Google Glass to be tested by 8,000 people

Google has chosen 8,000 people, including celebrities and tech opinion formers, who will get the chance to test its much-awaited 'wearable computer' Glass.

Those who wanted to become 'Glass Explorers' had a week in February to submit their reasons why they should, in 50 words, via Google or Twitter.

They were also asked to pay 1,500 dollars and collect their Glass frames from Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York.
The Glass wearable computers display information in a smartphone-like format, are hands-free, can interact with the internet using natural language voice commands and use Google's Android operating system.

Among the well-known names who impressed the #ifihadglass judges were actor Neil Patrick Harris, who now plays womanising Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, and Souljaboy, a US rapper whose dance craze swept the nation, SKY News reports.

According to the report, former House of Representatives speaker and Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said he would take his 'on tours of zoos and museums to share the animals and fossils'.

The names of around 4,000 people accepted by Google via Twitter have been collated and posted online by Stanford computer science PhD student Andrej Karpathy.

His research showed 26 per cent of people chosen have fewer than 100 followers, 61 per cent fewer than 1,000 and seven percent have more than 10,000 followers.

The Glass wearable computers display information in a smartphone-like format, are hands-free, can interact with the internet using natural language voice commands and use Google's Android operating system.