Continuing the race to who creates the first market-ready heads-up display...Sony has "quietly applied for a patent on a familiar-looking smart glasses system whose advantage over [Google Glass] would be an emphasis on things in twos. Eyepieces are the most obvious, but Sony is also keen on sharing data between two friends: transmitters on a pair of glasses would send personal info through a likely very uncomfortable glance at someone else with the same eyewear. If your friends are more than a little weirded out from sharing by staring, the proposed glasses could still pick up information from visual tags on posters, products and virtually anything else. There's even the obligatory connection to a watch for sharing data with the rest of the world. Whether or not the patent leads to Sony head-mounted technology more advanced than a personal 3D TV is still up in the air, especially with Google currently hogging the spotlight... not that existing, more conservative designs have ever stopped Sony from rolling out wild concepts before." Continue reading on Engadget With any smart glasses solution there are a lot of design and user experience challenges. For one, I don't think we want to live in a world where people are walking around distracted by UI flying in front of them, running into things, and zoning out like a drone when they talk to you. There's also a huge dork-factor with technology-based eyewear. But there is a big opportunity to create an entirely new interaction paradigm with this type of formfactor if it's done right. I just hope that whoever wins the race truly considers the experience and makes it useful, dork-free AND magical.