App Inventor for Android

[HappinessNow]

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend's faces. You can even make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

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 behavior.http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Any non-programmers out there try building an Android App using this yet?

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

At the risk of necromancy, yes, am a non-programmer developing an app for Android driven tablet devices, for use by children who are non verbal and with severe learning difficulties. It's a challenge for all of us!!

[earthpigg]

At the risk of necromancy, yes...

well, im glad you did. been playing with that for an hour or so :P

[kaspar_silas]

I just thought I would throw in my 2 cents for any starting app developers.

I used the Processing.org path which is somewhat between App-inventor and the full ellipse way. It does require some coding but the coding is massively simplified. I actually think it makes more sense than the somewhat unusual and slightly limiting style of the current App-Inventor but that's just IMHO.

Anyway I wrote a short tutorial on my first effort so in case it's useful for anyone it's at:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1812672

[pwnst*r]

That's pretty cool, but being part of Google Labs, it may not be around long (http://www.pcworld.com/article/236158/google_labs_to_be_shut_down.html).