Over the past week or so, during the limited free time I've had, I've put together my first Google Glass App. It is a fairly simple application that sends a bundled deck of timeline cards to your Google Glass. It is similar to how the New York Times app sends a bunch of articles, or several emails, birthday notifications, or other bits of information are bundled. Look for the white triangle in the upper right corner of the card.

I started the project simply to learn my way around writing apps in Glass. I chose to use PHP since it is the language I'm most comfortable with to program webpages. I started by downloading the Mirror Quick Start code for PHP from Google and making small modifications to it.

My initial thought was to create a tool that I could use for doing presentation. The goal would be to use the Glass app as a PowerPoint replacement. I often mirror what I'm seeing in Glass to my smartphone. I've found this useful in demonstrating Glass. I've thought it would be nice to build a presentation in Glass and then run through it, showing what is on the smartphone screen. Ideally, either hooking the smartphone up directly to a projector, or sharing it to a computer connected to a projector.

As I got the app a little further developed, I started thinking more generally about ways a deck of Timeline cards could be used. I've used my app to load a recipe that I can follow while cooking. I've used it to load a poem. I've used it to load a todo list.

Getting started was fairly easy. I started with the The Google Mirror API Developer Preview. I used the sample apps on that page, and then started my open application.

First, I created my project at the Google API Console. I selected Create… on the menu on the left to create my project. I turned on the Glass Mirror API in the Services section. I requested OAuth permission and went to the API Access section to create a Client ID for the web application.

I then downloaded the PHP code using GIT:

git clone https://github.com/googleglass/mirror-quickstart-php.git

I changed the config.php section to use the API key information from the API Access section of the Google API Console and started hacking. I read different parts of the code and started making small changes. When I got a better sense of what could be done, I started making larger changes. Glass Explorers are welcome to test out the app, and provide feedback. Beginner Glass Developers who want more information are welcome to contact me directly.

You can see the app at Glass Deck