Stuck In Customs

4 AM, a week ago…

I get a strange email from Google. Just sign the paperwork they say. We can’t tell you anything. I sign, assuming it’s gotta be cool with an approach like that.

Fast Forward One Week

Next thing I knew, I was up in a helicopter over Tekapo, New Zealand, sitting by Steven Levy from Wired magazine tracking balloons as they headed for the stratosphere. I was just a few hours north of my home in Queenstown, so I was excited to check out this secret Google X project right in my own backyard!

So, here’s the whole story. I’ll start with a video I shot with Google Glass that shows some of the behind-the-scenes. Can’t see it in your country? Here’s the Vimeo version.

(Note, there is the Longer Video coming soon that has a lot of the tech talk and geeky stuff if you want to know more.)

So, what’s the reason for all this? Well, there are billions of people on Earth without Internet. Billions! What’s a crazy (loon-y) idea to get them Internet? Step in Project Loon from Google X and Rich DeVaul. What’s the net result of it all? You can see the little white dot-balloon in the photo bellow on the left floating over New Zealand.

New Zealand was a perfect test bed because even though we have only 4 million people, 1 million of us don’t even have Internet. Or, if we have it, it’s crazy-expensive. We even visited one farmer (Charles) who said that he had to pay $1400 for ONE month of satellite-Internet. Crazy!

So, imagine a network, a mesh of balloons that spin around the earth, effortlessly handing off Internet from one balloon to the next, just like the way you hand off phone service from one tower to the next as you drive. You can see more about the tech on Google’s Project Loon site.

Anyhoo, I was invited along to take photos. Google was nice enough to even officially license a few photos (thanks!). No, they didn’t pay me to write a nice article. I’m just kind of a Google fan. Stephen Levy and Wired liked some of the more special photos too, so you can see even more in Stephen’s article (Wired magazine). Man, he’s a cool guy. You really get to know a dude when you’re ripping through the New Zealand mountains with these crazy Kiwi pilots!

After watching the flawless launch on a chilly morning, we ended up taking a chopper to a remote farm. There were a lot of choppers. It was kind of like Apocalypse Google Now.

We landed and jumped off to go try out the Internet. Again, flawless. I can only assume they had a few failed tests beforehand… they must have been working on this for a long time. But man, it was smooth. The family was super excited. They were on Trademe.co.nz, which is the eBay of New Zealand. The husband was looking for a new truck… his wife was not thrilled.

The balloons worked perfectly. Raven Aerostar is the company that is behind the balloons; they are Google’s design partner for Project Loon. They make balloons for NASA and stuff, so they are pretty hardcore.

At lunch, the creator of the project, Rich DeVaul, told us a funny story. I don’t even know if I can repeat it, but I will. It seems innocuous enough. BTW, I’m not a real journalist or anything. I’m just a guy that takes photos and likes stories.

[Queue Radiolab soundeffects] Rich is tearing down a highway in central California. He’s in his own car. There are other Google people in there, and they are peering upwards and out the window like tornado chasers. They have radio antennae, laptops, and all kinds of crazy Google equipment as they try to track a balloon. At some point, they overload his alternator and they come to an unceremonious stop. They are stranded.

Rich has to call his wife to pick them up. She’s been in the dark for years about this project, and he hasn’t told her anything. She drives hours and hours to pick them up. He fills up her car with nerds and equipment and they sit there silently, ignoring the Fringe/X-Files nonsense that is happening in the backseat. His lips form a line as he looks side to side innocently. I’m not sure if that look actually happened, but it probably did.

I heard she’s here at this press conference that’s happening right now in Christchurch. So now she knows everything; She’s probably quite proud of him!

And, by the way, if you are here in New Zealand in Christchurch, come see me at the Festival of Flight at the Air Force Museum on Sunday! The Project Loon event is from 10am-2pm on Sunday June 16th. There will be a lot about balloon science and stuff like that… bring the family! Here’s a map.

Anyway, hats off to all the engineers and team members. It’s a cool project. It’s all quite early, of course, but if they can keep iterating, it will be a really cool option to get Internet everywhere. I can see remote villages in Africa having one of those red-ballooned antennas. I can see it forcing competitive local Internet services in SE Asia to provide cheaper service and no data caps (the same way Google Fiber is disrupting competitive services). I can see myself putting one of those antenna on my truck so I have Internet no matter where I travel in New Zealand to take photos. Man, I can’t wait!

A Photo-Essay of the launch

Here’s a few other photos. Or, there’s a whole album on Google+ – enjoy!

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Just released!

I wanted to make a special post about these. I’ve decided to share even more of my personal favorite filters!

There are 49 New Filters – here’s a video below that shows how I used some of them… some examples for you! 🙂

The Google Science Fair – Free educational event – The Science of Photography

I know some of you were able to watch the Google Science Fair event a few weeks ago, but be sure to check out that website for some of the other videos. I wish I had all these resources when I was a kid!

This Week in Tech

This was a fun episode with Leo recently. You might enjoy! 🙂

Auto-Awesome on Google+ So I went to the Chinese Acrobatic Circus and after the event, I uploaded all the photos to Google+. It was so cool to see that it made a bunch of animated GIFs automatically for me. See the whole album here.

Idea – Family Videos on YouTube, and a question for YouTube Experts!

So, I’ve taken to recording SO many videos of the family on my mobile (and now Glass too), and it’s great to share them privately with my family all over the world on YouTube. I used to burn DVDs every year around Christmas for the whole family using iMovie, but that’s kind of a pain. Now, the videos are nice and short, and there are a lot of them… uploading them all as “Unlisted” to YouTube then sharing the link seems to be pretty awesome. I’ve also taken all my old family videos DVDs and ripped them and uploaded them to YouTube. I feel good having a backup on the cloud. And, frankly, it’s often easier to go to YouTube rather than put in a DVD!

Question to YouTube Experts: So, I have made a playlist called “Family Videos” that contains about 60+ videos. All the videos are “unlisted” but I can’t figure out a way to make an “unlisted” playlist that I share with the family. The playlist is either “Private” or “Public”. If it’s private, then only I can see it, right? It says I can “share” the private playlist, but no one can see it until it is public, and I don’t want it public… so… what do I do?

I really want this private family playlist to work. That way, the family can just always check this playlist for the “latest” videos. Know what I mean? Otherwise, I have to send out an email every time I add a new short video to the playlist.

Nat Geo Traveler – project from a student

See this awesome magazine cover here? It was made by Dave Reily for one of his projects for school. This is one of the cool things about Creative Commons Noncommercial — I end up with tons of students all over the world that end up re-using my photos for art projects or school projects. You can see more from Dave and his project here on is FB page.

TBEX – The Future of Travel Media in Toronto

Thanks again for TBEX – I had a fun time during event in Toronto. I look forward to going back… it was a cool city!

Google Glass atop the CN Tower

This was the tallest free-standing structure in the world for 34 years until the Burj Khalifa was finished in 2010. I went out on a walk around the edge to take photos (and record video) with Google Glass and the Sony NEX-7.

Surfing the categories

We get new people coming to the blog all the time! Don’t forget that you can click on the categories on the right OR under the photo to see more photos from this place. For example, check out the “France” category at the bottom. The blog only shows about 10 entries, so you’ll have to click PREVIOUS on the bottom after you scroll all the way down.

Don’t forget about Flatbooks!

Jump over to Flatbooks.com and see some of the latest offerings there! I think you’ll find something you like! 🙂

What’s it like to wear Glass in China?

Beijing is more recently known for its crazy pollution (image links), so it was a real challenge shooting over the past week or so while I was there. It’s my fifth time to Beijing, and the pollution gets worse and worse every time. This means that shooting things far away is very difficult, because it gets fogged out like a video game that can only handle a few polygons at a time.

I was most interested in the reactions of people to Google Glass in China. I’ve noticed people’s reactions in a few places so far – In San Francisco, Toronto, Auckland, and now my hometown in Queenstown, New Zealand. For sure, people’s reactions in China were totally different. Now, of course this is all anecdotal, so you can hardly figure out a cultural trend-line from my observations, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Security Concerns

I was a bit paranoid to wear them through the airport, in customs, and near military or police. There was always a mild panic they would abscond with them and stick me in a white room with some sort of Chinese Agent Smith.

I did indeed have an “encounter” with a guy from the military very close to Tiananmen Square over by the National Theatre. I was taking photos with Tom and some local friends that worked at Google and another small startup. One of the security-military guys came up to me and was very interested! Mostly just sort of tech-fascinated, though, and curious. I didn’t sense any danger in the interaction, so I didn’t turn around and run. My goal in China was: “Don’t run from the military,” so I tried my best to meet that goal.

Anyway, he got really close to the Glass and my friends helped me translate what he was asking. He was trying to figure out how it worked and was fascinated that you could get the internet to work on it. He then asked to try them on, and he loved them! He spent several minutes playing with the menus and even said, “Okay Glass, take a picture,” which it did (amazingly, even though his accent was rather thick!) While he was smiling the whole time, he was also trying to say a bunch of different things because he was mesmerized by the idea that you could talk to it! Everyone had a really good time and we were all laughing. For some reason, when he tried to speak English, he sounded exactly like Borat.

So that was my only interaction with the government-machine complex. Other than that, all my interactions were with the rest of the Chinese population.

How the citizenry of China reacted to Glass

First, let me tell you about the reaction from the more western world (SF, Toronto, Auckland, Queenstown) where I have a fairly consistent experience.

Whenever I am in public, people my age (I am 41) and younger are SUPER interested in the glass. Especially younger people. When I walk through the streets, I must get approached by a dozen (or sometimes, many many more) people per hour who say the following things (other Glass Explorers will probably agree with hearing these things): “Wow what is that thing?” “Whoa, is that Google Glass?” and “This is the first time I’ve ever seen it!” and “How much does it cost?” (man I get that one A LOT!) and “What does it look like?” and “What can you do with it?” and, well, the list just goes on and on.

The point is that people in the west are just so excited and mesmerized by it — they come up and engage and want to know more, try it, play with it, etc. Now, I do notice people a lot older than me are a bit more standoffish, unless they are really into geek culture. They look ponderously at me, clearly thinking, “What is happening to our world?” I had one older guy in the elevator at the Four Seasons shake his head dismissively and sigh, but that was the MOST negative reaction to about 1000+ people that have seen it.

One group that seemed SUPER excited about it was black guys! Haha… I guess I could say African-Americans, but I saw several groups in Canada too, so I don’t even know what — is that African Canadian? Err… I’m not a journalist… so, I’ll just… dispense with all the labeling and let’s just say, err… well… groups of non-white-people that gathered on the street. This happened like eight times! They would get really excited and say things like, “Wow, that’s the Google Glass!!!!” “I gotta get me some of that!” “That looks TIGHT – how much is it!!” Haha it was great… I went over to talk to them all and they had so much fun with it. My guess is that more “white” people would have reacted like this too, but they are sometimes more reserved. Haha… man, I know… what a generalization, but I’m just telling you what happened to me.

So, let’s talk about China. Crickets. Man, they just would look at me curiously for a second and then turn their heads away. It was really interesting. Very few people came up to me, and they were usually younger (teens and twenties). But, mostly, they was just silent about it. I attribute some of it to not speaking English, but I think there was something larger going on.

It may be a combination of vestigial communist cultural reactions to strangers and general “out-of-the-box-shock” at seeing the Glass. Now, the Chinese are as technophilic as their Western counterparts. They are iPhone and iPad crazy! You go into any Starbucks, and upwardly mobile and middle-class people fill every seat and stare at their iPhones. Apple did a great job of marketing there, and the “lifestyle” of a high-end tech user is quite aspirational. It’s a wonderful sign of wealth and upward mobility, which is very important in their new money-driven culture.

There is something still broken in the Chinese culture, I’m afraid. It’s the cultural idea of innovation and design. It does indeed exist in pockets (I met many people with tech startups, Google, Youku, and many other places that are mega-techy and doing awesome stuff) , but, generally, there is not a cultural “worship” of technology innovation like there is in the West. For that reason, I think we’ll continue to see the “bigger” ideas (that are well executed!) like Glass and others come from the West. I had lunch with Kevin Kelly, who spends even more time studying the Chinese culture. He recently visited several dorm rooms all over the country and saw that they had very few (or often, none) aspirations beyond making money. He said there were no posters on the wall, and when he asked them who their “heroes” are, they could not give any answers. It’s strange indeed, and may point to a larger cultural issue. I hope Kevin writes a book about it!

A Nice Glass Story from Beijing

This has nothing to do with the story above, except as a really cool use-case example of Glass.

At the airport, I got a local simcard so I could use the Chinese internet through Glass. I really had no problem at all! I could get maps, emails, send messages, and Google stuff via voice. One day, I was with Tom and we were driving by Tiananmen Square and there was a strange flag I could not recognize. So I said, exactly this (yes, it was a malformed question): “Okay Glass, Google What flag is it that has a gold lion on a red background and an orange stripe and a green stripe.” Immediately, it came back and said “Sri Lanka”! Wow! It even showed me a photo of the flag and visually brought up the Wikipedia entry on the Flag of Sri Lanka. Now, WHY the flag of Sri Lanka was hanging over Tienanmen Square was another question I did not ask. I figured that Sri Lanka probably just invaded overnight and had hoisted their flag to signal victory.

Photos with Glass from Beijing

I have a Glass gallery over on Google+ that I’m continuing to add new photos to. You’ll see several from China in there…

Camera Experiment in China

I know regular readers of the blog are waiting on the results of my China Experiment: Dumping Nikon for Sony. I’m working on that piece too… I should have it done in a week or so! In the meantime, you can probably see several of the Sony NEX shots in my stream on G+.