Building an App for Android

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Some long time ago I remember getting excited about Yahoo Pipes and the potential apps I could build. I was going to create remarkable research tools with RSS mashups! And yet, the excitement faded pretty quickly. Why bother to design my own application when there was usually something already on the market that would work just as well, and probably better?

Android’s newly launched App Inventor has the potential to be another Yahoo Pipes for me. I’ve already submitted my request to try out the beta software, but I have mixed feelings about its use. Will I really spend time with App Inventor once the novelty has worn off? And does that even matter as long as other people – people with more time and imagination than I – stick with it?

In the short run, I’ve got some ideas for Android apps up my sleeve: kid entertainment, alerts, quiz material. But I also have a lot of questions. Do all apps have to be submitted for public use? How will Google manage issues of licensed content? Is there a plan to improve the app market’s UI and search function to accommodate an app explosion? Hopefully the answers will come (along with a beta invite) in the near future. In the meantime, I’m contenting myself with reading what others have to say about the new Google software. Here’s a quick coverage round-up on App Inventor:

3 thoughts on “Building an App for Android”

  1. It’s officially A Good Thing.

    Even if it just allows tinkering folks to easily assemble apps for personal use, that’s a very real positive.

    This type of user customization is good for a platform. And perhaps it’ll put pressure on Apple to step up on this type of stuff.

    Back in the pre-Jobs days, Apple was really good at this kind of stuff – witness the legendary Hypercard. But during the second coming of Jobs, it’s been whittled down off the OS X platform, and has never appeared on the iOS platform.

  2. Chucky- Fully agreed. As others have pointed out, it could do for app creation what Blogger initially did for blog creation. Or, frankly, what Frontpage did for me once upon a time with website creation. Yes, I just used a Microsoft example.

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