The winners of Google's IfIHadGlass contest can expect their Explorer Edition of Glass sooner rather than later, as a spokesman for Google confirms to ABC News that the company is rolling out the hands-free device to winners quickly.
"This month Google hopes to ship Glass Explorer Edition, designed for the first people to examine the potential uses of Glass...Developers can tinker with Glass and consumers can try it out in the real world."
Google recently informed the 8,000 winners of the contest that they had won, and will be able to buy Glass long before anyone else for $1,500. Winners of the contest included several celebrities, such as How I Met Your Mother actor Neil Patrick Harris and filmmaker/ reality tv star Kevin Smith.
In addition, Google Ventures has partnered with venture capitalist firms Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in creating the "Glass Collective" program, aimed at starting the development of applications for Glass. Marc Andreessen had this to say in a blog post
"All of us involved in the Glass Collective are absolutely certain that developers are going to create thousands of ways for millions of people to use Glass and improve their lives and the world around them..."
Hopefully the Glass Collective is able to start bringing apps to the Glass soon, so that people with the Explorer version of Glass will have some apps to play around with during the time they exclusively own the device. Google is expected to release Glass to the public sometime later this year, for a lower price than $1,500, though the exact details are still unknown at this point.
With the first 8,000 copies of Glass on their way soon, and a new program to develop apps for the device in progress, we should soon be getting first-hand information about the Glass from the winners of the contest, and will be able to see how people use the innovative device to create unique apps.