Google Announces Project Glass Developer Events

Although Google Glass has been touted by the search giant as something of an experiment, recent activity suggests that the product is a very strategic part of Google's immediate future. The Google Glass team announced an upcoming event designed to jumpstart application development for the device via its Mirror API.

Project Glass staffers this week unveiled the Glass Foundry, which will offer developers who signed up for the Glass Explorers program last year early access to the device and its developer tools.

Glass Foundry will be held in San Francisco on Jan. 28 and 29 and in New York City on Feb. 1 and 2. If you are a developer enrolled in the Glass Explorers program, you must register for a Foundry event by Jan. 18 at 4 p.m. Pacific time.

In an email to those developers, Google said it will "begin the first day with an introduction to Glass. You'll have a device to use while on-site. Next we'll take a look at the Mirror API, which gives you the ability to exchange data and interact with the user over REST. we'll then dive into development with Google engineers on site to help you at any point. At the end of the second day we'll have a lively round of demos with some special guest judges."

According to the Glass team, developers will be able to use a range of programming languages including PHP, Python, and Java to develop tools for the device via REST (Representational State Transfer).

The $1,500 Project Glass Explorer Edition made its debut at the Google I/O developer conference last year. Only U.S.-based I/O attendees were allowed to order the glasses, which are scheduled to ship early this this year.

Google first tipped Project Glass in April 2012. The glasses let you get texts, emails, music, weather, and more beamed directly to your field of vision. The concept device puts your smartphone into a pair of slim glasses and projects its contents for some futuristic, voice-activated fun.