Tzukuri launches unlosable glasses

When Allen Liao was still at university he borrowed a friend's expensive sunglasses and lost them.

"He wasn't very happy with me so that's how it all started," Liao says.

The 23-year-old dropped out of uni to start developing Tzukuri, a line of "unlosable" glasses which went on sale this week.

Tzukuri integrates hand-crafted glasses with Bluetooth technology.  The glasses are connected to an iOS app, which notifies the owner if they are left behind, records the last GPS location and shows proximity when searching for them indoors.

Manufacturing

The range is manufactured in Sydney from cellulose acetate which is a 100 per cent renewable and recyclable natural biopolymer manufactured from cotton and wood pulp.

Tzukuri creates both glasses and sunglasses priced at $485 including prescription lenses. They are available online and from a pop-up at Sydney's Old Clare Hotel which opened this week.

"If you look at technology like your phone, it is made from lots of different components," Liao says. "But when you make a pair of glasses you only have three pieces to work with. We invented a new process to seal the electronics inside one piece of material which allows us to make a very light pair of glasses."

The reality 

Liao says he's nervous now his vision has become a reality.

"You've got to be nervous, you just don't know what people will expect," he says.

The signs are good so far, with Tzukuri breaking even the first day it started trading. Liao has plans to open three pop-up stores in the next six months and is aiming to sell 13,000 pairs of glasses in Australia, bringing in over $6 million in revenue.

If his plans for international expansion come off there are more commercial opportunities.

"We are looking first at New Zealand and Asia-Pacific and then looking very closely at the United States and Europe," Liao says.

But the process of developing Tzukuri has not been without its challenges for Liao. His initial co-founder left the business and went back to finish his university course.

These "Smart Glasses" Adjust To Your Vision Automatically

The glasses' liquid lenses change shape according to the distance of objects, making reading glasses and bifocals unnecessary.
                         

By age 45, most of us will need glasses at least for reading. That’s because our eyes’ ability to accommodate—to change focus to see objects at different distances—degrades with age. In young eyes, the eyeball’s crystalline lens changes shape easily, allowing this accommodation. But as we get older, this lens stiffens. Objects in close range suddenly look blurry. Hence the “readers” most middle-aged adults begin wearing on a chain or tucking in a handbag, or the bifocals worn by those who already had vision problems.

But the days of popping reading glasses on and off or constantly shifting your gaze through bifocals may be numbered. Researchers at the University of Utah have developed “smart glasses” with liquid lenses that can automatically adjust their focus.

Regular prescription glasses, Mastrangelo explains, don’t fix the eyes’ accommodation problems. They simply shift the range of what’s in focus rather than expanding it. So if you put on a pair of reading glasses, the once-blurry page a foot from your eyes will be clear, but objects on the other side of the room will suddenly be blurry. The reverse is true of people who need glasses only for seeing far distances.

Though the glasses have not yet been formally tested, Mastrangelo and other members of his lab have tried them out. The current prototype is, to put it gently, bulky (think a clear version of Doc’s goggles in Back to the Future). Formal wearer tests are in the works.

Some adjustments will need to be made before the glasses could be ready for the market, Mastrangelo says. They need to reduce the weight and thickness of the eyepieces and make the electronic subsystems smaller. They also need “much improved” styling. Mastrangelo expects to overcome these issues and have a product on shelves within two to three years.

Cancer warning for children who don’t wear sunglasses

PARENTS are being urged to put sunglasses on their children whenever they are outside to protect them from eye cancer.
             

The Australian Medical Association is leading the renewed push, issuing a plea to parents that whenever they wear sunglasses their children should too.

Cancer Council figures show eye cancer killed 21 Queenslanders in 2013 and 81 people were diagnosed with the disease.

AMA vice president Tony Bartone said it’s not only bright sunny days that are problematic.

“They should be worn whenever you are outside during the day,” he said.

“We have already seen very hot weather this summer, and we must take every precaution to reduce the risk of skin cancer by protecting ourselves from overexposure to UV radiation.”

The Cancer Council recommends covering up and wearing sunscreen whenever the UV index is three or above, but CCQ spokeswoman Katie Clift said our eyes required even greater protection.

“Damage to the eye can occur regardless of the UV index level, so it’s essential that Queenslanders wear wraparound sunglasses at all times when outside during daylight hours,” she said.

“Be sure to reduce exposure of the eye to UV radiation as much as possible, ensure your sunglasses meet the Australian/New Zealand standard, and wear a broadbrimmed hat.”

Ms Clift said 20 per cent of cataracts were believed to be caused by UV radiation exposure to the eye.

How to pick the right glasses for your face

Just like a tailored suit, a pair of glasses should be properly fit to the wearer. A proper fitting frame is more flattering, more comfortable, and more effective at helping you see better or keeping the sun out of your eyes. Here’s quick guide to getting the right fit, which is unique for every person depending on your head size, face shape, feature distribution, etc.
                   

Frame sizing

A frame size is typically noted as: lens width – bridge width – temple width. For example: 51mm – 21mm – 145mm.

The key is finding a size that corresponds to the overall width of your face, while being mindful of the distribution of the physical size of your eyes (lens width) versus the space between them (bridge width).

As a rule, I think sizing should be treated on a case-by-case basis, as it depends largely on your proportions and the style being selected. But as a general guideline, here are some starting points for total width (lens width x2 + bridge width):

Small/Narrow Face: 125mm – 129mm
Medium Face: 130mm – 134mm
Large Face: 135mm – 139mm
Wide Face: 140mm – 145mm

The keys to proper eyewear fit

1. The width of the frame should match the width of your face. This means, when looking at you straight on, the glasses should not hang off the side of your face (this would mean the frame is too wide) and we should not be able to see the sides of the temples (this would mean the frame is too narrow).

2. We should be able to see your eyebrows above the frames. At least half of them, preferably a little more than half.

3. Each eyeball should be directly in the center of the lens, from left to right. The distance between the corner of the eye and the edge of lens should be the same on both sides of the eye.

4. Your eye should fill the top half of the lens. The bottom of the eye should roughly touch the vertical midpoint of the lens.

5. The temples should be adjusted to fit around your ears. If you have a problem with glasses sliding down your nose, you need to have the temples bent to keep them in place.

6. The overall frame should be located roughly in the middle of your face. It should provide a nice balance between the top of the face and the bottom of the face. In each of the examples below, notice there is roughly equal distance between the top of the frame and the top of the head, and the bottom of the from and the bottom of the chin.

Glasses make face recognition tech think you’re Milla Jovovich

Those new glasses make you look completely different – especially to face recognition software.
                 

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University has fooled face recognition algorithms using the oldest trick in the book: a pair of fake glasses.

A white male researcher wearing the glasses was able to pass for American actress Milla Jovovich while a South-Asian female colleague was digitally disguised as a Middle-Eastern male. Both tricked commercially available face recognition software Face++ with a success rate of around 90 per cent. The system wasn’t perfect, however: a Middle-Eastern male trying to use the glasses to pass as white British actor Clive Owen only succeeded 16 per cent of the time.

The patterned glasses work by exploiting the neural networks used in face recognition systems. Neural networks don’t rely on the same features that humans do to recognise faces. The systems often focus on things like the colour of different pixels and slowly piece together a best guess of who’s in the shot by comparing it to other, similar images. If just a small area of the face has been changed, it can completely mess with the attempted recognition – which is why the computer system can confuse two people who in fact look very different.

They designed bespoke glasses with a pattern that changes how the system interprets the wearer’s face. The frames essentially overlay the face with pixels that perturb the software’s calculations in just the right way that it misidentifies the person as another specified face in its database – Milla Jovovich, for example. To a human, the frames just look like a colourful tortoiseshell design.