Google Urges Developers To Start Creating Apps For Google Glass

Lately, the Glass augmented-reality eyewear has been a very discussed topic. Google is planning to release the official Glass Development Kit (also abbreviated as GDK) in order to help the developers with their apps on this topic.

The plans for the GDK provided by Google have been made public during the I/O developer conference which took place less than a month ago, in July.  This information comes from a blog post by the Glass developer relations team.

What is more is that the Google company does not want the app-makers wait for the GDK to be released, but encourages them to start working upon their ideas. As the post suggests, the company is still working on the GDK and it is not in the last phase of the project. Still, as the post suggests, the developers are invited to start developing their projects with the existing Android SDK. It is true and accepted by the team that the Android SDK (API Level 15) does not have all the tools that help you design the perfect project for Glass, still it is a useful basic tool, until the GDK comes out on the market.

Coming back to what Google Glass will bring, until now we know that it will have an accelerometer and a playing media. Also, Google made public (using photos also) some sample apps of the Glass which included a stopwatch, a level and compass. Also, the company promised to bring to light other features in the near future. The blog post suggested that once the GDK will be released, the samples will also be updated in order to show that there is a migration path between a full Glass experience and a traditional Android app.

The popularity of Glass apps seems to be growing, as a number of companies and developers have started to release third-party Glass apps or, in other situations, they have started to use Google Mirror API for web-based Glassware.

They actually refer to media brands, such as the New York Times’ app pushing breaking news alerts and updates from hour to hours to the Glass owners. Other brands such as CNN and Elle presented their apps during the I/O conference. Also, what’s more, the social media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Path have launched the Glass apps, also.

What’s interesting is that Fancy’s e-commerce service has a Glass app which allows users to take photos of objects in the world, everywhere around them and then find matching products. Cool, right? Also, the cloud-storage service Evernote released a preview of its app.

What Fancy Glass app does for its users is help them find colour-matched products. Still, they consider that they are still in their early days on Glass, even if they are excited about it.

The company’s vice president of marketing, Andrew Sinkov, mentioned in a blog post that wearable’s are the next frontier in the consumer technology and that they are trying to make the Evernote a perfect tool for the wearable technology future. Also, he mentions that at the moment what users can see is a simple part of the useful ways in which Evernote can be used with Google Glass. The company promises more and more interesting ways of using it.

We should also mention that wearable-technology incubator Stained Glass Labs keeps a directory of Glass apps which include the apps of other developers and startups. This includes YouTube-uploading Full screen BEAM and photo-filtering Glassagram but also the app banned by Google Tits & Glass. Also, once the GDK is available, Google’s Glass Platform Developer Policies for the Mirror API will be available to  policing native apps for its eyewear.

What is great is that the app includes rules for people’s personal data usage and collecting. Also, when it comes to sexually explicit material and violence or hate speech, there are specific rules. Among other categories, the gambling and impersonation are among the first.