Below is over a decade of glimpses of what was to come. There’s more, these were just handy.

2005.

.@adafruit zzzzzzzzzzz pic.twitter.com/JoGlS4i9IY

— adafruit industries (@adafruit) November 26, 2016

.@adafruit testing out @Snap @Spectacles pic.twitter.com/LjHYYgc5tr

— adafruit industries (@adafruit) November 26, 2016

That was the past, now there’s Bluetooth low energy, massive social networks/sharing and a lot of good reasons to always have a way to record with you at all times.

a few hours with @snap @Spectacles … super fun https://t.co/5KDXSAJRCz pic.twitter.com/J5X5RMCQED

— adafruit industries (@adafruit) November 26, 2016

Sharing moments, geotagging, filters and billions of phones, with billions of thoughts transmitting. Snap didn’t put the technology in the center like Google Glass, Snap put memories and sharing as the focus. It’s subtle and ambient, it’s (can be) respectful and let’s people know what’s going on when pressing the button, with the intent for private sharing, or more if you want. It goes to your “story”. Moving the files around, low-res, and later HD takes awhile, the app does a good job getting them around in the background.

The social experience of waiting in line, long lines at vending machines for Spectacles only amplifies together-connecting, if you’re waiting in line for 5 hours, you’re going to make friends. This effort is “social, scale, scoop & stuff” – which is how we look at efforts that can be community enhancing, helping and coming together.

Snapchat, is now Snap, it’s hard to find the word “Snap” – they’ve moved to yellow and a ghost. They’re doing a good job with this. The store in NYC is across from the Apple store, a giant eye, always fixated.

There’s a bit of marketer garbage inside the app, but it pays the bills and the marketers will be fooled thinking it’s a good idea for awhile, in the end, they’ll need to tell real stories, show real people and share something unique and special. It might not work out, however, this was the best attempt so far. In the instructions it says it’s all about video, because the moving image is what we process, what we care about, what we consume and what we create.

If you’ve been strapping cameras to your head, wearing net connected watches, even 10 years ago, if you’ve been giving up the most precious personal real estate, just for tidbits of what’s to come, this is one of the best launches.

Here’s a teardown of what’s inside, Nordic – no surprises, smart.

The case is yellow, it’s the charger, it goes to the important places in your home, people will ask about it, they’ll try it out.

Add us on Snapchat – Username: adabot https://www.snapchat.com/add/adabot Remember back in 2012 when we did some fun factory tours, snaps with ADABOT, ladyada and more! We’re still here and will be exploring Snapchat Spectacles.

An easy prediction would be for Facebook to wait until GoPro’s stock price dips lower and scoop them up to get around to the Facebook/Instagram version of spectacles, Facebook currently has a 360 camera, sorta ($30,000). Check out our GoPro coverage as well as Google Glass coverage on the Adafruit blog.

On a related note, for ya’ll who were in Minneapolis in 2001 and worked at Fallon worldwide, there was a demo I would show off using a Pocket PC (HP Jornada) with wireless modem and GPS CF card called “GHOST” …it used Macromedia Flash, Pocket PC edition … you could leave messages all over Minneapolis, and if you had a “ghost friend” you could see those messages once you were in the same place. No one else had a device, so it was just me, a ghost leaving GPS messages all over the city, mostly at bars.

Feels good to play Pokemon now and wear some Spectacles now, 15 years later -pt