Last week we asked why anyone would want to be a Google Glass App Developer, seeing as no one was allowed to charge for downloading an app or to make money from advertising. This week, developer Chris Maddern has released the code for his unofficial Facebook app, which allows you to upload photos taken with Glass directly to Facebook. Alongside the code he’s outlined what tweaks would need to be made to customise the app for use with your own online web service. These tweaks which amount to about 15 minutes worth of work for an inexperienced developer means that almost anyone will be able to create their own simple Glass app in next to no time.
This template for creating your own Glass app is free to download from GitHub and works on Google’s Mirror API, the developing platform for Glass. Maddern has said that this is only version 1.0, he plans to soon release more complex versions which will allow you to reply to notifications and add timelines. His eventual plan is to create a web based service to allow people to create their own Glass Apps without ever needing to see a line of code.
This isn’t the end for developers who are planning on making apps that fully use the potential of Glass, for example ‘Winky’ which allows you to take photos by slowly winking with your right eye. This framework is merely a template for sharing information between websites and Glass. Even when the web based service is launched for people to create their own apps, the results probably aren’t going to be groundbreaking.
Currently only 2000 people have access to Google Glass, most of whom are developers and tech journalists. This very small user base is likely to be one reason why there are currently very few official apps for Google Glass (at Google’s I/O event the other week they announced ones for Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Elle, Evernote and Tumblr). Many companies may be waiting until Glass goes public or at least until there is a definitive release date before putting any resources into actually developing an app. While waiting for general release later this year though, this framework will give a budding Google Glass app developer something to practice with and build upon, hopefully giving a selection of high quality apps to be used with Glass.
Image Courtesy of Dekuwa via Flickr