To build apps that can run directly on the Google Glass itself, the users will have to wait a little bit longer. Glass Development Kit (GDK), a software dev toolkit is soon going to be released by Google.
Developers looking out for exploring the full range of functionality that Google Glass provides certainly know that Google haven’t exactly shown them all the details. The best alternative seems to be is designing a web-based service, Glassware, as described by Google. It should interact with Google Glass via limited cloud-based APIs.
Playground’s Dave Senior writes, “The platform itself is a RESTful-based API meant for sending small messages of push data. Video, picture, audio, and text linked from HTML/CSS formatted messages are sent via a web service request to the Google Glass Mirror API. The API is not for developing true native applications.”
According to a new Google+ post from the Glass Developer Relations Team, “Developers are now being encouraged to design and develop your awesome ideas via the current Android SDK while waiting for the official GDK to hit the Web.”
“Glass is built on the Android 4.0.4 platform, so you can write APKs using the standard Android SDK (API Level 15) and sideload them onto Glass. The Android SDK provides you with a wide range of APIs to do things such as access the low-level hardware, render OpenGL, use stock Android UI widgets, and much more. You can even use the Android NDK to develop. When we launch the GDK, we’ll also update these samples to show the migration path from a traditional Android app to a full Glass experience.” reads Google’s description on its Glass Development Kit webpage.
Those new to Android or Google Glass can benefit from some of the sample APKs that Google has provided – Compass, Level, and Stopwatch apps.
However, GDK release date hasn’t been finalised as yet.