Ever since Google launched its Google Glass project, the reality of wearable eyewear seems to be inevitable. Since then, developers from around the world have been trying to take on Google Glass by creating their own wearable display glasses. Instead of just being able take a photo or video, smart glasses have the potential to do so much more. With capabilities such as being able to integrate augmented reality with your own, feeding you live information during your activities, projecting images at a high resolution, and even letting you manipulate 3D objects with ease; it’s only a matter of time before smart glasses become a part of our daily lives.

With that in mind, take a look at our list of 10 forthcoming augmented reality & smart glasses that you can buy to have a look at the future of wearable gadgets. Most of these products are still in development but some are already available for pre-order. Have a look at the future of augmented reality and smart glasses.

Recommended Reading: 10 Hottest ‘Top-To-Toe’ Wearable Gadgets

1. CastAR

CastAR is comprised of two things, a pair of glasses and a surface for the glasses to scan. There’s a camera in the middle of the glasses that scans your surroundings. It then adjusts accordingly to project images through the two micro-projectors installed on top of the frames. No longer do you need to hold a screen and point it at an AR object. Just wear the glasses and the augmented world is right in front of you. This is a good attempt in bridging the physical and virtual world.

Part of what makes CastAR unique is the additional component called Magic Wand that helps you interact with the augmented world. The Magic Wand can also be used to move an augmented object in the augmented world thus allowing you to do something like play an augmented reality game. [$290-$765]

2. Moverio BT-200

The Moverio BT-200 is an augmented reality headset capable of watching HD contents (3D supported). It also enhances your augmented reality experience when using AR related apps. This headset comes with a front facing camera, a motion sensor, a built-in Dolby Digital Plus for sound, GPS, microphone, compass and projectors. It works by projecting images at a resolution of 960×540 to the transparent glasses, allowing you to watch videos, play games, navigate and plenty more without losing sight of the physical world.

Unlike most augmented reality glasses, instead of being wireless, it needs to be connected to an Android based device at all times. That’s where all the computing power comes from. This allows BT-200 to last for up to 6 hours with impressive specifications like a 1.2GHz dual core processor, 1GB RAM, the drivers for Dolby Digital and an Android system running on Ice Cream Sandwich. [$699]

3. Meta

Meta focuses on what Google Glass does not. It overlays augmented reality on top of your reality. Your gestures are identified by Meta to allow you to freely manipulate 3D objects, where you can basically treat it like a clay. Meta also gives you unlimited screens by just grabbing a piece of paper and playing a video onto that paper; turning it into a flexible computer screen of sorts.

It aims to give users the capability of being able to do full-fledged 3D modelling on the go, using nothing other than Meta itself. Its specs include motion tracking, 3D HD display, 3D surround sound, camera and quality lenses. [$667-$3650]

4. Vuzix M-100

This type of smart glasses will help in relaying information directly to you from a wearable monocular display, similar to that of Google Glass. Vuzix M-100 also comes with direct-onboard processing features plus a camera to help it capture and display augmented reality. However, its focus is for enterprise, commercial and medical applications.

Vuzix M-100 smart glasses is based on Android, therefore it is compatible with thousands of Android applications. It also includes the Nuance Communication speech-to-text software to help improve the M-100 voice dictation system. [$999]

5. Laster SeeThru

SeeThru claim to be the first genuine wireless augmented reality eyewear and instead of relying on a camera to gather information about your surroundings, it relies only on its own series of location plus a GPS to get things done. The Laster SeeThru is not equipped with a camera to avoid comments regarding invasion of privacy.

The SeeThru focuses almost entirely on sports and activities like biking, parachuting and yachting among other things. It helps navigate and gives live information whenever you’re doing such activities. SeeThru is packed with features like wireless & communication with smartphone, localization and navigation, head tracker, and contacts access from phone just to name a few. [$399]

6. Icis

These augmented reality glasses look like any normal glasses without any visibily big components such as a camera. But that doesn’t mean that Icis doesn’t come with a camera. In fact it does. It even comes embedded with other components such as speaker, microphone, battery, the circuit board and everything to make it look like normal eyewear.

Icis can easily be connected to smartphones running Android, iOS and Windows platform using a bluetooth connection. They’re planning on creating an app called socialFlo that allows you to select which apps you’d want to see present in Icis as widgets. [$220]

7. ORA-S

Optinvent ORA-S is a see through wearable display glasses that enables a variety of augmented applications. They even come with bigger and brighter resolution than that of a Google Glass. ORA-S features two mode when it comes to locating virtual images. The standard AR Mode lets you view images at 0 degree angle and the other is called Glance Mode that enables its user to view from a 20 degree angle. To activate them, all you need is to tilt the wearable display on the right side upwards to activate the standard AR Mode. T ilting it downwards enables the Glance Mode.

This AR glasses comes with specifications such as sound (through audio jack), microphone, orientation sensor, camera, WI-Fi, 1.2GHz dual core ARM Cortex microprocessor, 1GB DDR memory with 4GB Flash memory and its running on Android 4.2.2. Since it can be connected to your smartphone or tablet, ORA-S is a good hands-free wearable computer alternative. [$949]

8. GlassUP

There’s a general idea that most wearable computers with display are basically the second output for your smartphone or tablet devices. GlassUp wants to be just that. Unlike other products in this market niche, GlassUp only projects in monochrome instead of full color to improve its battery life duration. It also projects display into your field of vision making it easier to read your noticiations.

Some of the features that come with GlassUP range from sending out emails to reading RSS feeds. GlassUp can also be used in aiding the hearing impaired and even receive translations display when talking in different languages. It’s more than just a second output for your smartphone. [TBA]

9. Atheer One

Here’s another company that regards its augmented reality glasses as an accessory to your smartphone or tablet devices. The Atheer One smart glasses promotes natural interaction, where you can use hand gestures to control it. It consists of two displays for each eye almost equivalent to a 26-inch tablet being put in landscape right in front of your face.

Atheer One requires your Android device to function as it needs to leverage the 2D available in Google Playstore to be converted into a 3D environment. Because Atheer One displays 3D graphics right in front of your eyes, it’s better to interact with the graphics using your hands, as it feels more natural. [$500-$850]

10. K-Glass

K-Glass is a wearable hands-free display project thats similar to others but has a more unique technology to it. Unlike the others, K-Glass focuses on replicating the process of how our brains form our surroundings when it receives the information from our eyes. Using a technology called Visual Attention Modem (VAM), it categorizes relevant and irrelevant visual data, replicating the human brain’s ability.

This way K-Glass can give its user even more intelligent augmented reality. Hence, providing its user with present and relevant information. For example, you’re looking for something to eat and end up outside of some restaurant, K-Glass can prompt you with an overlay menu of that restaurants food. Therefore, you don’t have to waste time and effort in getting that information. [TBA]

Dribbble is a great community which houses graphic designers, mobile designers, illustrators, artists, typographers, and iconographers who are encouraged to share their best work and get feedback. It’s a great place to be inspired and a great source for fresh ideas. All the designs on Dribbble are properly selected and rated, so you can be sure that they’re high quality.

There are plenty of talented creative people on Dribbble worth following but here are my picks for the 10 best accounts of huge designers to follow on Dribbble. Some of them have even worked with Instagram, Dropbox, Nike, Google, and other giant trend-setting companies.

Recommended Reading: 80 Impressive Photography Portfolios And Photoblogs To Draw Inspiration From

For more sources of inspiration, check out:

• 20 Inspiring Instagrammers You Need To Follow
• 20 Beautiful UI & UX Designer Portfolios For Inspiration
• Designers: 20 Tumblr Blogs To Follow For Inspiration
• 80 Inspirational Design Portfolios To Bump Up Your Creativity

Mike | Creative Mints. Mike Creative Mints is a geek from Prague with 12 years of experience in web design. He creates eye-catching user-oriented designs that amaze you with colors and typography. Mike creates icons, websites, logos, games, applications, illustrations, and UIs. He is a real artist who creates sketches before the graphic mock up, so you can watch his full workflow on Dribbble.

Eddie Lobanovskiy. Eddie Lobanovskiy is a web designer from Sarasota, Florida. He graduated from The Art School of Baranovichi and has more than 16 years of experience in graphic design. Eddie is a founder of v5 Design studio, which has earned a few awards from Smashing Magazine, Design Awwwards, and Six Revisions. Currently, he runs a new project called Two Solids, which is focused on creating products for mobile platforms.

Dan Cederholm. Dan Cederholm is a web designer, author, and speaker from Salem, Massachusetts. He is a master in the field of standards-based graphic design. He has worked with giants such as YouTube, Microsoft, Google, MTV, ESPN, Electronic Arts, Blogger, and others. Moreover, Dan is a designer and co-founder of Dribbble, so this prominent person is really worth following.

Meagan Fisher. Meagan Fisher is a Brooklyn-based web designer who loves typography and textures. She is so obsessed with owls that even her personal website is called Owltastic. Her mission is to make the web a better place and it seems like she’s on the road to success. Despite her young age, Meagan has already worked with companies like Twitter and Change.org.

Tim Van Damme. Tim Van Damme is a lead web designer of Instagram. His current project is Dropbox. Tim is a great person to follow on Dribbble. He is a self-taught freelance designer living in San Francisco, California.

Justin Mezzell. Creative Designer and Illustrator, Justin Mezzell, dedicates his life to art. He designs magazines, albums, personal projects and is constantly learning new things. He currently lives in Orlando, Florida. Justin is a big fan of video games, science fiction, and nature documentaries. You can definitely see how his many passions influence his work.

Josh Hemsley. Josh Hemsley is a designer, father and husband. He’s worked with companies such as Nike, P.F. Changs, Coors, Taylor Guitars and NW Natural.

Michael Flarup. Michael Flarup is a designer based out of Copenhagen, Denmark. He specializes in logo, UI, and icon designs. He runs a one-man studio named PixelResort and is obsessed with pixels and details.

David Lanham. David Lanham is a designer from Greensboro, North Carolina. He’s always been passionate about the high contrast of nature and technology. Traditional and digital art help David to express himself and set his imagination free. He sells prints, toys, and stickers featuring his works.

Asher. Asher Abbasi is a Pakistan-based freelance web designer of icons and UIs for mobile apps. He is only 22 years old, but already has enough skills to make us jealous. Asher's perseverance and hardwork impresses and inspires. He is a self-taught designer and everything he knows he learnt from the web.

There are many usability advantages in using megamenu on a webpage. With megamenu, you can take full control over your menu. Almost all web elements can be assigned there. Some great companies have even applied megamenu into their website. Amazon and Mashable for example. Amazon have an image background in their menu and Mashable uses image thumbnails for a more attractive menu.

If you have been working with Bootstrap, now you can build a megamenu in a snap with this brand new library called Yamm from Geedmo.

Yamm3 (Yet Another Megamenu) is a CSS library to help you build a megamenu in Bootstrap 3 easily. The megamenu works for both responsive and fixed layouts. It covers almost all bootstrap elements to be included in the navbar like picture, accordion, list, grid, table, form and so on.

Recommended Reading: Working With Bootstrap Plugin: Modal Window

Basic Guide

Yamm3 uses lightweight and pure CSS. To get started with Yamm3, you only have to include the Yamm3 class you need into your standard navbar HTML markup.

Before working with Yamm3, the first step is to include the Yamm3 and Bootstrap stylesheet library into the head section as follows:

 <head> ... <link href="css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"> <link href="css/bootstrap-theme.min.css" rel="stylesheet"> <link href="css/yamm.css" rel="stylesheet"> ... </head> 

And don’t forget to also include the jQuery and Bootstrap library into your project, either in the head or body section, like so:

 ... <script src="js/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script> <script src="js/bootstrap.min.js"></script> ... 

Please note that we use Bootstrap 3 here and the minimum jQuery version required is version 1.9.0+. If you are still running on the previous Bootstrap version, we recommend following the guide of the previous Yamm version.

HTML Markup

In basic usage, to use Yamm3 firstly add .yamm class at the top of the navbar markup. Then, you can add your menu markup into the .dropdown-menu class. The following is a basic example.

 <nav class="navbar yamm navbar-default " role="navigation"> ... <ul class="nav navbar-nav"> <li class="dropdown"> <a href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">Dropdown</a> <ul class="dropdown-menu"> <li> <div class="yamm-content"> <div class="row"> <!-- Your Menu Goes Here --> </div> </div> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> ... </nav> 

As seen there, you can also use .yamm-content as an option to wrap content with padding.

For example, let’s try to add an accordion menu inside our markup navbar. Replace the Your Menu Goes Here comment with the following code.

 <div id="accordion" class="panel-group"> <div class="panel panel-default"> <div class="panel-heading"> <h4 class="panel-title"><a data-toggle="collapse" data-parent="#accordion" href="#collapseOne">Accordion Group Item #1</a></h4> </div> <div id="collapseOne" class="panel-collapse collapse in"> <div class="panel-body">This is collapsible menu.</div> </div> </div> <div class="panel panel-default"> <div class="panel-heading"> <h4 class="panel-title"><a data-toggle="collapse" data-parent="#accordion" href="#collapseTwo">Accordion Group Item #2</a></h4> </div> <div id="collapseTwo" class="panel-collapse collapse"> <div class="panel-body">This is collapsible menu.</div> </div> </div> </div> 

By calling the accordion id and using a panel-group class for grouping, you are able to create an accordion inside the navbar. And so our menu will look like the screenshot below:

There are plenty of other components you can add into the navbar. Self exploration of other components you can implement can be done if you download the Yamm3 complete archive and open the index.html file with your favourite code editor.

Javascript

There is an additional javascript code used for the prevention of an unexpected closed menu in some components like accordion, forms, etc. Just include the following code into your head or body section:

 <script> $(document).on('click', '.yamm .dropdown-menu', function(e) { e.stopPropagation() }) </script> 

Conclusion

Yamm3 is another great Twitter product to boost your Bootstrap’s development when building an attractive navbar. You just need a little effort in exploring all implementation components, as it lacks documentation support for creating various components menu.

Share your opinion with us in the comments section below.

Twitter is amongst the top social media platforms in the digital world that gives you news and even humorous content. Recently, it broke down for 20 minutes, thanks to the host of the 86th Academy Awards, Ellen Degeneres, when she took a group selfie with a few movie stars. That selfie is the most popular Tweet of all time with over 3 million Retweets and almost 2 million favourites.

Twitter is epic like that. It also allows you to do things like control your PC and now control smartphone apps with the help of CtrlTwit. By following @CtrlTwit and replying to a Tweet with a few commands and their selected #hashtags, you’ll be able to like posts on Instagram, subscribe to YouTube channels, find locations to eat on Foursquare and plenty of other things.

Recommended Reading: 40 Tools To Spice Up Your Twitter Background

How CtrlTwit Works

CtrlTwit is quite simple to use. First, follow their @CtrlTwit Twitter account .This account will be feeding you all the information that you’re looking for. To begin using it, just look for Tweets with apps that it supports. It currently supports apps like Instagram, YouTube, Dropbox, Pocket, Instapaper, Foursquare, and Meetup.

For example, when someone shares an Instagram post on Twitter, you can like it by simply replying to that person’s Tweet and typing in @instagram like #ctrltwit. CtrlTwit will then automatically use your Instagram account and like that picture for you.

@TheEllenShow @instagram like #ctrltwit

— Brian Voo (@brianvoo) March 5, 2014

@CtrlTwit will then Tweet you a confirmation saying that you’ve liked the selected Instagram picture. It will look something like this.

@brianvoo http://t.co/kScvHEPCGd been liked #ezv7

— CtrlTwit (@ctrltwit) March 5, 2014

Supported Apps

There are a few commands that you can use to your advantage on CtrlTwit. Here are all the supported apps and their corresponding commands with a description of what you can do with CtrlTwit.

Instagram

Replying @instagram like #ctrltwit to any Tweet with an Instagram photo automatically likes the photo using your Instagram account.

Using @instagram comment [your comment] #ctrltwit will add a comment to that following Instagram picture that you reply to. The only limitation here is that you still have to follow Twitters 140 character limit, so your comment can’t be that lengthy.

You can also instantly follow someone on Instagram through a Tweet by replying @instagram follow #ctrltwit to a Tweet that has an Instagram link.

YouTube

When someone Tweets about a YouTube video and provides a link, you can instantly Subscribe to that video’s YouTube channel by replying @youtube subscribe #ctrltwit.

@shaharsol awesome @youtube subscribe #ctrltwit

— orensol (@orensol) December 25, 2013

Dropbox

You can also check how much Dropbox space you have left. Simply Tweet CTRL @dropbox how much space left? #ctrltwit and @CtrlTwit will reply you with the amount of storage space you’ve used and how much you have left.

@shaharsol you have 72.60GB left out of 102.00GB in your Dropbox account #bgm9

— CtrlTwit (@ctrltwit) December 19, 2013

Foursquare

On Foursquare, you can do two things using CtrlTwit. You can check in anywhere using Foursquare by Tweeting CTRL @foursquare check in at [name of place] #ctrltwit without using the brackets. So your tweet should look something like CTRL @foursquare check in at McDonald’s #ctrltwit.

You can also ask Foursquare to suggest a place nearby to eat at. Just Tweet CTRL @foursquare where to eat? #ctrltwit. @CtrlTwit will then give you a location that’s near the detected Tweet location.

@shaharsol go to Puaa (בןעה) a Café at 8 Rabbi Yohanan St., Jaffa Flea Market, Tel Aviv #w73f

— CtrlTwit (@ctrltwit) December 19, 2013

Evernote

It also works for Evernote where you can save links to any Evernote notebook of your choice. You do this by replying to a Tweet that has a link and then adding @evernote add to [notebook name] #ctrltwit.

@hongkiat @evernote add to Inspiration #ctrltwit

— Brian Voo (@brianvoo) March 5, 2014

Meetup

If someone Tweets a Meetup event, you can RSVP to it by replying to them and then adding @meetup rsvp yes/no/maybe #ctrltwit at the end.

@orensol cool, thx! @meetup rsvp yes #ctrltwit

— Shahar Solomianik (@shaharsol) December 24, 2013

Pocket

You can also automatically save links that people Tweet to the ‘read later’ app, Pocket, by replying to that tweet and adding @pocket save #ctrltwit to it.

@hongkiat @pocket save #ctrltwit

— Brian Voo (@brianvoo) March 5, 2014

Instapaper

If your preferred ‘read later’ app is Instapaper instead, you can add links in Tweets to your Instapaper account by replying to that Tweet and adding @instapaper later #ctrltwit.

Final Thoughts

CtrlTwit will definitely help the Twitter addict who just can’t seem to catch up with all the content. Do note that CtrlTwit would need access to apps that you choose to use it with. Therefore, using the above commands for the first time would result in them asking you for authorization.

@brianvoo please complete this one-time authorization process with Twitter and foursquare to proceed http://t.co/NwBob50kgs #1mtj

— CtrlTwit (@ctrltwit) March 5, 2014

However, after that one-time authorization request, you’re all set and ready to use CtrlTwit. There’s more room for other apps to come into play, it’s just a matter of time before it supports all your favourite smartphone apps.