Google Glass Gets Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr Apps
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David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images(SAN FRANCISCO) — Google might have been mum on its much-buzzed-about glasses on day one of its big Google I/O Developer’s Conference, but on Thursday the company has announced a series of new Glass-based applications.
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Elle magazine all unveiled new applications for the connected glasses, which overlay digital information in the physical world. The Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr options all allow Glass wearers to share their photos on the respective social networks straight from the glasses.
While the Facebook app is restricted at the moment to just sharing photos taken with the glasses, Twitter allows for that feature and some other notification options. The app will also allow you to see Twitter notifications and respond to messages.
“In addition to sharing photos, you can also keep up with the people you follow on Twitter through notifications — for mentions, DMs and Tweets from users for whom you’ve turned on notifications. As always, you can reply to, retweet or favorite these Tweets,” Twitter engineering manager Shiv Ramamurthi said in a Twitter blog post Thursday.
ABC News tried out the Facebook and Twitter apps and can report that they did work as promised. We snapped a photo on the glasses, tapped it once to share and then we were able to select the social network to share it with. However, installing the sharing-based apps are a bit clunky at the moment. You must install the apps from the Glass app on the phone and then enable sharing in the Web-based Glass control panel.
The other new media apps like CNN and Elle are easier to get working. Similar to The New York Times app, both CNN and Elle show snippets of information from the respective publications. For instance, with the Elle app, users will receive text and photo-based updates throughout the day about fashion news.
Google Glass is not yet available for purchase; instead, Google has begun selling an Explorer Edition for $1,500 to early adopters and software developers. At this week’s Google conference the company is holding sessions teaching software makers how to make Glass applications, instructing developers about the software tools and suggesting the apps that aren’t too distracting.
Google told ABC News Wednesday it plans to bring its new Hangouts app and more social functionality from its Google Plus network to Glass sometime soon. Google Plus is already deeply integrated into Glass — you can share and see notifications from friends.
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