There’s been a large shift over recent years on the web. More and more people are viewing themselves as creators of content, and not just consumers of content. But I’m probably telling you something that you already know, right? It’s kinda obvious when you look at the growing number of blogs and other social media sites like YouTube that make sharing user-generated content uber-easy.
So it makes sense that as smartphones become more and more popular, people will want to create content there as well.
Well check this out:
Enter the App Inventor for Android.
App Inventor promises to make the development of Android apps so simple that anyone can do it. No longer do you need mad developer skills to create an app. If you have an idea, and you’re savvy enough to use your Android phone, then you already have almost everything that you need.
Check out what GoogleLabs has to say about what you can do:
 | Because App Inventor provides access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build apps that know where you are. You can build an app to help you remember where you parked your car, an app that shows the location of your friends or colleagues at a concert or conference, or your own custom tour app of your school, workplace, or a museum. |
 | You can write apps that use the phone features of an Android phone. You can write an app that periodically texts “missing you” to your loved ones, or an app “No Text While Driving” that responds to all texts automatically with “sorry, I’m driving and will contact you later”. You can even have the app read the incoming texts aloud to you (though this might lure you into responding). |
 | App Inventor provides a way for you to communicate with the web. If you know how to write web apps, you can use App Inventor to write Android apps that talk to your favorite web sites, such as Amazon and Twitter. |
So what do you think? If you could create an Android app, then what kind would you create? What would you find useful?
Do you even think that making app development easier is a good idea? What’s the best that could happen? What’s the worst that could happen?
I think it’s great to make development more accessible to a larger audience, but my initial reaction remains “Oh crap, here comes even more low-quality spam in the Marketplace”. As much as the iPhone App Store is hated, one can’t argue that the curation is what makes the quality of the apps in there so much higher. I’d love to be proven wrong and find out that this tool is going to result in a huge rush of wonderful, interactive, quality applications, but how can it if it’s not even using the actual SDK to take advantage of all the features of the phone?
I think that I’m kinda on the fence like you are. I can see lots of people creating apps of their cat meowing (like in the video), but I think that it might create some opportunity for others to create some pretty decent stuff.
It sounds like some of the SDK stuff is built in there somewhere, because they tout that you can build apps that use all the features of the phone. I’ve applied, and am still awaiting my ‘approval’ so I hope to have more to report on that front soon.
There will be a lot of apps that aren’t useful to the masses. I wouldn’t call them crap-apps necessarily, though. Sure, some of them will be. More fart apps and such. More spam.More noise. But people will are learning how to ignore such things.
But think about this. My 11 year old daughter can create an app for mother’s day. It won’t have wide appeal, but it won’t be crap either. In fact, it will be wonderful. Micro-publication for micro-audiences, this is where I get excited about empowering people to create and design.
Some of those micro-audience apps will appeal to a much larger audience than anyone ever intended. And that’s good too. Many of them will appeal to 1 or 2 people. Or even just the person who created them. That doesn’t make them crap. Or even spam or noise. It just means they are limited in their appeal.
And if I can push the crap metaphor just a bit farther—we need crap to fertilize the environment where we hope to grow something of real value.
FANTASTIC POST, Dan!
That’s a great point Marcus, and one that I hadn’t really thought of before now! The ability to create a micro/personal app might have some pretty widespread appeal. If there really is a market for that, I could even see more apps that help people create those kinds of things (like the mother’s day app).
Thanks dude! You rock!
Seriously can’t wait to try this out. Need a free Saturday. This give code slackers like me a chance to develop an app.
Yeah… I’m in the same boat Brett… I’m nowhere near the level of being a full-fledged application developer, but I design e-learning for a living and am savvy enough to work with an app development program like this. I’ve already got a few ideas being tossed around, and can’t wait to try some things out.