Timothy Jordan, Google’s senior developer advocate for Glass, ran Gmail, Evernote and The New York Times apps on the augmented reality eyewear in a demonstration held at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. There was also technical presentation which covered some guidelines and code involved in Glass apps development.
Glass apps center around the use of “timeline cards” which are similar to cards on Android devices running Google Now. The timeline cards may be of text, images, videos or “bundles” of expandable data that contains multiple timeline cards. Jordan advised developers to build apps specifically for Glass rather than porting existing apps from tablets as the key to good Glass apps is to make them as unobtrusive as possible.
Jordan demonstrated the New York Times app which delivers new headlines with an image and byline to the user and the option to have Glass read it out. Gmail works similarly with a subject line and photo of the sender showing on the display. Message can be replied to via dictation. Evernote shows similar basic functionality in addition to the ability to handle and share photos and other media. Google says that Glass will be available for consumers to purchase by the end of this year.
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