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Google Glass API Documentation

developers.google.com

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that wearable computers are over 30 years old right? See Steve Mann: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann

Can you go out and buy a pair at a store right now?

Can you go out and buy a reel-to-reel tape recorder at a store right now?

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#62
post #44

Look hopefully they'll improve on this a lot, but lets be honest, this API is pathetic. If there are significant technical (power, weight, etc) reasons why this is all that can be done, then they probably aren't ready for prime time. I'm trying to stay positive and imagine the future for this product is bright, but wow wow wow this is bad.

[deleted]

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#63
post #2

This is so exciting. Just how a completely new user experience paradigm was uncovered when high quality touch screen devices like iPhone etc. first launched, this is yet another milestone in how we will continue to interact with the petabytes of data that we as mankind have digitized. It's worth pondering how significantly new I/O devices change the game -- the first tty, the commercial keyboard & mouse, the touch sc…

> It's worth pondering how significantly new I/O devices change the game -- the first tty, the commercial keyboard & mouse, the touch screen, multi-touch trackpads, and voice activated smartphones. This comment actually explains my complete disinterest in Glass :) I don't see how voice-activated smartphones have changed the game yet, IMHO they're in the same league as Glass - "this might be worth it later" (especiall…

"What has changed my life was connectedness, and Glass does not do more than a smartphone in that area."

Yes it does. It completes the connection between what you see and the rest of your digital world. That's significant.

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#64
I'm hoping there's an easy 'be quiet' option. They're 100% right that apps shouldn't be spammy, but we additionally need a standardised option to mute or uninstall apps with a couple of swipes. It's the most walled garden ever, but for something like this with so much potential for spammer abuse, I think we need it. At least they'll be hackable.

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#65

I've been a Google Glass skeptic. But I just got back from Mexico, where I was walking all over waving my phone at various signs so Word Lens could translate them for me... skeptic no more! Word Lens is a killer app for the platform. Except now I see that there's no API to access the camera. Seems like a huge mistake.

No camera API access? That's ridiculous! Not only does it restrict about 70% of the possible usefulness of a head-mounted computer (so it's basically just a fancy news-feed display), but it'll allow competitors to move into the arena having a clear advantage. The only reason I see for Google to be doing this is resource allocation, but I feel like image processing could be offloaded to a linked smartphone, if necessa…

It looks like there will be one standard way to take photos, and you'll register an Intent to handle what you want to do with those photos (see 'Add a cat to that'). Considering people will be wearing these things 23/7, it's not unreasonable that they wouldn't give arbitrary apps shutter control right away.

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#66
post #7

I can't find any info on how to write a Glass app that actually interacts with the camera or does geolocation. Am I missing something?

You can get a user's geolocation ( https://developers.google.com/glass/location ). Couldn't find anything about the camera. However, the API doesn't seem to offer any way to run code on the actual device aka "apps".

It looks like the Mirror API allows you to register callbacks, like Android Intents, to handle events like 'position changed' or 'new photo'. They're really locking down user interaction on the device itself, probably due to processor power, and to keep the experience consistent. Not that I agree with them, but they definitely look afraid of getting a bad name if some devs produce crap - hence the very limited scope.

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#67

This is... pretty seriously disappointing, if it's supposed to be the whole thing (or close to the whole thing). I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're going to publish the rest later, and not deliberately hobbling it to prevent the public from getting creeped out by the hardware's capabilities.

There's no augmented reality, but from the docs it looks like you can stream audio and video to and from a service, maintain awareness of the users location whether they're using the app or not, and push interactive notifications. About all it's missing is a HUD, which will no doubt come as soon as the batteries can handle it.

Re: Google Glass API Documentation

#69
post #26

hm... only support for java and python. I hope they release a version for Go since it is Google's language.

To be clear, there are only example apps in Java and Python, but an assortment of client libraries are available.
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