This semester, UNC students have the opportunity to be some of the first people in the country to use Google Glass — a device that won’t be released to the public until the end of this year at the earliest.
Thanks to a contest sponsored by Google, three UNC students won Glass, which is eyeglasses that enable the user to have a first-person experience with a smartphone. Two of the students created the Carolina Glass Explorers Club as a way to share the device with the student body.
The students entered into a competition for Glass that required participants to submit a 5-second video or a 150-character message with the hashtag, “#ifihadglass.”
But after winning Google’s contest, the students still had to pick up the technology in New York and foot the bill for the device — which sophomore Patrick Lung , one of the contest winners, said cost $1,633.
“And then you have the plane flight, and living in New York is not exactly cheap,” he said.
Luckily for them, the professor of their entrepreneurship first-year seminar, Charles Merritt , made an ambitious deal with their class.
“I just said that if anyone in here wins, we’ll find out a way to get it paid for and get (the students) to New York,” Merritt said.
Their trip was paid for by an anonymous donation to UNC’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Contest winner Pranati Panuganti, a sophomore biology major, said she founded the Carolina Glass Explorers Club this year to start a conversation about the ethics and benefits of wearable technology.