Google App Inventor Aims to Let Anybody Easily Create Android Apps

Google has a new Google Labs project designed to let anybody (as in non-developers) create Android Apps. The project is called App Inventor.

While in beta status, App Inventor could become a huge factor in Android growth, should it find semi-mainstream use. If you can get people of all ages creating any kinds of apps they want with little to no friction, Android becomes a much more personalized platform for mobile phone users (not to mention eventually tablets, TVs, etc.).

"To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer," explains Google. "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 behavior."

Google has a gallery of sample apps created with the App Inventor available here. You can also check out App Inventor in action in the following clip:

Again, this is in beta and the true potential of this remains to be seen, but the concept has enormous implications. Simplification often leads to wider adoption. Look at what blogging platforms did for online content creation. Look at what Twitter is doing for news consumption (essentially what RSS has been doing for years). If people have a simple way to create apps quickly that can be used by users of any Android devices, they are probably going to take advantage, and those apps will get users, and inspire more app creation.

It will be very interesting to see how this develops, what kinds of spam control are implemented, and how Android competitors react.

Google says it will be granting access to App Inventor over the coming weeks. There is a form here where you can request access.

There are 4 Comments. Add Yours.

Cool
July 13, 2010 at 2:48 pm

ParkIt is really good. Interesting application and I try create a quiz.
- Needed
  July 13, 2010 at 3:36 pm
  
  This is what is needed. OK we will get a lot of bad apps, and even hacking, spywear and viruses, etc, but…
  
  Sometimes there will be a touch of Genuis. This is similar to Patents, just take a look at all those Pointless Inventions… but the we get the lightbulb
  
  Mobile Phone Programming Mobile Code. Programming Phones
T-Shirts
July 14, 2010 at 5:23 am

This is a great idea, I’ve thought about apps and how I would love to be able to develop them. The problem is the steep learning curve, I would have to spend a lot of time learning with no real results to show. With this it will get a lot of people interested, most will give up but some will carry on, develop a rubbish application first, but they are rewarded by having a working pplication that THEY made on their phone, this will encourage them to make more useful well designed apps. When the limitations of Appinventor become evident to them they will be encouraged to learn more and go beyond Appinventor.

This is how I started building websites, first used Frontpage (yeah yeah I know) which enabled me to make a rubbnish web page, but at least I had a result I had something to show for my work, the limitations became clear quite quickly so it encouraged me to learn HTML properly.
Tom Zurinskas
July 14, 2010 at 1:31 pm

I’m thinking of a way to use phonetic spelling (truespel) and shortcut spelling (zipspell) to bring up correct spelling. It could work like autocorrect in Word. Is there a way to do this ap. Requires uploading a list of entry words and corresponding target words.

Phonetical method – enter ~nee and it returns “knee”
Shortcut method – enter ~respy and it returns “responsibility”

Solves two problems. 1 Finding spelling from pronunciation. 2. zippy typing speed by shortening long words. (also unzipped words have no typos, so are more accurate)