Whether you’re about to die doing something stupid awesome on a mountain, or about to die doing something stupid sweet in the ocean, you’re going to want your heirs to know exactly how you met your end. Maybe even relive it from your point of view. Liquid Image is here to help. The California based company has a line of camera goggles that let you record HD video directly from between your eyes. It’s an amazing way to step into someone else’s perspective. Their newest offerings were recently on display at CES 2011, and the demonstrations of their capabilities were killer. Check out some great ski and scuba footage, as well as a CES floor demo, in the videos below. Ranging from $150 to $400+, these camera goggles could be a relatively easy point of access to bring lifelogging to extreme sports, and from there to the rest of the world. Record it all, share it all, and encourage others to do the same. It might start with wanting to share your stupidest proudest moments from the exact same POV in which you experienced them.
We’ve seen plenty of head mounted cameras, but Liquid Image takes the concept and makes it really simple. Are you engaging in a dangerous activity? Well then you’re probably wearing goggles. Why not include a camera directly inside them while you’re at it? At CES, the company had several pairs of their headware on display, including D1 quality ski/stunt goggles starting at $150, 1080p HD goggles starting at $250, and various others. As you’ll see in the clip from CES below, Liquid Image works hard to make their goggles easy to use. Just two big buttons (for gloved hands), and an interior light to let you know you’re recording. The model they show off here can take a 32 GB SD card, and has a battery life of 1.5 to 2 hours. Not bad at all. Expect them to arrive early this year, with other versions being released throughout 2011.
Extreme sports could be the activity that helps popularize the idea of recording everything you do. It used to be that you needed a dedicated camera crew that was as insane as you were if you wanted to film your stunts on the mountain. Now you can record the whole affair without any more equipment than you would normally wear. That’s going to encourage many more people to videotape their adventures. It could even get the casual athlete or aspiring young crazy to strap on a pair of goggles and share their experiences with friends via YouTube. As soon as the idea of recording your life becomes fun and exciting it will spread. We already have a generation talking into their webcams. Next we could have them talking into their glasses.
Even if it takes a while for the technology and the culture to be ready, Liquid Image has hit upon a pretty great idea: sell cameras you don’t have to think about wearing. For extreme sports enthusiasts, that means goggles, but Liquid Image is already working on smaller pairs that will look more like sunglasses. Polaroid is doing the same. Give it a few years (maybe less) and it will be cheap and easy to wear these things anywhere. All it takes are some enthusiastic and persuasive early adopters, and the lifelogging concept could become a major fad. Maybe even a way of life for some. Take a good look at that Bro out on the ski slopes with the video goggles. Crazy? Cocky? Camera-whore? Yes to all the above. But just wait. Your Uncle Joe will be showing you videos from his scuba trip soon enough. Then your Great Aunt Edna will share some footage of her visit to the botanical gardens. …Lifelogging could turn us all into Bros.
*shudder*
[image credits: Liquid Image]
[source: Liquid Image]
