Google Reveals Glass Development Kit, Blows Doors Open for Third-Party Apps

At a 'hackathon' held in San Francisco today, Google unveiled its 'Glass Development Kit', or GDK for short. As the name suggests, this set of tools (which ties into Android's SDK) allows developers to take far greater advantage of what Glass is capable of.

As we near the launch of Glass for consumers, the release of this development kit couldn't come at a better time. With it, developers gain access to previously-locked portions of Glass, such as advanced camera control, voice command access, gesture detection and more.

At the hackathon, where Google invited about 100 developers, the GDK was explored with the crowd, while developers who had early access to the GDK showed off their creations. A rather impressive demo of a Glassware app called 'Word Lens' was shown which translates text on-the-fly, and this, to me, is one of the coolest possible uses of glass, and it would be one of the few apps that would encourage me to get one.

A Google Glass game example

Other apps shown off include a hands-free cooking assistant and even some games. At this point, with the GDK being released soon, we're very early days, and the sky's the limit on what developers can do with Glass. I admit that I used to be one of those who wrote Glass off right away, and while I'm confident it's not a product I'd use that often, there are amazing advantages to it when equipped with the right apps.