Free Mobile Apps!

Within hours you could be distributing your first free company mobile application. App-Inventor is one such development tool that will assist you in achieving this goal. To get you started Google have provided a number free of online tutorials (Google-Tutorials 2011), they also include a downloadable emulator so that you do not need to own an Android smart phone to start developing today.  Accessing your smart phone’s sensors (GPS/Tilt/Touch screen/Text-to-speech/etc) has never been so simple.  App building is not limited to simple games, you can also build apps that inform and educate your own staff, existing customers and potential new customers. To use App-Inventor, you do not need to be a professional developer, because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the App looks and use blocks (block editor) to specify the App's behavior.

App-Inventor is simple to use, but also very powerful. The block development method  permits back end database connectivity and use without the need for specialist script writing, and because App Inventor provides access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build Apps that know where you are, or guide you to a location.  App-Inventor also provides a way for you to communicate directly with the web or specific web sites. 

What Google have to say: “In creating App Inventor for Android, we're fortunate to be able to draw upon significant prior research in educational computing, and work done in Google on online development environments.   The educational perspective that motivates App-Inventor holds that programming can be a vehicle for engaging powerful ideas through active learning. As such, it is part of an ongoing movement in computers and education that began with the work of Seymour Papert and the MIT Logo Group in the 1960s” (Google 2011)

An alternative to App-Inventor is Eclipse (Eclipse 2011).  A tutorial for developing an Android application using Eclipse can be found on the Vogella website (Vogella 2011)

Please Note: Google will end support for App-Inventor on 31^st December 2011, it is making the source code publicly available under an open source license. In order to ensure the future success of App-Inventor, Google has funded the establishment of a Center For Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab. Public access similar to that which is currently offered will be available in the first quarter of 2012 (MIT 2011)

References

Google 2011, App-Inventor <online> http://www.appinventorbeta.com/about/moreinfo/

Google-Tutorials 2011, App-Inventor <online> Http://www.appinventorbeta.com/learn/tutorials/index.html

Eclipse 2011, Eclipse <online> http://www.eclipse.org

Vogella 2011, Android App <online> http://www.vogella.de/articles/Android/article.html#first

MIT 2011, Mobile Learning <online> http://mobilelearning.mit.edu
http://www.talkandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Google-App-inventor.png?54b313