I'm sure most of you have heard of Google Glass by now. This is a hardware platform, literally built into a set of glasses that's designed to mate with your Android cell phone and allow you to access and use your phone in conjunction with your glasses. It's an interesting idea, and while I'm not sure if it will catch on, I'd like to see some parts of this technology come to fruition.
There's a new company that is trying something similar, providing a new way to access databases. Virtual Search, Inc. has combined a set of glasses with a built in display with a set of virtual reality gloves and proprietary software to allow you to search your Analysis Services cubes in a quick and intuitive manner.
Users can connect to a cube and then visualize the aggregations in a starscape-like manner. With gestures that are customizable for each user, the software allows the wearer to quickly add or remove filters along dimensions and measures in a way that can speed up querying for the business user. Data dictionaries and other meta data can pop up in the display on the side as users quickly move through what-if scenarios.
I have to think this would be an easy sell in many companies, if only for the cachet of cool that this would bestow upon the users. I'm sure many of my employers would spring for the hardware and likely fund a project to build new cubes to test the interface. I'm also sorry to tell you this isn't true, nor likely to be true. It's my little April first thought for the day. As a short apology, the podcast for the day is a series of bloopers so you can laugh at my inability to record a short 3 minute segment each day.
Hopefully you enjoyed this and while you might be drooling over the prospect, you aren't too disappointed. If any of you software developers are so inclined to try building something like this, you might float your idea over at Kickstarter.
Steve Jones
Bloopers
Here are a few funny moments from the podcasts
Enjoy!