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Editorial: 鈥�Like it or not, this is the age of ubiquitous computing鈥�

READY to wear a computer on your face? Google thinks you are. The company鈥檚 seeks to bring wearable computing into the mainstream 鈥� but what will the average person do with it? There are , but a sneak peek at some of the first Glass apps gives a glimpse of how useful the device might be.

Glass debuted in May last year at Google鈥檚 annual developer conference, Google I/O, but it was only last month that designers and developers finally got their hands on the device. At the latest I/O, held in San Francisco last week, Google to come up with exciting new uses.

Glass consists of a fingertip-sized transparent prism display that sits at the top right corner of a user鈥檚 field of vision. This prism is attached to a body housing a camera, eye movement sensors, a touch-sensitive sidebar and a number of other sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope and compass. It has Wi-Fi and can be paired with a smartphone via Bluetooth to access things like GPS or data over a 3G or 4G connection.

So far, the apps that come with Glass simply adapt familiar online activities, like emailing or taking pictures with a voice command. Other official apps come from third parties, like

But as developers who have tried the device are discovering, Glass is about more than just adapting familiar activities to a new interface. Nelson Blaha, a web developer in Dallas, Texas, has had Glass for about three weeks now. He says it is perfect for subtly adding context to the background of one鈥檚 normal activities.

Blaha鈥檚 BirdsForGlass app displays pictures of and information about birds that have been sighted near a Glass-wearer鈥檚 location. It draws on Cornell University鈥檚 eBird birdwatching database, which collects sightings from all over the US. 鈥淚f you had to use a birdwatching book, you鈥檇 have to go through all the species that may not be in the area at the time,鈥� says Blaha. 鈥淏ut something like this uses your location to keep track of what birds are likely to be around you at that moment.鈥� Users are also able to look up a bird鈥檚 entry without taking their eyes off the bird itself 鈥� impossible with a book or smartphone.

Other Glass apps adapt and enhance familiar smartphone tasks. For example, a program called , created by Boston-based developer , lets users share images online, then receive feedback from their friends directly in the Glass display. This kind of interaction is more cumbersome on a phone, says Johnson. With Glass, the camera is always out and ready, and the Glassnost app shows comments as they come in.

Johnson thinks this might change the way we use photo-sharing services. 鈥淪ay you鈥檙e at a store and you want friends to help you decide whether or not to buy something, you can push photos to the web and get feedback very quickly,鈥� he says.

Another app, called ThroughGlass, developed by Los Angeles-based engineers Andrew Skotzko and Drew Baumann brings this kind of 鈥渁lways on鈥� social networking to Facebook users. It allows users to take photos and videos with Glass, upload them to Facebook and update their status using voice recognition, as well as 鈥渓ike鈥� their friends鈥� posts.

鈥淵ou think your phone is always with you? Try putting on a pair of glasses that are connected to the internet,鈥� says Skotzko.

鈥淭hink your phone is always with you? Try putting on a pair of glasses that are connected to the internet鈥�

Glass also makes activities that you would not want to do with a smartphone more desirable, such as facial recognition. It would be embarrassing to hold up your smartphone camera to try to identify someone who you鈥檙e not sure whether you鈥檝e met before. But an app for doctors called , developed by Lance Nanek in New York is more subtle. It takes a photo, then uploads it to an online analysis and recognition service called . This matches the picture against the faces of previous patients and, if it recognises it, serves up medical information about the person.

Until last week, Google gave app developers no option but to use a programming interface called Mirror, which did not give access to the camera or other sensors. Some found a way around this by putting Glass in a special mode that allows it to be programmed just like any device that runs Google鈥檚 Android operating system. Now Google has told all developers how to do this hack, which opens up the possibilities. In this way, developer Mike DiGiovanni created an app called Winky that allows Glass wearers to take pictures with a wink rather than a voice command.

鈥淎n app called Winky allows Google Glass wearers to take pictures just by winking鈥�

Investors are taking an interest. A start-up incubator called and a venture-capital fund called were recently founded to support companies developing Glass apps.

With greater control over the device, developers are more likely to hit on a killer app. DiGiovanni thinks there will be many. 鈥淓veryone doing a job probably has something that would benefit from them having a lightweight hands-free device always on them,鈥� he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭ime to raise a Glass鈥�