of Apple on HMDs and win the race on being first with smartglasses to replace smartphones.”  

For example, earlier this year, Facebook beat out Apple in an exclusive deal with AR display firm Plessey.  The company’s goal is “glasses form factor that lets devices melt away,” while noting that “the project will take years to complete.”  It continues to generate a variety of smartglasses related patients, including one for a companion audio system.  

Just to show they’re in the game too, Amazon is working on Echo Frames and Microsoft is still trying to figure out uses for Hololens.  

But what may be most intriguing smartglasses may be indicated by some recent Apple patents.  As reported by Patently Apple:

The main patent covers a powerful new vision correction optical system that’s able to incorporate a user’s glasses prescription into the system. The system will then alter the optics to address vision issues such astigmatism, farsightedness, and nearsightedness so that those who wear glasses won’t have to them when using Apple’s HMD.

It’s worth pointing out that the vision correction is not the goal of the patent, just one of the features it allows.  The patent incorporates a variety of field-of-vision functions, including high-resolution display needed for AR and VR.  But vision correction may be one of the most consequential.

Two months ago, technology author Robert Scoble explained that Apple should be more interested in AR than VR because:

60% of people wear eye glasses.  So, if Apple can disrupt the eye glass market, like it disrupted the watch market, it can sell 10s of millions. So, the teams that are winning Tim Cook’s ear are those who are showing how Apple can disrupt eye glasses. Not teams that are disrupting VR.

Doug Thompson elaborated, “If it can grab 13% of the market for glasses, that’s an $18B market, nearly double the current Apple wearables business to date.” Although he believes AR is coming, he also believes: “The point of Apple Glasses won’t be to ‘bring AR to the masses’. It will be to create a wearable product that’s beautiful and that does beautiful things.”

And this was before the news broke about Apple’s new patent.  

I’ve worn glasses since elementary school, and it’s a bother to have to periodically get new lenses.  If I could buy smartglasses that automatically updated, I’d be there. Warby Parker, Lenscrafter, and all those independent opticians should be pretty worried. 

Thirty years ago, if you predicted we’d all be glued to handheld screens, you’d have been scoffed at.  I think that in perhaps as little as ten years it is going to be considered equally as old-fashioned to be looking at a screen or even carrying a device.  Anything we’d want to look at or do on a screen we’ll do virtually, using the ubiquitous computing power we’ll have (such as through Google’s ambient computing).  

Mr. Scoble told John Koetsier: “This next paradigm shift is computing that you use while walking around, while moving around in space,”  Mr. Koetsier believes it is “the next major leap in computing platforms,” called “spacial computing.”

We should stop thinking about AR as a fun add-on and more about a technology to help us see what we need/want to see in the way that best presents it, and smartglasses as the way we’ll experience it.

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now regular THCB contributor.

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses

By KIM BELLARD

It’s been a few months since I last wrote about augmented reality (AR), and, if anything, AR activity has only picked up since then — particularly in regard to smartglasses.  I pointed out then how Apple’s Tim Cook and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg were extremely bullish on the field. and Alphabet (Google Glasses) and Snap (Spectacles) have never, despite a few apparent setbacks, lost their faith.   

I can’t do justice to all that is going on in the field, but I want to try to hit some of the highlights, including not just what we see but how we see.  

Let’s start with Google acquiring smartglass innovator North, for some $180m, saying: 

We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing. 

North’s founders explained that, from the start, their vision had been: “Technology seamlessly blended into your world: immediately accessible when you want it, but hidden away when you don’t,” which is a pretty good vision.

Meanwhile, Snap is up to Spectacles 3.0, introduced last summer.  They allow for 3D video and AR, and continue Snap’s emphasis on headgear that not only does cool stuff but that looks cool too.  Steen Strand, head of SnapLab, told The Indian Express: 

A lot of the challenges with doing technology and eyewear is about how to hack all the stuff you need into a form factor that’s small, light, comfortable, and ultimately something that looks good as well.

Snapchat is very good at taking something very complex like AR and implementing it in a way that’s just fun and playful.  It really sidesteps the whole burden of the technology and we are trying to do that as much as possible with Spectacles.

Snap claims 170m of its users engage with AR daily — and some 30 times each day at that.  It recently introduced Local Lens, which “enable a persistent, shared AR world built right on top of your neighborhood.”  

And then there’s Apple, the leader in taking hardware ideas and making them better, with cooler designs (think iPod, iPhone, iPad).  It has been working on headset-mounted displays (HMDs) — including AR and VR — since 2015, with a 1,000 person engineering team.  

According to Bloomberg, there has been tension between Mike Rockwell, the team’s lead, and Jony Ive, Apple’s design guru, largely centering around if such headsets would be freestanding or need a companion hub, such as a smartphone, that would allow greater capabilities.

Ive won the battle, having Apple focus first on a freestanding headset.  Bloomberg reports:

Although the headset is less technologically ambitious, it’s pretty advanced.  It’s designed to feature ultra-high-resolution that will make it almost impossible for a user to differentiate the virtual world from the real one.

Apple continues to work on both versions (especially since Ive has now departed). Bloomberg predicts Apple’s AR glasses will be available by 2023.

Not to be outdone, according to Patently Apple,  “Facebook is determined to stay ahead of Apple on HMDs and win the race on being first with smartglasses to replace smartphones.”  

For example, earlier this year, Facebook beat out Apple in an exclusive deal with AR display firm Plessey.  The company’s goal is “glasses form factor that lets devices melt away,” while noting that “the project will take years to complete.”  It continues to generate a variety of smartglasses related patients, including one for a companion audio system.  

Just to show they’re in the game too, Amazon is working on Echo Frames and Microsoft is still trying to figure out uses for Hololens.  

But what may be most intriguing smartglasses may be indicated by some recent Apple patents.  As reported by Patently Apple:

The main patent covers a powerful new vision correction optical system that’s able to incorporate a user’s glasses prescription into the system. The system will then alter the optics to address vision issues such astigmatism, farsightedness, and nearsightedness so that those who wear glasses won’t have to them when using Apple’s HMD.

It’s worth pointing out that the vision correction is not the goal of the patent, just one of the features it allows.  The patent incorporates a variety of field-of-vision functions, including high-resolution display needed for AR and VR.  But vision correction may be one of the most consequential.

Two months ago, technology author Robert Scoble explained that Apple should be more interested in AR than VR because:

60% of people wear eye glasses.  So, if Apple can disrupt the eye glass market, like it disrupted the watch market, it can sell 10s of millions. So, the teams that are winning Tim Cook’s ear are those who are showing how Apple can disrupt eye glasses. Not teams that are disrupting VR.

Doug Thompson elaborated, “If it can grab 13% of the market for glasses, that’s an $18B market, nearly double the current Apple wearables business to date.” Although he believes AR is coming, he also believes: “The point of Apple Glasses won’t be to ‘bring AR to the masses’. It will be to create a wearable product that’s beautiful and that does beautiful things.”

And this was before the news broke about Apple’s new patent.  

I’ve worn glasses since elementary school, and it’s a bother to have to periodically get new lenses.  If I could buy smartglasses that automatically updated, I’d be there. Warby Parker, Lenscrafter, and all those independent opticians should be pretty worried. 

Thirty years ago, if you predicted we’d all be glued to handheld screens, you’d have been scoffed at.  I think that in perhaps as little as ten years it is going to be considered equally as old-fashioned to be looking at a screen or even carrying a device.  Anything we’d want to look at or do on a screen we’ll do virtually, using the ubiquitous computing power we’ll have (such as through Google’s ambient computing).  

Mr. Scoble told John Koetsier: “This next paradigm shift is computing that you use while walking around, while moving around in space,”  Mr. Koetsier believes it is “the next major leap in computing platforms,” called “spacial computing.”

We should stop thinking about AR as a fun add-on and more about a technology to help us see what we need/want to see in the way that best presents it, and smartglasses as the way we’ll experience it.

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now regular THCB contributor.

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[junker-town]

Ranking the most compelling divisions in baseball

The Cubs are going to win the NL Central. After that, it’s a beautiful mess.

This exercise used to be a lot more fun before the advent of the wild card.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m still in favor of the current postseason system. It’s essentially an eight-team postseason wrapped in the cloak of a 10-team postseason, with an extra cruel surprise waiting for two of the teams that spent a couple dozen hours thinking they were a real postseason team. It has nice balance, giving hope to a third of baseball before ripping it away quickly and meticulously at the same time, like a Band-Aid that spirals up your entire torso.

But danged if it’s not harder to give a rip about divisional races these days. I can’t pick a winner in the AL West, but it doesn’t matter because the loser just might have a safety net. Or two.

One of these divisions will spit out a compelling race, though. Those are just the odds. And if I had to place odds on which divisions would be the most interesting, the order of likelihood would go something like ...

6. NL Central

Ostensible contenders Cubs, Cardinals

Enigmas in the middle Pirates

Rebuilders Reds, Brewers

Notes You can feel free to move the Pirates up a rung — I know I’m bullish — just as you can feel free to move the Cardinals down after the Alex Reyes injury. It’s all fluid.

Except for the Cubs at the top. They’re going to win the division. We can all agree on that. This is the dullest division in baseball in that respect.

Concoct an apocalyptic injury scenario for the Cubs and they still look like the favorites. Even if something unspeakable happens to the rotation, they still have the lineup to overcome it, along with 38 games against the Reds and Brewers to act as a buffer. If something unspeakable happens to the rotation and lineup, they still have depth at every level, every position, and they wouldn’t be automatically eliminated.

Again, that’s in the event of a roster apocalypse. Assuming that they have a normal baseball season, with ups and downs, surprises and disappointments, they’ll win the division by a comfortable margin. The Cardinals and Pirates should be interesting, but they won’t be beat-the-Cubs interesting.

5. AL Central

Ostensible contenders Indians, Tigers

Enigmas in the middle Royals

Rebuilders Twins, White Sox

Notes Come on, middle America. You’re killing us.

The Indians aren’t exactly a juggernaut who are guaranteed to win the division by 15 games. They’ll still have some of the injury concerns that plagued them last season. A forearm strain for Danny Salazar is kind of a big deal, even if he recovered quickly enough to appear in the postseason. It’s impossible to know how much they can expect from Michael Brantley, and the lineup seems surprisingly thin without him, even with Edwin Encarnacion.

Not only are the Indians the clear favorites, though, but the closest team to them (Tigers) spent the offseason signing minor-league free agents and nothing else. The Royals have a lot of familiar names and a rotation filled with competent-to-solid known quantities, but the projection systems absolutely hate them. We’ve heard that before, and Royals fans are right to wear these dour projections as badges of pride, but, well, we heard them last year, too. And they were kind of right.

At the bottom, we have the Twins and White Sox. They will play 19 games against each other this year. That reads like a missing verse from “Eleanor Rigby.”

4. NL East

Ostensible contenders Mets, Nationals

Enigmas in the middle Marlins

Rebuilders Phillies, Braves

Notes This might have the best 1-2 race at the top, which means I might be underrating this division, but the Marlins are also the sketchiest of enigmas. While they might have the best outfield in baseball, give or take, they also have one of the most uninspiring rotations. That’s not fair to them for obvious, painful reasons, but it’s hard to concoct a lot of scenarios where they pitch enough to contend with the Mets, much less the Nationals. It’s possible that the two teams combine to feature nine starting pitchers better than Wei-Yin Chen, and if Zack Wheeler comes back at full strength, it might be a clean sweep.

The Phillies and Braves are both better than you think, with rotations that are surprisingly deep and effective, but they’re in the rebuilding category because they haven’t been shy about rebuilding recently. Move them up if you need to, but it’s not going to change that this is a division with clear, unambiguous tiers.

3. NL West

Ostensible contenders Dodgers, Giants

Enigmas in the middle Diamondbacks, Rockies

Rebuilders Padres

Notes The NL West just squeaks ahead of the NL East because a) Giants/Dodgers has a ring to it, even if the Dodgers have dominated the division since 2013, and b) I’m just curious enough about the Diamondbacks in a post-Stewart and La Russa world. We expected Zack Greinke, Shelby Miller, and A.J. Pollock to be huge contributors at this time last season. So let’s pretend it never happened and, wham, instant contenders again.

The Rockies are everyone’s underrated team, to the point where they’re probably rated just fine. They have some flaws. They spent their money in a curious fashion this winter. They also might have the best lineup in baseball, so they’re worth getting excited over, especially considering how hard they’ve worked to build a young rotation that might not have their souls flayed by Coors Field.

The Padres signed Jered Weaver, and I’ll be honest, I missed that news entirely. He also might start Opening Day. That combination is a perfect way to describe the 2017 Padres. But the Diamondbacks and Rockies are likely to bug the Giants and Dodgers just enough, if not surprise the heck out of everyone.

2. AL West

Ostensible contenders Astros, Mariners, Rangers

Enigmas in the middle Angels

Rebuilders A’s

Notes Some housekeeping, first. A team with Mike Trout is not an enigma. It’s a team with an eight-game head start on the rest of the league, and the Angels spent the offseason making sensible, rational moves. FanGraphs’ projected standings has them finishing with the same record as the Mets, you know. They’re one of my sneaky almost-contenders, too, so don’t stuff them in the rebuilding category.

Don’t stuff them in the contending category, either. That’s filled with three teams that are hard to separate. The Astros have the division’s lineup, with five starting pitchers who can help a team. The Rangers are the defending champs, with just enough youth to balance out their aging players. The Mariners are the Mariners are the Mariners, but they were busy this offseason, and they probably got better. I’ve picked three different winners at different points this winter, and I’ll probably cycle through them again before I settle on one.

It’s not like the A’s will be boring, either, with enough young starting pitching to avoid last place, so the AL West should have one of the most evenly distributed collections of talent in baseball. That’s usually what it takes to have the most interesting division in baseball.

But I’ll get a little contrarian.

1. AL East

Ostensible contenders Red Sox

Enigmas in the middle Yankees, Blue Jays, Rays, Orioles

Rebuilders Nope

Notes On one hand, the problem here is the same problem with the least interesting division. There’s a clear favorite. It’s not a controversial favorite, either. The Red Sox have Chris Sale, and last year’s Cy Young winner is probably their No. 3 starter. The lineup is loaded with youth and veterans alike, and the bullpen could be one of the best in the AL. They’re probably going to win the AL East.

They’re not guaranteed to win the division, of course. And the reason the AL East is baseball’s most interesting division is that any of the four teams below them might rise up and chew through the Red Sox’ sense of entitlement. It’s a stretch with the Rays, and the projection systems sure hate the Orioles, but any of the non-Sox could win 95 games without us demanding a congressional inquiry to figure out how it happened.

It’s a matter of preference, then. Do you prefer your divisional races to have a couple of heavyweights at the top, exchanging body blows all summer? If so, the NL West might be for you. Do you prefer a mess of teams at the top, each with a roughly equal chance of winning? The AL West might be your spirit division.

I’m a parity junkie, I guess. When I look at the AL East, I see a bunch of teams with a chance, and they’re all going to be playing each other in the last two months of the season, with the teams out of contention still talented and prideful enough to play spoiler.

It’s the AL East for me, with the other two teams close behind. There’s also a chance that none of these stupid divisions will be worth watching by the end of the season, and that we’ll have to focus on a hilarious three-way Rays/Tigers/Mariners battle for a wild card spot. I’m cautiously optimistic about some of them, though. It will never be 1993 again, but there’s still a chance that at least a couple of these divisions will be worth watching for the entire season.

[khondoker]

GrooveFunnels From A Users’ Point Of View

If you’re Connected with In the world of online marketing, you’ve probably at least heard of GrooveFunnels, the digital marketing suite and the landing page builder that’s revitalizing online sales funnels. In this  Review, we go deep into the pros and cons to establish whether Groove is a valid online business marketing suite worth attempting, or just much-publicised.

Groove Digital has become quite a big name since it started, becoming one of the most significant marketing SaaS (Software as a Service) for online businesses around. I guess it’s no surprise people adore GrooveFunnels as it is all about earning its users cash. More specifically, it is about giving businesses apps that help them turn their own site visitors into customers. It’s no wonder Groove has increased so much in such a brief time period.

There’s no denying it has become quite popular, but does this mean it is well worth it? It seems it’s just another site and/or landing page builder, so what sets it apart and should you add it into your marketing tools?

In this GrooveFunnels Review, I’ll undergo the core of the software suite–what it is, the positives and the negatives, the features, customer service, and so on. I’m basing this review on my own experience with the Groove Free-for-life membership strategy, which comes with the heart the features and plenty of other whistles and bells. I will also provide the nod towards other testimonials I have seen, as not every user will agree with me about the last verdict.

Whether you choose to use it or not, and it is an important player, anybody in e-commerce and online marketing should be acquainted with it. Before you jump in, what’s our rating? I will put it at a solid 4.4 stars. With a few drawbacks, it is definitely good. Continue reading to learn why!

GrooveFunnels Review Highlights

GrooveFunnels of Groove digital is a great Landing page builder, with an easy drag-and-drop editor.

Easy and ample integrations between apps permit you to engage in various marketing activities, like selling a digital product, capturing emails, and accepting payments right inside GrooveFunnels.

Simple to learn and use

Focused on making its user’s more money

Instead of a free Trial, free-for-lifetime membership is available.

Visit the GrooveFunnels Website here.

What is GrooveFunnels?

GrooveFunnels is a suite of digital marketing tools designed to help digital marketers run a successful online business.

The platform includes tools for creating sales funnels, building websites and landing pages (GroovePages), selling a digital product (GrooveSell) and physical product (GrooveKart), creating membership sites (GrooveMember), blogging (GrooveBlog), video storing (GrooveVideo), running webinars (GrooveWebinar), building and marketing to an email list (GrooveMail), and much more.

Keep in mind that Groove is currently in beta, so many of the promised features are still in development at this review.

The creator of Groove digital Mike Filsaime is as famous as his creation, and for a good reason. Mike is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, online marketing coach, and consultant. Also, the inventor of the “Butterfly marketing” method, that restructured digital marketing.

He has been one of the online marketing industry leaders for a long time now. He has produced several software solutions that have helped businesses gain success. Software like Kartra, WebinarJam, and EverWebinar – he’s the man behind them. His experience with Kartra evoked the vision to create the GrooveFunnels.

Pros — GrooveFunnels Review

I’ve got some good news:

Groove is intended to save you energy, money and time by making more sales–to do what otherwise demands a lot of technological competence and/or an array of third party applications. In this regard, it succeeds.

Makes You More Sales- More Money

Among the greatest things about Groove is its focus on sales. They make it very easy to make your accounts, put your content up, and begin taking payments. Additionally, it’s pretty simple to select up everything –it’ll probably take you a couple of hours to figure out a lot of what you require, maximum.

Drag and Drop Interface AKA GroovePages

Quite a few features are handy here in the GroovePages app. I like how simple it is to duplicate pages and also the fact I can save templates from being used again after. Their webpage builder, GroovePages, is a fairly important feature, and they have pulled it off nicely. As soon as you get used to it, it’s simple to use drag and drop builder.

Congruent selection of Apps

I believe Groove handles internal apps and API integrations quite nicely. Email autoresponders (GrooveMail) and payment processors are not too much of a sweat–they work reliably and are easy to manage.

All under one roof

Overall, it’s great to have all the marketing apps under one roof: I will build my landing pages, produce forms and order forms and activate emails (GrooveMail) all from one platform.

All of this does save your time and money, resources you would otherwise need to spend on developers, CSS, hosting configurations, and so on.

Exquisite pricing

I think you wouldn’t mind considering the free-for-lifetime account is an excellent investment (lol!)–everything you’re permitted for a StartUp account is pretty decent.

If you need to have over 3 funnels or websites, the GrooveFunnels Platinum upgrade might not be too much to ask for, especially when you are getting a  lifetime deal (time-specific) with a one-time price of $1397. The monthly payment option will soon roll ou,t and the one-time payment option will be no longer. 

Makes you money with the affiliate Program

Mind-blowing is the right word for the Groove affiliate program. I mean, every member, free or pro, becomes an affiliate automatically; how good’s that? A separate app, GrooveAffiliate, is dedicated to managing affiliates, affiliate link, paying commissions and laying stats for the affiliates. And GrooveAffiliate would pay you 20% off sales if you are a free member. Become a pro, and you’ll get a whopping 40% of $1397, calculate how much it turns out for you. 

An engaging support community

Their private Facebook Group has over 100k members, and most posts are helpful- not consist of people bragging about how much money they made and flashing their sports cars. Groove has helped people do amazing things, but it’s also helped escalate quick rich schemes, online courses, a saturation of coaches and specialists, and other spammy online marketer stuff.

Groove is not only an ideal sales funnel builder; it also does a great job of packaging great resources together and making them accessible under one roof. It arguably conserves most users a hassle they’d have if they attempted to manage funnels another way.

Continue reading users’ point of view

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[kristinsimmons]

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses

By KIM BELLARD

It’s been a few months since I last wrote about augmented reality (AR), and, if anything, AR activity has only picked up since then — particularly in regard to smartglasses.  I pointed out then how Apple’s Tim Cook and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg were extremely bullish on the field. and Alphabet (Google Glasses) and Snap (Spectacles) have never, despite a few apparent setbacks, lost their faith.   

I can’t do justice to all that is going on in the field, but I want to try to hit some of the highlights, including not just what we see but how we see.  

Let’s start with Google acquiring smartglass innovator North, for some $180m, saying: 

We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing. 

North’s founders explained that, from the start, their vision had been: “Technology seamlessly blended into your world: immediately accessible when you want it, but hidden away when you don’t,” which is a pretty good vision.

Meanwhile, Snap is up to Spectacles 3.0, introduced last summer.  They allow for 3D video and AR, and continue Snap’s emphasis on headgear that not only does cool stuff but that looks cool too.  Steen Strand, head of SnapLab, told The Indian Express: 

A lot of the challenges with doing technology and eyewear is about how to hack all the stuff you need into a form factor that’s small, light, comfortable, and ultimately something that looks good as well.

Snapchat is very good at taking something very complex like AR and implementing it in a way that’s just fun and playful.  It really sidesteps the whole burden of the technology and we are trying to do that as much as possible with Spectacles.

Snap claims 170m of its users engage with AR daily — and some 30 times each day at that.  It recently introduced Local Lens, which “enable a persistent, shared AR world built right on top of your neighborhood.”  

And then there’s Apple, the leader in taking hardware ideas and making them better, with cooler designs (think iPod, iPhone, iPad).  It has been working on headset-mounted displays (HMDs) — including AR and VR — since 2015, with a 1,000 person engineering team.  

According to Bloomberg, there has been tension between Mike Rockwell, the team’s lead, and Jony Ive, Apple’s design guru, largely centering around if such headsets would be freestanding or need a companion hub, such as a smartphone, that would allow greater capabilities.

Ive won the battle, having Apple focus first on a freestanding headset.  Bloomberg reports:

Although the headset is less technologically ambitious, it’s pretty advanced.  It’s designed to feature ultra-high-resolution that will make it almost impossible for a user to differentiate the virtual world from the real one.

Apple continues to work on both versions (especially since Ive has now departed). Bloomberg predicts Apple’s AR glasses will be available by 2023.

Not to be outdone, according to Patently Apple,  “Facebook is determined to stay ahead of Apple on HMDs and win the race on being first with smartglasses to replace smartphones.”  

For example, earlier this year, Facebook beat out Apple in an exclusive deal with AR display firm Plessey.  The company’s goal is “glasses form factor that lets devices melt away,” while noting that “the project will take years to complete.”  It continues to generate a variety of smartglasses related patients, including one for a companion audio system.  

Just to show they’re in the game too, Amazon is working on Echo Frames and Microsoft is still trying to figure out uses for Hololens.  

But what may be most intriguing smartglasses may be indicated by some recent Apple patents.  As reported by Patently Apple:

The main patent covers a powerful new vision correction optical system that’s able to incorporate a user’s glasses prescription into the system. The system will then alter the optics to address vision issues such astigmatism, farsightedness, and nearsightedness so that those who wear glasses won’t have to them when using Apple’s HMD.

It’s worth pointing out that the vision correction is not the goal of the patent, just one of the features it allows.  The patent incorporates a variety of field-of-vision functions, including high-resolution display needed for AR and VR.  But vision correction may be one of the most consequential.

Two months ago, technology author Robert Scoble explained that Apple should be more interested in AR than VR because:

60% of people wear eye glasses. ��So, if Apple can disrupt the eye glass market, like it disrupted the watch market, it can sell 10s of millions. So, the teams that are winning Tim Cook’s ear are those who are showing how Apple can disrupt eye glasses. Not teams that are disrupting VR.

Doug Thompson elaborated, “If it can grab 13% of the market for glasses, that’s an $18B market, nearly double the current Apple wearables business to date.” Although he believes AR is coming, he also believes: “The point of Apple Glasses won’t be to ‘bring AR to the masses’. It will be to create a wearable product that’s beautiful and that does beautiful things.”

And this was before the news broke about Apple’s new patent.  

I’ve worn glasses since elementary school, and it’s a bother to have to periodically get new lenses.  If I could buy smartglasses that automatically updated, I’d be there. Warby Parker, Lenscrafter, and all those independent opticians should be pretty worried. 

Thirty years ago, if you predicted we’d all be glued to handheld screens, you’d have been scoffed at.  I think that in perhaps as little as ten years it is going to be considered equally as old-fashioned to be looking at a screen or even carrying a device.  Anything we’d want to look at or do on a screen we’ll do virtually, using the ubiquitous computing power we’ll have (such as through Google’s ambient computing).  

Mr. Scoble told John Koetsier: “This next paradigm shift is computing that you use while walking around, while moving around in space,”  Mr. Koetsier believes it is “the next major leap in computing platforms,” called “spacial computing.”

We should stop thinking about AR as a fun add-on and more about a technology to help us see what we need/want to see in the way that best presents it, and smartglasses as the way we’ll experience it.

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now regular THCB contributor.

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/