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Will anyone create a killer app for Google Glass?

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Preeti
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Google invited developers to two "Glass Foundry" events recently to dream up the apps for its new Glass device.

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Last summer, Ian Shakil, then a recent graduate of Stanford business school, got to try on Google's head-mounted computing device, Glass, earlier than almost anyone outside the company.

Hanging out with some Google employee friends at San Francisco's Dolores Park, he put on a pair and decided he'd just glimpsed the future of computing. Shakil, who at the time was working as a consultant to MC10, a flexible electronics company, says, "I had that epiphany moment: I'd quit my job, and devote myself to creating a startup."

Completely new gadget categories aren't created very often. But when they are, they can disrupt existing businesses and create massive opportunities for new startups that build the killer apps for the new big thing. The shockwaves created by the iPhone and its App Store, for instance, are still being felt across the computer industry.

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It's uncertain whether Glass will have a similar impact, but Google is creating high expectations that it will become a mass-market device. While being secretive about certain key details, it intends to start selling Glass this year and has already been looking for outsiders' ideas that could help make the device a hit.

Last month, Google held two-day hackathons for selected developers in New York and San Francisco. (It had "Glass Foundry" attendees sign agreements to stay silent about their experiences.) It has also given early access to certain, but not all, developers of popular smartphone apps that could be a natural fit for Glass's tiny, head-worn, Android-powered display.

For instance, Evernote's CEO Phil Libin has had one in the office for awhile and says his company was among the earliest to get a pair. His company makes software that lets users save notes to themselves on their devices. But his team is still figuring out how to adapt its app for the device, he says. Makers of many other popular apps have yet to get access to the device.

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