Hello, rest of the web! Zapier brings more than 200 services to Glass
While the Mirror API makes for a solid development backbone, creating new apps and services for Google Glass has been solidly restricted to developers capable of writing and hosting services to access it. Now, thanks to Zapier, everyday users can can extend Glass functionality with access to more than 200 web services, and the ability to create custom actions and bundles within the Glass timeline.
To get started, you simply sign up for their free service, and then begin building actions, which couldn’t be simpler:
To add Glass, you’ll have to connect your account, which will trigger a familiar screen:
Once you’ve added your Glass account to Zapier (along with any of the other web services you’d like to use), it can be set as either a triggering service or a receiving action. Pick your trigger on the left and your action on the right. In this graphic provided by Zapier, they’re setting up a function to save Glass photos to DropBox:
After setting your trigger and action (which pull available sub-options from the service selected), you’re taken to a screen which allows you to configure how your action works:
Setting actions to create new timeline cards is as easy as selecting Glass in your action:
…and then configuring how the timeline card will appear. This configuration screen allows you to select from existing actions within the Glass timeline, and to use either plain text or HTML to layout your display.
In this “Zap” (Zapier’s name for configured actions), when a new file is added to the target directory, a timeline card is generated which includes the file name:
The list of services includes a handful marked as “Premium”, indicating they’re only available under the paid service, and the free membership is limited to 5 Zaps and 100 Tasks, one of which is used each time a Zap is triggered (although they’ve gamified the service a bit by offering bonus tasks for a series of actions in-site, including setting up Zaps and sharing your configured actions).
For those who find Zapier useful enough to pay for Premium service, the pricing is reasonable, with most users coming in around $15 per month and hefty jumps in the provided Tasks and Zaps for those who want everything on the internet notifying them at all times.
The supported service list is also impressive, with all of the standard Google web services showing, along with popular services such as DropBox, PayPal, EventBrite, SalesForce, and more.
(click for full size)
While Glass developers will continue to build out robust apps customized per service, Zapier founder Mike Knoop believes end users are ready for a quantum leap forward now:
“The biggest thing I’d like to stress is that Glass is now in the hands of non-developers. Previously, only developers could make Glass better. With Zapier, anyone in the Explorer program can extend Glass to make it do awesome things. I’m looking forward to seeing the creative use cases people come up with!”
If our early experimentation is any judge, Glass users will do just that.
Have you set up a cool zap you want to share? Tell us about it in the comments below!
UPDATE: Here are 100 free tasks!
Mike Knoop emailed us and said that if you use this link, you’ll get 100 free tasks: http://zpr.io/kjS