What They Say
Protocol Entertainment reported that Amazon has canned the Glow projection devices after poor sales. The aim of the device was to enable video interaction with children remotely for caregivers, grandparents and others.
Kids are terrible cameramen,” Behrang Assadi, who used to head marketing for Amazon Glow, told Protoc some time ago. “They tend to not sit still. They get easily distracted by other features of phones, and sometimes they just put it down and walk away.”
What was interesting about Glow was its combination of computer vision and projection mapping, which allowed kids to play with physical puzzle pieces, or “scan” physical objects to incorporate them into digital art, Protocol said. The device was the result of a lot of experimentation, with Amazon developers toying with ideas that included robot arms and laser pointers, as Amazon senior hardware engineer Martin Aalund told the blog earlier this year.
What We Think
Initially, I fell for the hype and could imagine using the device with more remote family members. However, it was thoroughly debunked by Karl Guttag (Guttag Debunks Amazon Glow). That is has failed is not really a surprise.
We haven’t got a direct link to this story which appeared in an email, but didn’t seem to have been posted to the website when we looked. (BR)
