First Taste of Google App Inventor

Two weeks ago, I finally got my long waited invite for Google App Inventor. Immediately I plugged in my Nexus One to my computer and start off fooling around with App Inventor.

The set up procedure is pretty easy and simple, following the on-site instruction, it took me a few minutes to get the program installed and set up from my PC. However there is a catch, your phone driver may not necessary be installed together with the package and hence you *may* need to install it manually by yourself afterward. It's a smooth and easy process, so no need to panic.

Once I had set up everything, I then follow the tutorial and implement my first Android App - "Hello Purr".

The App Inventor itself basically is a cloud platform that's driven by Java technology. The App Inventor has 2 major screen, the Design view and the Blocks view. 

Design view is more like a WYSIWYG editor, you can see a dummy phone screen, user can place in (drag-and-drop) different components like images / sound / social widgets / buttons etc (from the left). You cannot implement / set any actions for any of these components just yet, instead user will be able to update the color and font size (for text). Under the Block view, that's where user can create actions and interactions for the components (that they had dragged in under Design view).

Design View

Block view

Google made it very easy and simple for the user to interact with the components. As you can see from above, user does not need to know anything about programming, instead the Block editor is more like puzzle and blocks that allow user to place in 'actions' for each component. This action is very similar to pseudo code programming instead of real programming. You will not need to know any if / else statement nor for / while loop, instead you simply drag and drop blocks together and it works as expected !

Once you are happy with your creation, user can use App Inventor to package their (own creation) app and store on the user's phone (via the 'Package to Phone' button on the top right of the Design view). App inventor made the Android app creation really simple and handy. Since I just got on the first tutorial, as a result I yet to explore the other components like social media widgets, sharing & Sensors like Acceleromenter and LocationSensor etc. 

In short, using App Inventor to create Android App is more like using DreamWeaver to create your HTML page. You do not need to know in depth of how things work nor knowing Java language, yet you can still create a very decent Android app. Some people doubt about the ability of the App Inventor, my suggestion will be give it a try and see it yourself.

Rebirth

It had been a long while since my last post. Due to the lack of time, and the move from the West to the East, there was a point that I was thinking to close down this blog. Anyways here I am back in action.

Since the move back in Jan, I am now in Hong Kong, fun and energize city. There are also tones of interesting technologies around town as well.

These days I am in love with Android and I purchased a Nexus One online back in January. Personally I am not an apple fans at all, and that's one of the reason I am heading for an Android phone.  Throughout the past 7 months, I can see the Android community is growing larger and larger and it is being recognized by the general public, as a result Android is now the top selling smartphone OS @ US. In Asia people now have more knowledge about what Android is and are getting adopt to the Android system as well.

Android on smartphone is now similar to Windows on PC, you can install the OS almost under any brand name's device, mean while iOS you will still need to relay on Apple to provide specific hardware in order for the OS to run on the device. This is a very interesting trend and to be quite honest, am a bit sad for Apple, but don't forget does not matter how the next generation iPhone looks like, there are always bunch of Apple fans around the globe waiting and wish to purchase the device.