The New York Times' Nick Bilton is quoting "Google employees familiar with the project" as saying that Mountain View's long-rumored skunkworks technology — heads-up glasses with integrated connectivity and navigation features — will be on sale this year. That could be construed as an aggressive-sounding schedule, but it's said that the company is looking at this more of an "experiment" than a profitable product — idea first, revenue streams later. And the price might be low enough to at least get a few techies interested: "around the price of current smartphones," Bilton says, or somewhere in the range of $250 to $600. His sources say that we can expect either 3G or 4G wireless capability, motion and GPS sensors, a camera, and an Android base powering a small display sitting close to the eye that will offer an augmented reality view of your world. Integration with Google products like Maps and Goggles is a given, needless to say.

Whether these will take off depends on a wide variety of factors: usability, style, and fleshing out exactly what such a product does — but naturally, we're as excited as anyone to try them. More on this as it develops.