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First 'adult' app for Google Glass planned 'within days'
Mom warned it'll make you go blind
It had to happen. An app developer at the more risqué end of the market tells El Reg it has already started developing for Google Glass after getting its hairy palms on some of the new hardware and will have an application ready before the end of this week.
"We should have something out in a couple of days," MiKandi cofounder Jennifer McEwan told The Register. "Initially we are developing this for ourselves. Whenever new technology comes out we prefer to keep it simple that way. As we learn more about Glass we can build it into other applications."
MiKandi, which already has an app for Android and hosts an adult app store with over 7,000 software tools for your hardware, was at this year's Google I/O developer's conference, and has been trying out the newly-arrived kit to experiment with one of humanity's favorite types of media.
"It's not that Google Glass is just a camera – GoPro and others are already doing really good cameras – but Glass is more than that; it's a pretty awesome communications device," MiKandi CEO Jesse Adams told El Reg. "So you don't just use it for viewing content, but also for talking about it and sharing, letting people interact with media in totally new ways."
The Glass hardware could prove and instant hit with makers of point-of-view pornography (and El Reg is willing to bet plenty of salacious snaps and video have already been taken privately), and Adams said that it's conceivable that adult performers could sell subscription access to the feeds from their Glass headsets during working hours.
"Glass can also enhance a couple's foreplay by having messages read to you, or snippets of footage sent to you during the day by your partner," he said.
It's an often-quoted view that the pornography industry is one of the earliest adopters of new technology. Certainly the industry was key in ensuring the success of the VHS format and was in the vanguard of web payments and e-commerce. But McEwen explained this is no longer the case.
"The old adage that porn drives technology is not as big anymore, certainly not for the last ten years," she explained. "A lot of companies spent time and money developing mobile apps only to get burned when Apple threw them out of the iTunes store, and now the industry seems split 50/50 on new technology, with a prevailing 'wait and see' attitude."
Quite what Google will think of the ways the industry can use Glass remains to be seen. The company isn't quite as prudish as firms such as Apple, but the Glass terms and conditions are fairly tough in terms of what the Chocolate Factory will and won't allow, even banning the resale of headsets.
El Reg is still waiting for an official comment, but it seems highly unlikely that Mountain View hasn't considered the potential use of Glass in the adult world. While they may crack the whip and attempt to shut MiKandi down, this hack suspects the company might be a little more open-minded than their Cupertino competitors. ®