Ina Fried

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Support for Facebook, Twitter and Video Streaming Coming to Google Glass, With New Tools on the Way

Facebook and Twitter are among a new array of partners that announced on Thursday that they have built or are building apps for Glass, Google’s high-tech eyewear.

Facebook is building an app that allows photos taken on the glasses to be shared directly to the social network. Twitter is doing the same, as well as allowing access to send and receive tweets.

“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,” Twitter said in a blog post. “As always, you can reply to, retweet or favorite these Tweets.”

Other partners include Evernote, CNN and Tumblr.

Google also said on Thursday that it is preparing a broader set of tools for developers to write software for Glass.

So far, Google has released a relatively limited programming interface, known as the Mirror API. During a technical session on Thursday, though, Google said it is working on a broader Glass Development Kit.

“We’re actively building it,” said developer advocate Timothy Jordan, speaking to a crowd of developers that filled the main room and an overflow room, and even spilled into beanbag chairs in an impromptu viewing area in the Moscone West lobby.

The developer kit is essentially similar to developing for Android, Jordan said, with some specifics tailored to the Glass hardware.

As for whether there is going to be an app store for Glass, Jordan noted that things are still in the early developer preview phase, but said, “We’re definitely going to have something.”

Google also announced Thursday that it will start supporting video streaming to Glass. Previously, Google had only talked about support for short video clips to be shown on the eyewear.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik