At a Glass hackathon in San Francisco, Google unveiled something that’ll get app developers really excited – the Glass Development Kit (GDK).  The Glass Development Kit is a whole new set of tools that allows developers to create Glassware, which are native and web apps created especially for Google Glass, that matches the feature set of Google’s own apps.

Back in April, Google made its Glass Mirror API available for developers to help them get started in app development for Google Glass.  It was met with some great animosity as it posed great challenges and obstacles for developers, such as they are not allowed to “serve or include any advertisements in your API Client,” “use user data from your API Client for advertising purposes,” “sell or transmit any user data received from your API Client(s) to a third-party ad network or service, data broker, or other advertising or marketing provider,” “be used for Third-Party Ad Serving (“3PAS”).”  Aside from that, apps developed using the Glass Mirror API are web-based, and have limited functionality.

Timothy Jordan, Google’s senior development advocate, was the one who finally unveiled GDK at the hackathon and highlighted what makes it different from the Mirror API. Jordan stated that apps developed under GDK can function offline, get real-time user responses without pinging the cloud, access the Glass hardware directly and take advantage of its built-in gyroscope and GPS, and made it so that Android developers will have no trouble using it.

Google “worked really hard to make sure that if you’re an Android developer, developing for Glass would feel natural,” Jordan stated.

Aside from that, GDK will allow the development of apps that features live cards and provide an immersive experience.

Though this will not be available for months, there is a GDK sneak peek now available for developers, plus some apps created using GDK were also introduced, such as Word Lens, which allows you to translate words just by looking at them through your Glass.  The first game for Glass was also introduced. Spellista is a spelling game that uses the Glass’ gyroscope and accelerometer to track your head movements and let you spell words based on the letters you look at or even let the user build their own custom levels.  The new Strava app for Glass makes use of the new live card view which makes your activity information readily available.  Another app is the All The Cooks app, which allows the user to see various food recipes with their Glass, making cooking and checking recipes a more natural activity, instead of going to the counter to check your cookbook or iPad for the recipe.

As for the new immersive experience, previously swiping and tapping will just allow you to navigate your Glass menu.  But with these new apps, the gestures you’ve learned can now be used to better navigate within apps.

The mentioned apps above may not be something really useful for people, or not something people will use everyday, but these apps show that there is a lot of room for developing apps that can truly be useful for Glass users on a daily basis.