(Photo: Olympus)

Bonkers sky-diving demos really have a way of invigorating your competition, don't they? Not long after Google showed the world just what its Project Glass headsets can do, Olympus, the Japanese camera manufacturer, has announced its reentry into wearable computing with a prototype called the MEG4.0.

As The Verge notes, the glasses-mounted heads-up display has Bluetooth connectivity to work with smartphones. It will use Olympus' "proprietary optical technology" to optimize visibility of the world around you. The press release also promises eight hours of battery life (if you put it in "intermittent display mode"--i.e. switching on for 15 seconds every three minutes.) And a built-in accelerometer lets the device respond to the position of the user's head.

The company has been experimenting with head-mounted displays before and working on prototypes since 2005, but it's hard not to notice the timing.

GOOG shouldn't be that worried, however, considering Olympus hasn't figured out a way to work its core competency into the device: The MEG4.0 doesn't appear to include a camera.