Google Glass Concepts: What Is And What Could Be

Since Google’s recent unveiling of Google Glass, the product has continued to generate buzz among tech junkies and gadget hounds, all of whom are eager for the retail launch this Holiday season.

We know from Google’s demos, that turn-by-turn directions, language translation, social networking, and simple augmented reality functions will be available on the device when it launches. But what can we really expect from Google’s latest innovation? What will third-party developers come up with?

What we’ve already been shown:

For app developers, apps are made using the Mirror API, “a collection of RESTful web services” — distinct from Google’s other APIs such as its Android mobile developer application.

Jenny Murphy, Glass developer programs engineer, said, “If you’ve done any development with other Web services at Google, you’ll feel right at home developing on Glass.”

Google held a special hackathon, aka Google Foundry, on January 28 and 29, and again on February 1 and 2 to expose additional details about Google’s Mirror API to developers. Unfortunately, developers that attended the events are prohibited from sharing information unveiled at the hackathons, so it’s unlikely the general public will hear more about Mirror until the product has officially launched. But the secrecy hasn’t stopped excited fans from developing their own unique ideas for the Google product.

JetBlue recently released mock-ups of airport cues that could be a glimpse of additional features developed for Google Glass via Mirror.

And yet other fans have thrown together mock-ups of what they imagine we will likely see:

Here’s a rather risqué video from another fan (NSFW for language and some sexual innuendos):

And yet another video (strong NSFW for language):

So what can we really expect from Google Glass when it hits the market? Will it exceed our expectations, or fall flat on its back? I’m grabbing one either way… it’s what I do. Let us know in the comments below what features you would like to see available on Google Glass.