Mindgrub now developing for Google Glass, smart watches and more

Google Glass is still in the invitation-only “Explorer” phase, which means they’re not available for retail yet. But local web, mobile and game development agency Mindgrub Technologies — which recently announced it’s relocating its Catonsville headquarters into Baltimore city — is already developing two projects for Glass.
“It’s early-adopter stuff,” said Mindgrub founder and CEO Todd Marks. “Lots of people from a marketing perspective want it. Physicians are clamoring for this stuff — they’re all over Google Glass.”
Both are business-to-business projects: one is an app for a surgeon, and the other is an app for a company that make products for firefighters.
Mindgrub started developing apps for Glass when Google released the Glass API earlier in 2014, but Glass isn’t the only piece of wearable technology the company is now developing for. After seeing wearable tech on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Marks directed Mindgrub to expand its business into multiple types of wearable technology that are based on the Android operating system.
The company’s research division, Mindgrub Labs, is creating applications for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch and working with a New York City company to create a gamified platform for the Fitbit fitness wristband so employees can compete against one another to see who’s living a healthier lifestyle.
For Marks, who says his company of 42 full-timers and around eight part-timers is the “biggest Android developer in the area,” making applications for different types of wearable tech now is just an extension of Mindgrub’s philosophy to be ahead of the curve in the technology industry. The same mindset pushed Mindgrub into creating a separate gaming division in fall 2012 to focus specifically on producing mobile games.
“We’re a technology innovation agency,” he said. “We see what the next top technology would be, [and] start doing development in our labs group.”