North Carolina firefighter writing Google Glass apps to help save lives

Himanshu Arora

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Patrick Jackson, who happens to be a firefighter for Rocky Mount, North Carolina, is developing Google Glass apps to help save time and lives. According to CNN, the idea first struck his mind when he saw a skydiving demo of Google Glass at the annual Google developers conference in 2012.

The computer-savvy firefighter has already developed a couple of apps. The first one is an incident notification app which routes incoming emergency calls to his Glass. The app feeds important information like incident location, map, and notes from 911 emergency center, directly to the eye-line of firefighters in case of an emergency. The second app, "find a hydrant", helps quickly locate fire hydrants closest to the incident location.

That's not all, he is currently working on a couple more apps. One of them would provide vital information such as building layout, emergency exits, and more before firefighters enter the building, while the other would provide detailed schematics of vehicles so that it's easier to rescue people trapped inside them.

Earlier, when Jackson didn't have Google's wearable computer, he was developing apps using the Glass Mirror API. To get his hands on the hardware, he submitted his idea to Google's IfIHadGlass competition, and got the device in September. He raised funds for the device on Indiegogo.

Many other fire departments across the nation have shown interest in Jackson's ideas and his Google Glass setup.

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Is he a good fire-fighter though? If my house catches fire, I don't want no IT geeks coming to put it out...
 
I hope they don't just rely on that in the future (I can see FD around the nations jumping on it). I think it is cool as long as they still know how to do their jobs and find their resources when Google services are down (or taken down).

Scenario: "Oh no... The Internet is slow today due to some DDOS.... Where the heck is that old map that shows us fire hydrant locations?"
 
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