Google have just announced their new App Inventor for Android website which they claim can let anyone make apps for the Android mobile platform.
Currently in beta, Google say that users will be granted access to the App Inventor “over the coming weeks.”
To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behaviour.
The software code is written by the App Inventor software, while users are able to select what options they’d like included in their app using ‘blocks.’
These can be used for “just about everything you can do with an Android phone, as well as blocks for doing “programming-like” stuff– blocks to store information, blocks for repeating actions, and blocks to perform actions under certain conditions.”
Simple but Powerful!
App Inventor is simple to use, but also very powerful. Apps you build can even store data created by users in a database, so you can create a make-a-quiz app in which the teachers can save questions in a quiz for their students to answer.Because App Inventor provides access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build apps that know where you are. You can build an app to help you remember where you parked your car, an app that shows the location of your friends or colleagues at a concert or conference, or your own custom tour app of your school, workplace, or a museum.
You can write apps that use the phone features of an Android phone. You can write an app that periodically texts “missing you” to your loved ones, or an app “No Text While Driving” that responds to all texts automatically with “sorry, I’m driving and will contact you later”. You can even have the app read the incoming texts aloud to you (though this might lure you into responding).
App Inventor provides a way for you to communicate with the web. If you know how to write web apps, you can use App Inventor to write Android apps that talk to your favorite web sites, such as Amazon and Twitter.
Here’s what you need
To get going with App Inventor, users will need just a Gmail account, a computer and an Android-based handset, and then fill in this form.
To help them create a killa app, the site serves up useful suggestions, including options to use the handset’s GPS function for location-based shenanigans, knock out quick games like WhackAMole , build quiz apps and tools to build apps that link to other services, such as Twitter.
Here’s a video to explain how it all works. Complete with a purdy little puddy tat.
Easier than the iPhone
Google’s new App Inventor should give just about anyone the tools to easily knock out software designed specifically for their own needs, and will make the process considerably easier than on the rival iPhone platform.
For iPhones, users need comparatively advanced software developer skills to create apps for the platform, and then they have to wait to see if Apple’s sometimes bewildering vetting process will premit their app to be distributed.
There’s an awful lot we don’t like about Apple’s censorial policies, but it does prove an effective barrier against malicious code. Google have yet to announce what safeguards will be in place for the App Inventor program.
