Google unveiled its long-rumored "Project Glass" initiative on Wednesday, bringing wearable augmented reality right in front of our eyes.

Google's Project Glass is working on a silver band running across the fireheads with a small see-through screen, which sport the capability to display digital information in your field of vision.

A video released on Wednesday by Google, showing how the glasses work, is going viral and has exceeded 1.8 million views. It shows a man strolling down the streets of Manhattan as the glasses tell him about the weather, discover a friend in close distance, take photos and lets him video chat.

The glasses are curretnly in prototype stage. They can send and receive information from the lenses, respond to the wearer's voice commands, and take videos and photos.
Google first plans to let their employees test out other designs, and hopefully allowing the public to access an early version later in 2012.

Google may be urgent in their race against their rival Apple, reportedly also working on wearable technology.

Google X, the company's lab, gained strength last year when Richard W. DeVaul from Apple joined its team. Now DeVaul works in a team specializing in artificial intelligence and wearable devices at Google, according to The New York Times.

Google seems to be the forerunner in this field, as Babak Parviz, another employee, recently built a contact lens with embedded electronics which form a miniature display, reports the Times.

“This puts Google out in front of Apple; they are a long ways ahead at this point,” according to Michael Liebhold, a senior researcher who specializes in wearable computing at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California.
“In addition to having a superstar team of scientists who specialize in wearable, they also have the needed data elements, including Google Maps.”